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The good news was she got Route 19. It cut the volume of mail she had to deliver in half.
The bad news was it was a sketchy neighborhood. Even her cohorts at the postal service (who never gave a rat’s ass about her) told her to stay alert.
So she did. She did her new route, alert and efficient. She would park, open the back of the truck, load her bag with that block’s mail, deliver it as quickly as possible, then drive to the next block and do it all over again. It was easy enough; and although the neighborhood was held together with duct tape and desperation, she managed to work this route every day pretty much without incident.
Until the day everything changed.
An early October day it was, crisp, overcast, with a sting in the breeze — winter’s early passive-aggressive threat. She pulled up to the first block, found a good spot at the corner and parked. She was just opening the back when she felt it — a presence behind her.
All senses sharpened, she stayed calm and proceeded to load her bag with the mail. She turned her head just enough to catch, out of the corner of her eye, the shape of a massive, loose pit bull, no collar, watching her.
Chiara had always been attuned to dogs in a spooky way. A friend of hers once posited that while in heaven (as an impending puppy), she was directed…
