Millie POV
I watched her from the upstairs window for forty-five minutes.
Forty-five minutes of a woman watering her own garden in her own front yard in her own town at six in the evening on a Tuesday when she had supposedly already dropped by. She had been watering the hostas. The hostas did not need watering. I knew because my mother had hosted a Halbrook cocktail party every spring for nine years, and I had learned, through endurance more than interest, that hostas should never be watered in the evening because the wet leaves invited rot, and the Halbrooks had lost three of theirs to rot in 2019, and Mrs. Halbrook had written a small column about it in the “Garden & Grounds” newsletter she self-published.
Mrs. Halbrook knew better. Mrs. Halbrook was watering her hostas at six in the
