Tritia thought for a moment. “At least promise me you’ll call if something happens, okay? Call if you need any help.”

“You know I will.”

“Okay.” She was reluctant to hang up, but she could tell that Irene really didn’t want to talk to her right now. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Okay.”

The old woman hung up without saying good-bye.

Doug was wrong, Tritia thought, replacing the receiver. People weren’t changing in ways entirely unconnected to the mail. Directly or indirectly, everything was connected to the mail. At the bottom of all that was occurring in Willis, at the root of all the hostility, all the craziness, was the mailman.

She walked outside to where she had left the mail she’d taken out of the box this morning before Doug and Billy awoke. There were two envelopes, both addressed to her, and all day she had debated with herself whether or not to open them.

Now she picked up a shovel and dug a deep hole on the forest side of the garden.

She threw the envelopes into the hole and buried them, unopened.

Tritia walked down the road toward the Nelsons’ house. Hannah hadn’t called for over two weeks. In fact, Tritia hadn’t talked to her friend since Scooby had been poisoned. That was unusual. Ordinarily, she and Hannah went over to each other’s houses or talked on the phone at least every other day.

She’d tried dialing the Nelsons’ number more than once the past week or so, but she kept getting a busy signal, and when she’d called this morning, a decidedly robotic phone company voice had told her that the line had been disconnected and was no longer in service.

So she decided to walk over and see her friend.

There had been a light rain just after Doug and Billy had left, a short shower from a lone cloud that lasted less than ten minutes, and the dust on the road was packed down. For that she was grateful. Usually, dust flew with each footfall and she was filthy by the time she reached Hannah’s house. But while the rain had settled the dirt, it had also upped the humidity, and that she could have done without. By the time she arrived, the sweat was dripping down the sides of her face.

The Nelsons’ car was in the driveway, Tritia noticed immediately, so she knew they were home. She walked past the car up to the house, shoes noisily crunching the gravel beneath her feet. Her eyes wandered over to the metal stake where Scooby’s chain had been tied. Next to the stake was an empty plastic water bowl. It was strange not hearing the dog’s happy bark as she approached the house, and it made her feel uneasy, as though she had come to the wrong place.