A Stranger Handed Me a Blue Box at Church and Said, “You’ll Need This Tonight”—I Wish I’d Opened It Sooner

The forty-minute drive up the mountain gave me too much time to think about the woman’s face, how she’d known my name, how she’d disappeared so completely that even Amber hadn’t noticed her approach. My daughter had been distracted anyway, talking about the property again, suggesting gently that maybe it was time to consider selling, that fifty acres was too much for one aging man to maintain alone. “Just think about it, Dad,” she’d said in the church parking lot, Rowan’s hand on her shoulder in that practiced gesture of concerned unity they’d perfected.

“We only want what’s best for you. The Cascade Development Group is still interested. The offer’s generous.

You could finally rest, maybe travel like you and Mom always planned.”

I’d nodded noncommittally and driven away, watching them in my rearview mirror as they stood together in the autumn sunlight, looking like the perfect young couple worried about an elderly parent. I didn’t know then that they’d been planning my death for months, that the sympathy in Amber’s voice was covering calculations about inheritance timelines and property liquidation. I didn’t know that my son-in-law had already spent money he expected to extract from my estate, that my daughter had been renting cave systems on my land to drug traffickers for five years.

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