Twelve days after my husband Daniel died, I caught our neighbor Monica climbing over my fence with bags stuffed full of his apples. Daniel had treasured those trees, tending them every autumn while our eight-year-old son, Ben, helped beside him. Before he died, Daniel had looked at the branches and told us they would keep feeding our family long after he was gone. Seeing Monica steal that harvest felt like another loss.
When I confronted her, she said she needed the apples to sell. Then, before climbing back over the fence, she looked at me and said, “Funny how much your life depended on one red light twenty-seven years ago.” I froze. Only Daniel and I knew what had really happened that night. The next morning, every apple was gone, branches were broken, and Daniel’s old ladder lay smashed beneath the trees. I searched for answers and found an old photograph of Monica and Daniel together. Suddenly, I knew my husband had hidden something from me.
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