Saturday Afternoon

When Sarah turned the key in the old farmhouse door, she felt something close to peace for the first time in months.

The house smelled like cedar and dust. Like someone had loved it once. She’d left everything behind – the condo, the furniture, the friends who took sides after the breakup. She sold most of her life in one weekend on Facebook Marketplace, packed her clothes and her dog, and drove six hours toward a town with more cows than people.

She told herself:

No one knows me here. No one knows what happened. I get to be new now.

She bought a used truck. She started going to the local coffee shop every morning. She started mowing her own field. She tried to enjoy the quiet, tried to believe the quiet meant safety.

For a little while, it worked.  Until tiny things started happening.

The first time was easy-to-explain things. Her mailbox door left open. The gate she swore she latched was swinging. A cigarette butt in her gravel driveway – she didn’t smoke.

The time she told herself it was nothing.

The second time she told herself she was just jumpy.  

The third time she told herself she was paranoid.

The fourth time – she stopped telling herself anything. Because the fourth time wasn’t subtle.

It was a manila envelope taped on her door. No stamp. No return address.

Inside was a printed screenshot of a text message from her ex – the one that blew up her marriage – the one she deleted, blocked, crushed, buried. The message that only three people had ever even seen.

On the bottom of the page:

You can move, but you can’t disappear.

Her hands shook so hard she had to sit down on the porch step. The next day she went to the sheriff. He listened. He nodded. He said all the calm law-enforcement words about “documentation” and “paper trail” and “we’ll patrol extra.”  But at the end he said: “You sure it’s your ex?”

Sarah went home and sat in her truck for ten minutes before even walking inside. Because the question ripped open something she had tried not to look at:   What if it wasn’t him?

What if there was someone else – someone who’d been watching it all unfold back in her old life – someone who didn’t show themselves then because they were waiting to see what she’d do when she ran? The next week, another envelope came. This one only had GPS coordinates and Midnight.

Sarah started at the numbers for a long time; she recognized the location – the little footbridge over the creek past her pasture. She could call the sheriff. She could pack everything again. She could leave the state. She could run again. But something in her was so tired of running.  So that night, at 11:58 pm, she walked down to the creek with a flashlight in her hand and her dog by her side.

At midnight on the dot, she heard footsteps on the other side of the bridge. She felt her whole left tighten like a fist – all the fear, all the betrayal, all the lies – all the weight she came here to escape.

And she said, out loud into the darkness “I’m not afraid of you anymore.” The footsteps stopped. A long silence followed. Then the voice – a voice she recognized, but not the one she expected – said:

“You should be.”

The next morning, the envelope wasn’t there. But the message was. Her troubles didn’t follow her here like a shadow. They were already waiting. What  was she going to do next?