That's the problem with perfection. Every surface gleams. Every tool hangs on its pegboard outline. The kitchen counters reflect the overhead light in unbroken sheets of granite, not a crumb, not a ring stain, no indication that a living creature eats here. The couch cushions hold their factory creases.
I stand in the doorway and the silence presses against my eardrums like water.
Go be perfect and alone.
I pluck the triangular pot shard from my cargo pocket and set it on the kitchen counter. It sits there, bright orange against gray granite, the only object in this entire house that isn't where it belongs.
I leave it.
The fridge holds meal-prepped containers. Tuesday's allocation. Grilled chicken, brown rice, steamed broccoli, portioned into four-ounce segments. I close the fridge. Open it again. Close it. My hand stays on the handle.
I know you talk to it when you think nobody's listening.
The rosebush.
I did talk to it. Every morning at 0600, between the first and second pass of the mower. Quiet things. Progress reports on the new cane growth. Complaints about the soil alkalinity. Once, three weeks ago, standing in the pre-dawn dark, I told it about the woman next door who smelled like marigolds and laughed like a grenade going off in a flower shop.
I let go of the fridge handle.
Enough.
The crater won't investigate itself.
I change into clean cargo shorts. Fresh tee shirt, the backup I keep pressed and folded in the second drawer. Lace my boots tight. Grab the field investigation kit from the garage: pH testing strips, soil core sampler, magnifying loupe, evidence bags, a small UV wand I kept from my warband scouting days.
The crater sits in my front yard like a wound. Three feet across, eighteen inches deep. The rosebush halves have already started to wilt in the morning sun, petals curling brown at the edges. I kneel at the perimeter and breathe.
Focus.
Not on the blood prints on her porch steps. On the evidence.
I grab the soil core sampler and drive it six inches into the crater wall. The sample comes up clean. Dark. Rich. No discoloration, no chemical banding, no streaks of magical residue. I crack a pH strip against the core. 6.4. Exactly where I calibrated it last month.
No fertilizer contamination.
I sit back on my heels. Run the numbers again. Magical slow-release fertilizer leaves a signature. Accelerated microbial activity, yes, but also a distinct mineral bloom. Phosphorescent trace elements that glow under UV light for seventy-two hours minimum. I click on the UV wand and sweep it across the crater floor, the walls, the displaced root ball.
Nothing.
Clean soil. Undisturbed mineral composition. Whatever ripped this bush out of the ground, it wasn't a chemical chain reaction from Junia's fertilizer.
My stomach drops.
I accused her of something she didn't do.
I close my eyes. My arms pulse once, dim, ashamed.
Move on. Keep working the scene.
I widen the search radius. Circle the crater on hands and knees, nose inches from the turf, magnifying loupe pressed to my eye. The grass around the impact zone is torn but not burned. No scorch patterns. No radial blast signature. The damage is directional. Upward and outward, concentrated on the east side.
Something pulled it. Not pushed. Not exploded.Pulled.
I shift to the eastern lip of the crater and freeze.
Boot print.
Pressed deep into the soft soil. Long and narrow, maybe a size eleven, with a smooth sole. No tread pattern. Dress shoes. The heel impression drives a full inch deeper than the toe,meaning whoever stood here was leaning hard, bracing against resistance. Pulling against something heavy.
