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If you go back there somebody’s gonna die
I watch her for a moment, not believing that she’s as discombobulated as she’s acting,
bison in the backyard.
too unpredictable with bison
a house surrounded by poison
I am being watched.
Paula Paulsen
How does Maddy know Gwen’s house is a mess?
The single day that death occurred shouldn’t define her.”
She’d been quoted in the Avalon Breeze as talk of demolishing the minigolf course overheated. “New folks hate the old things and want to tear it down. Us islanders cherish old things. They need to go back to LA, destructive sons of guns.”
“She hated the developers and the real estate types. She led marches to protest the building of all the apartments that house workers. They were kicking people out of their houses and making them vacation rentals, so into apartments they went. Once she couldn’t march anymore, she resisted another way.”
just like Momma collected junk? She collected secrets, too. Who was sleeping with who. Who ripped off who. And she let folks know that she knew.”
Heidi would remember the one who survived.
“Momma thought it was the most evil thing that’s ever happened here,” Heidi says, “and that was the moment she wanted to leave this place.”
“Momma reached out to you,”
“She sent you little trinkets—a bracelet, a leather journal, and a pen . . . she didn’t want you to think that we were all evil white people over here. And that’s still very much true.”
I think she wanted to make the house ugly so that people couldn’t make comps.”
“Momma knew what people were saying about her
“Mom’s last protest was at a city council meeting. She wanted these Airbnb places restricted,
island’s protected. And there’s a water problem. Limited access to fresh water. In other words, we were never supposed to be living on this piece of rock.”
“After dinner back on last Friday, Momma took her evening hike over to the botanical garden, which she always does, and . . .”
“She sat on that little stone bench by this ringed stone garden and . . . that’s it. Hikers found her the next morning. She was dead.”
“The death certificate says, ‘heart attack,’ but she didn’t have cardiac disease. I mean . . . your heart just doesn’t explode without warning, right?”
she and a friend were having dinner at five.
she was out walking and that she’d call me later.”
she never believed that man they arrested was the murderer. She’d always say, ‘Why would a Black man come to the whitest place in LA County to kill other Black people?’ She’d say that a lot, and the wrong people heard that and didn’t like her saying it. That’s another reason she started hoarding.”
“You can’t kill someone if you can’t find them.”
“Did you request an autopsy, especially since she didn’t have heart disease?”
