Queen V.'s Arc

Chapter 9 of 13

She stayed away from windows for the rest of the morning. Paul made coffee. She drank it and told him she needed to check the chairs. He nodded and went back to his phone. She walked outside and stopped halfway to the garden house. Hank sat in a lounge chair on his side of the property line. A wooden bench and table set stood a few feet away, positioned where the utility bin had been. He was looking at his phone, but he glanced up when she approached. She hesitated, then crossed to the property line. She would not ask him anything if she could avoid it. But she needed to know. "Morning," he said. He turned his phone screen toward her. On it was a photo of foam bottle shapes clustered near a puddle. The timestamp read four-thirty that morning. "You see them too?" She stared at the photo. Relief and fear hit her at the same time. She was not losing her mind. But they were real. "Nobody else needs to know," she said. Her voice came out flat. Hank nodded and put the phone in his pocket. "Our secret," he said. She turned and walked back to her property without another word. The event would go on. The cellar would stay closed. And now she had proof she was not imagining things—but also a witness she had not planned for. She had come for certainty and gained it. She had also given Hank something to hold over her. The trade was done.