Chapter Ninety-Five: Marisol’s Door

Marisol’s house was the kind you could drive past a hundred times and never remember. A quiet street. Mid sized, beige painted walls. A patch of grass that looked like it had been bullied into staying green. The kind of place people choose when they want to fade into something respectable, wrap themselves in the illusion of safety.

I parked across the street and watched for a while. Not because I needed to. Because I wanted her to feel the shadow before she saw me.

Through the curtains, I caught glimpses, her moving from the kitchen to the living room, hair tied up, wearing one of those cotton house dresses that said I don’t belong to the past anymore. A child’s voice drifted faintly through the open kitchen window. Then another, younger, crying for attention.

She wasn’t expecting me.

I stepped out of the car and crossed the street, the sound of my boots on pavement steady, deliberate. A tricycle sat by the porch, a red one with faded stickers peeling from the sides. My shadow fell ove