For three days, the black sedan had been parked across the street from my house. It sat there through the morning commute, through the midday lull, and late into the evening.
I first noticed it the day after my grandmother’s funeral. I was sitting on my front porch, clutching the only thing she had left me in her will: a heavy, tarnished gold locket. It was an antique, something she wore every single day of her life. She had pressed it into my hand moments before she passed, whispering, “Keep it closed, Sarah. Just keep it safe.”
But I couldn’t stop looking at the car. The windows were tinted, but occasionally, when the streetlights hit the windshield just right, I could see a silhouette. A man. He was always watching.
On the fourth day, the rain was coming down in sheets. My anxiety got the better of me. I grabbed an umbrella and marched down the driveway, determined to confront him. As I got closer, the window rolled down just an inch.
I froze. I saw a pair of piercing, icy blue eyes—eyes that looked terrified and sorrowful all at once. He looked old, his face weathered, a scar running down his jawline.
“Who are you?” I shouted over the rain. “Why are you watching me?”
He didn’t speak. He just looked at the locket hanging around my neck. His eyes filled with tears, and without a word, he rolled the window up and started the engine. I watched him speed away, my heart hammering against my ribs.
I ran back inside, trembling. I pulled the locket off my neck and sat at the kitchen table. Everyone in the family knew what was inside: a picture of my grandfather, Arthur, who had died in the war before my dad was even born. I had never opened it—Grandma Rose had been so possessive of it—but I had seen the picture of Arthur on the mantle a thousand times.
But the way the man in the car looked at the necklace… it wasn’t greed. It was recognition.
I took a butter knife from the table. The clasp was old and rusted shut. I worked the blade into the groove, my hands shaking.
I pried the back of the locket open.
The old hinge snapped. Inside, there was a folded piece of paper—the note Grandma always spoke of. It read: My heart belongs to you.
But the paper was thick. Too thick. I used the tip of the knife to lift the corner of the paper. Hidden behind the note was a microscopic photo.
My breath hitched in my throat. I expected the black and white portrait of Arthur in his uniform.
It wasn’t my grandfather.
The man in the photo was young, handsome, and smiling, with his arm around a young version of my grandmother. He had a scar on his jawline. And piercing, icy blue eyes.
It was the man in the car.
I dropped the locket on the table. The man outside wasn’t a stalker. He was the secret my grandmother had kept for sixty years. And he hadn’t come for the jewelry; he had come to say goodbye to her.
