I turned onto a street that ran north and south, one that connected at the next intersection with the street where this woman Jen lived. On that street I’d turn right and go down a few houses before reaching the correct address. I looked at the houses as I passed, envious of the quiet lives going on behind their closed doors and drawn curtains. I felt like an interloper on their average lives, dragged there as the result of a horrible mistake I’d made six years earlier.

And one Blake had made in the past few months.

A man came around the corner of a house on my left. I saw him first, then heard something like keys jangling. His small fluffy dog bounded ahead of him, straining against the leash, and when the dog saw me, he strained even harder, pulling against the man until he stumbled slightly forward.

I looked to my right and briefly considered cutting sharply across the street to the sidewalk opposite me. But there wasn’t time to do that, and if I had, wouldn’t I have created suspicion?

So I walked on, head down slightly, and as the man came abreast of me, the fluffy dog’s tail going like a metronome, I tried not to make eye contact. But the man said hello to me, a friendly greeting, and without thinking too much about it, I said hello back to him.

Then my eyes trailed up, ever so quickly, and our gazes locked for a split second. The man smiled at me as we passed and looked like he wanted to say something, but I turned my head away and looked down at my shoes.

When I was well by him and almost to the next street, the one I needed to turn right on in order to complete my mission, I wondered if the man knew me from somewhere. Had I seen recognition in his eyes, however fleeting? Or had I just allowed my paranoia to get the best of me?

He might have seen me on one of the many social media spots we’d done for the Pig. Or he might have met me at a chamber of commerce meeting. I told myself to keep walking past the woman’s street and then to loop around and return to my car. To abort the mission, as they would have said in a spy movie when the spy’s cover was blown.

But when I reached the corner, I told myself to calm down, that a momentary glance in the dark with my hat and basketball clothes likely wouldn’t stick in an older man’s mind. Even if he had seen me somewhere before, I was now appearing before him completely out of context.

So I kept going and made the right turn.