Alice watched, breath held, as the sedan idled for a long minute. Then it reversed, turned around, and disappeared into the night.

No one called her Alice. No one called her anything. That was the deal.

The town of Elder’s Mill had no welcome sign. It didn’t need one. You either belonged, or you were a ghost passing through. Alice Peachy had been both for three years.

She lived on the edge of the county line in a rented cottage with a leaky roof and a garden that grew only thistles. The postman knew her as “the lady at 17B,” the librarian as “the one who reads obituaries from other states,” and the woman at the diner as “the quiet one who orders pie but never finishes the crust.”

That night, Alice watched from her window as the sedan’s headlights cut through her dark yard. She had already packed her suitcase. The thistles in the garden swayed like warning fingers. For a moment, she considered running—back to the highway, back to the unknown, back to being nobody.

“Just Alice,” she said.