I let out a nervous chuckle and started to backpedal, away from the checkout line.

“Are you staying at your folks’ place right now?” Barbara asked.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“The funny thing is, I ran into your sister about six months ago. I’m so sorry to hear about your mom,” Barbara went on.

Barbara ignored the cashier and stuck me with a hug before I could slip anyway any further. I felt her bosom awkwardly smash up against my rib cage.

“Thank you,” I muttered.

Barbara thankfully pulled away from me.

“I told your sister I remembered two things about you. One, you walked on your toes for some reason. Two, you and your sister constantly talked about monsters. You two were always really, really scared of ‘bloody monsters.’”

I couldn’t get the second thing Barbara said out of my head as I drove up the highway towards the house I grew up in and both my parents had died in within the past couple of years.

I called up my sister. She didn’t answer. She hadn’t answered her phone in months. I don’t know why I even kept trying. I left a voicemail.

“Hey Mandy. It’s Sam. It’s funny I just ran into Barbara Daniels. The lady who ran our daycare as kids at the store and she said something weird. She specifically mentioned that we always talked about monsters and being scared of bloody monsters. So weird she specifically mentioned that, but I wanted to talk to you about it. See what you might have remembered since you were a little older. I kind of remember being scared a lot, but would never have thought it would be something enough for her to mention fifteen years later. Anyway. Call me back. Bye.”

I wrapped up my message just as I pulled up to the dirt driveway which snaked up to my parents’ house and the tin mailbox with the name “Ross” printed on it in big, sloppy white painted letters which were so faded they could almost no longer be read.