Chapter 7

Adele Ferro sat on her front porch at midnight, peeling the last strip of adhesive off her mailbox.

The sticker had been stubborn. Six weeks of sun and rain had baked it onto the metal, and she had gone through half a bottle of adhesive remover and the patience her husband used to tease her about. The porch light cast a warm pool around her, moths orbiting the bulb, the cul-de-sac asleep around her at a Wednesday hour that had stopped being Tuesday half an hour ago.

The sticker came off in one long strip, and she folded it — once, twice, three times — and tucked it into the pocket of her dark trousers. A small square of metal, clean and bare for the first time in six weeks.

"It's done," Hal's voice said from the end of the driveway.

She looked up. He had changed out of the olive polo into a worn gray t-shirt, and he was standing at the edge of her lawn, hands in his pockets, watching her with the same tired steady gaze he'd had all evening.

"I saw the light," he said. "Thought you might want company."

Adele smiled, and it was not a big smile, but it reached her eyes. "I'm just finishing up. The sticker's off. The mailbox is clean."

Hal nodded. He walked up the driveway slowly, stopped a few feet from her. "I sent the note to the county. The management office too. I asked for an independent review of three years of fines."

Adele's hand, which had been brushing the clean metal of the mailbox, stilled. "Three years."

"Three years," Hal said. "If this went on that long — and I have no reason to think it didn't — there could be other false fines. Other hidden appeals. Other re-worded lines."

Adele looked at the mailbox. "There's a copy of the appeal in my folder. There's a copy of the fine line with his initials. There's the second copy with different wording. There's the photo with the time stamp. There's the regulations page."

"All five pages," Hal said. "I saw them."