Chapter 1: The Eviction Notice
The morning air was damp, clinging to the peeling white paint of the porch railing like a cold sweat. Martha Higgins pulled her faded floral housecoat tighter around her frail frame, her knuckles white as she gripped the cane that had become her constant companion over the last decade. She had stepped outside just to check the mail, hoping for a coupon flyer or perhaps a letter from an old friend, though those had stopped coming years ago. Instead, she found something taped aggressively to her front door. It was a bright orange sheet of paper that screamed for attention against the weathered wood.
Martha adjusted her glasses, her heart beginning to hammer a painful rhythm against her ribs. The bold black letters were blurry at first, swimming in her vision until she forced herself to focus. "FINAL NOTICE OF EVICTION," it read. The official seal of the county clerk was stamped at the bottom, looking like a bloody bruise. It was cruel timing. Today was the twenty-fifth anniversary of her husband’s death—the day the silence in this house had first begun. She had fought to keep this roof over her head through medical bills, rising taxes, and the lonely winters, but the orange paper suggested the fight was finally over. She had thirty days to vacate the premises. Thirty days to pack up seventy-two years of life.
Her trembling fingers reached out to peel the tape away. The paper crinkled loudly in the quiet morning. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, hot and stinging. She turned to go back inside, defeated, ready to sit in her armchair and let the grief finally overtake her. But as she pulled the orange notice free, something fluttered out from behind it. It wasn't an official document. It was a small, torn scrap of notebook paper, folded tightly. Martha frowned, her breath catching in her throat. She unfolded the scrap. The handwriting wasn't the sterile print of the court; it was scribbled in blue ink, hasty and jagged. She read the three words scrawled there, and the blood ran cold in her veins.
