Laura slid open her nightstand drawer and looked inside. The letter was on top. I saw the lipstick through the thin paper. “He’s just some freak,” she said. “I’m going to throw them out.”

She took the note and tore it over and over until the pieces were the size of confetti. Then she sprinkled them into her wastebasket.

I felt uneasy. “Them? Are there more?”

“Yeah.” Laura shrugged.

“How many?”

“I don’t know. Ten maybe.”

“Ten? When did this start?”

“A few weeks ago.”

“Do you still have them?”

She nodded.

“I want to see them,” I told her.

Laura sighed theatrically, as if I were making a big deal over nothing, and dug inside the drawer. She came out with a small stack of papers tied together with a rubber band. She pulled them apart and spilled them onto the blanket.

I couldn’t believe what I saw.

Some were written in lipstick like the other one. All of the messages were obscene and violent.

I’m going to fuck you.

Keep your door locked.

Are you going to be alone tonight, whore?

There were photographs, too. Whoever had done this had cut them out of porno magazines. I saw black-and-white shots of men with huge penises and women servicing them with their mouths. More messages were scrawled on the photos.

You’ll suck mine, too.

Is your ass still a virgin?

“Are you crazy?” I nearly screamed at her. “You have to go to the police with this.”

“I don’t want to make things worse. School will be done soon, and he’ll stop.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Come on, he hasn’t done anything. He’s just trying to creep me out. He’s like some peeping tom trying to get under my skin. Well, I won’t let him.”

“Do you have any idea who’s doing this?” I asked again.

“No. I talked to a few guys, you know, to see if they’d heard anything. I thought maybe he’d be bragging about it to his buddies. But nobody knew who it was, or if they did, they wouldn’t tell me.”

“Did you tell Dad?”

“Are you kidding? He’d flip. And don’t you dare breathe a word, little sister. Somehow it would wind up as my fault.”

While I watched, Laura began tearing up all of the notes and photographs. I wanted to stop her. I told her I thought she was making a big mistake, but Laura shredded and ripped and tore until she had a small mountain of remnants that she slid off her bed into the garbage.

“So much for that,” she said.

3
___________

Stride and Tish left Grandma’s Saloon together. Tish lit a cigarette when they were alone on the concrete pier that jutted out into Lake Superior. Her muscles unwound. She tilted her chin and exhaled a stream of smoke like a sigh. The breeze caught and dispersed it, but Stride could taste the ghost of smoke in the air, and he had to jam his hands in his pockets to beat down the craving.