Rose’s POV
It arrived on a Tuesday.
I almost didn’t open it.
That was the thing I kept coming back to afterward, that I had stood at my kitchen counter for almost three full minutes with the cream envelope in my hand, reading my own name in someone else’s handwriting, and had considered simply setting it aside. Putting it on the counter with the rest of the post. Leaving it there and going about my morning and dealing with it later, which was what I did with things I wasn’t certain I wanted to deal with immediately.
I didn’t set it aside.
I had recognized the return address, or rather, I had recognized the street, because I had looked it up three months ago in a moment of weakness I had immediately categorized as intelligence gathering and never looked at again. The Jones residence
