But when I emptied the garbage bag to prove he hadn’t taken anything valuable, a man’s shirt fell onto the sidewalk.
Something metallic slipped from its sleeve.
A silver wristwatch.
With a blue face.
My heart nearly stopped.
I picked it up, turned it over, and stared at the tiny inscription engraved on the back.
“Always your home. S.”
I knew that watch.
I’d saved for six months to buy it for my husband’s anniversary.
The same husband who had walked out on our son and me five years earlier.
I looked at my neighbor.
“Ivy… why do you have my husband’s watch?”
Her face went completely white.
And in that moment, I realized the woman who’d spent years pretending to care about us had been hiding something far more disturbing than a piece of jewelry.
My name is Sarah.
I was thirty-three years old when my marriage ended, and for the following five years, my entire existence seemed to revolve around two responsibilities.
