Keep This Quiet: Her husband agreed with her

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Friday. The gravel, noon.

"No."

It came out level. It had no second word behind it.

The pen moved. Two letters, small, in a box. She watched him make them. It was the second thing he had written at the hour she said it.

Nobody else on this property ever had.

"Yes, ma'am," the deputy said.

He looked up at the house, window by window, the way a man reads a number off a mailbox. He never once looked at her husband. Then he capped the pen.

At the hedge the secateurs had stopped. Under the trees, a car door opened without hurry.

"Deputy." Daniel's voice came from beside her, quiet. His hands hung where the man had asked for them.

"You've asked her. Now ask me."

"There's no box for you, sir."

"Then use the margin." He did not raise it. "She's right. She hasn't been safe in this house since Sunday night."

The pen stayed capped.

"Somebody stood in our room. Somebody shut a door on her hand, then walked out through my hall. I slept through it."

The mild eyes came round to him.

"I had every lock changed by Monday noon. I'd have rung your office myself. I was told the county doesn't come out for a door."