Every morning Sadie Grace found some new offering on her front stoop: seven fresh eggs wrapped in a clean cloth, a whole chicken, a cow liver on a slab of shagbark hickory that was still oozing sap. One day she found a letter of apology signed by the mayor of Riddle. She had long suspected that the mayor couldn’t read or write, and she thought it likely his wife had written the note. She burned the letter in her potbellied stove and sprinkled the ashes in the well behind his house. The next day the mayor’s wife took to her bed with stomach cramps.
