PART 2 — What Was Never Meant to Be Found
The first thing I saw wasn’t blood.
It was bread.
Perfectly good bread. Still securely sealed inside the bakery bag.
Right next to it sat unopened cartons of milk, crisp fresh vegetables, expensive steaks tightly wrapped in butcher paper, family-sized boxes of cereal, frozen dinners, yogurt cups that hadn’t even reached their expiration date, and enough fruit to fill an entire grocery store produce display.
I blinked several times, totally convinced I was missing something.
The heavy contractor bag wasn’t full of garbage at all.
It was full of groceries.
Thousands of dollars’ worth of groceries.
Nothing smelled rotten. Nothing had spoiled. Everything looked perfectly fresh.
“What on earth…” I whispered to myself.
A car door suddenly slammed somewhere down the street.
I nearly jumped out of my skin.
Thinking Evelyn had come back, I hurriedly tied the black bag closed exactly as I’d found it and crossed the asphalt street as casually as I possibly could. By the time I reached my own driveway, my heart was pounding harder than if I’d just been caught stealing.
When I told my wife, Sarah, what I’d found, she stared at me in utter disbelief.
“You’re telling me she’s throwing away perfectly good food every single day?”
“I know exactly how crazy it sounds.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Maybe someone else dumped it there.”
“In five different bags?”
Neither of us had a logical answer.
That evening, while I was grilling dinner on the patio, I watched Evelyn pull her SUV into her driveway.
She smiled over at me exactly like she always did.
“Beautiful evening,” she called out.
“It sure is.”
