It started with a peppermint.
Not one of those smooth, glossy ones you get at the bank, but the kind that’s powdery and crumbles in your mouth. Every Tuesday, like clockwork, Mrs. Altha would shuffle to my car in her orthopedic shoes, cardigan fluttering like a flag of habit, and she’d hand me one before sliding into the passenger seat.
“Sugar keeps the spirit sweet,” she’d always say with a wink.
I’m not sure when our little ritual stopped being just neighborly. Maybe it was the third ride, when she grabbed my hand for balance and didn’t let go right away. Or the time she made me pull over to watch the sunrise, whispering something about how it made her feel young. But I never thought much of it. She was old, I was bored, and driving her to her weekly doctor’s appointment felt like doing my small bit for the universe.
Today, though, was different.
She was wearing the same floral cardigan, but it looked too big for her. Or maybe she had gotten smaller. Her smile trembled when she gave me the peppermint, and her hands didn’t stop shaking even after we’d pulled out of the driveway.
“You okay, Mrs. Altha?” I asked, glancing at her at a red light.
She nodded. Slowly. Too slowly. “Just a bit tired, dear.”
But then, as we passed the hardware store, she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a folded note. Yellowed and creased. She held it out to me, her fingers hesitant.
“Don’t read this yet,” she said, her voice barely more than a breath. “Wait until you get home.”
That laugh I let out wasn’t real. It was the kind you make when something feels off but you’re trying to keep it light. “What is it? Some kind of treasure map?”
She didn’t smile. Not really. “Just promise.”
I promised.
After walking her into the clinic and watching her sign in with that shaky script of hers, I drove back home. I should’ve waited. I tried. But the moment I sat on the couch, the envelope in my pocket burned like it was alive.
I opened it.
The note was short.
If I don’t come home today, tell them I wasn’t scared. Tell them you made the end feel like the beginning. And please… find her. I never stopped looking.
On the back: a name—Sabrina Collins. A date. And an address in a part of Houston I’d never heard of.
I reread it five times. Maybe more. Then I just sat there, trying to stitch some sense into what I’d just read.
The phone rang three hours later.
“This is Memorial Downtown Clinic. Are you the emergency contact for Altha Collins?”
My mouth was dry. “Yeah. I guess I am.”
“She didn’t make it out of surgery. We’re very sorry.”
I couldn’t breathe. It was a routine intervention. Just some cardio work, they said. She told me last week it was nothing serious. She lied. Or maybe she didn’t want me to worry.
The next few days blurred. I handled what I could. Helped notify the neighbors. Helped the hospital with the release forms. There was no one else—at least, no one on paper. But the note she gave me kept burning in my mind.
Find her.
So I asked around.
Turns out, the older folks on the street knew more than I ever guessed. “Altha had a daughter,” one of them told me. “Ran off to Dallas or Houston, I think. Got mixed up with the wrong crowd. Drugs. That’s what did it.”
Another neighbor added, “She never stopped talking about her. But it hurt her, you know? Not knowing where she was.”
I kept digging. Found out Altha had hired a private investigator last year—something I only discovered because I found the receipt in her drawer while sorting her documents for the lawyer. The address matched the one on the note. A cheap apartment complex tucked behind a gas station off I-69 in Houston.
I made the drive the next morning.
The place was run-down, but not awful. The kind of place where hope lived with its head down. I knocked on 2B, and after a few seconds, a woman cracked the door.
Thin. Maybe mid-thirties. Brown hair pulled into a messy bun. Her eyes were the same shape as Altha’s, though dulled by wear.
“Yes?” she asked, voice cautious.
“Sabrina Collins?” I asked.
She didn’t answer, just studied me like I might be a debt collector or worse.
“I knew your mother,” I said. “I was… her neighbor. I drove her to her doctor’s appointments.”
Her face changed. Crumbled, almost.
“She died,” I said, and I don’t know why it came out so gently. “She wanted me to find you.”
That’s when the little boy stepped out from behind her. Couldn’t have been more than five. Holding a cracked blue toy truck and wearing socks but no shoes.
“I’m clean now,” Sabrina said, voice shaking. “Two years. I… I just couldn’t go back. I didn’t want her to see me like that.”
“She never stopped looking,” I told her. “She left you a note.”
I told her everything. About the peppermint rides. The note. The house three doors down from mine with the sagging porch and wind chimes that never stopped singing.
She cried. Right there in the doorway. I offered to wait outside while she packed a bag.
We drove back that evening.
When we got to the house, it was like the walls knew her. I unlocked the door, let her step in first. Everything was untouched—just as Altha had left it. On the dining room table was another note, sealed with wax.
It was addressed to Sabrina.
She opened it while I stood in the kitchen, pretending not to watch.
I heard her sob. Deep, gut-wrenching sobs that broke something in me, too.
Later, she told me what it said.
My sweet girl. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you sooner. I wanted to. I tried. I never stopped loving you—not even on the darkest days. This house is yours now. There’s a small account under your name, just enough to give you a start. If you’re reading this, it means you came home. That’s all I ever wanted.
Sabrina and her son moved in that week. I helped her set up the utilities, clean out the garden, and fix the back gate. She thanked me more times than I can count, and I always told her the same thing: “I just gave your mom a ride.”
But it wasn’t true. She gave me something. A reason to get out of bed. A story that mattered.
Sabrina and I started meeting for coffee. Then dinners. Then she invited me to her son’s kindergarten recital, and I cheered louder than anyone in the room. We talk about Altha often. The peppermint rides. Her scratched-up gospel CDs. Her fierce hope.
I still drive past her porch every day, half-expecting to see that floral cardigan fluttering in the breeze. I don’t. But the wind chimes are still singing.
Maybe some things don’t end. Maybe they just begin again.
If this story touched you, share it. You never know who might be waiting for a sign to come home.
