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All day yesterday, I paid for that short morning run that I’m sure would have been the end of me if I had pushed it even a tenth of a mile longer. Even a scorching hot shower and a gallon of water didn’t help, despite what Sara claimed. I barely made it to the couch before my legs gave out, so I spent the next eight hours in the supine position, unable to move a muscle without crying out in utter agony.

Somehow, my body survived to wake up again this morning. I don’t know if it was the nearly ten hours of the soundest sleep I’ve ever had in my life or the handful of ibuprofen I tossed down my throat right before bed, but I feel good enough to try running again today.

At least that’s what I’m saying now as I glance over at the clock and see it’s nearly time for my alarm to sound at six-thirty. I turn it off before it does. I don’t need that chiming to start my day.

I just hope I can get more out of Sara today to make all this pain and suffering worthwhile.

The first twinge of my body remembering what I did to it yesterday occurs when I swing my legs out of bed. Normally, this action means nothing to me. It’s merely a step between sitting up and standing.

Today is a different story, however.

My right leg makes it off the bed so my foot touches the floor relatively easily, but the left leg doesn’t fare so well. Halfway over, my hip cramps, and I collapse onto my back like a ton of bricks. Or an out of shape man.

After rubbing the cramped area for a minute or so, I try again to get out of bed and succeed. If only that’s all I had to do today, I’d be a champion, but I need to get up and over to Sara’s street to meet up with her.

So I hobble to the bathroom to get ready, and after slathering Ben Gay all over my legs, I get dressed in another pair of running shorts and a white T-shirt. With a quick look in the mirror as I brush my teeth, I silently remind myself that this is all for a purpose.

I need to find out all about Sara’s life so I can take it.

Ten minutes later as I walk down the street, I see Caroline walk out onto her porch dressed in shorts and a T-shirt and looking content like I wish I was. With a mug of coffee in her hand, she gives me a nod and a smile.

“Day two is hard, I hear.”

I nod, knowing all too well that’s true. She’s surprisingly quite attractive first thing in the morning. Her hair doesn’t look like a matted mess, and although I can’t tell if she’s wearing makeup or not, she looks as pretty right now as she always does.

“Just have to fight through. Have a good one,” I say with as much enthusiasm as I can muster this morning.

At least it’s not oppressively hot or humid today. I heard the weatherman say the heatwave might break this afternoon, but I’m not terribly hopeful. It’s got to be nearly eighty already this morning, and it’s not even seven o’clock yet.

Not that it will matter once I’m finished with this run. I plan to spend all day inside in the air-conditioned comfort of my house researching everything I can on Sara.

Hopefully today, she’ll give me more to go on.

As I turn the corner off Park Circle, I see her stretching a few yards away. She’s wearing what looks like a black skirt I’m sure has shorts underneath and a pink tank top. As I walk closer to her, I notice she’s wearing makeup this morning.

Interesting. Is Jared joining us, or is that for me?

“Hey, you came back!” she says with a broad smile.

“Yeah. Well, I told you I wouldn’t give up, so I figured I should try to live up to my word. One of my neighbors just told me the second day is hard, but I’m hoping I can muddle through.”

Sara looks around for who I’m talking about and then returns her focus to me. “Oh yeah? Are we being joined by a third?” she asks with a hint of hope in her voice.

I shake my head as I realize she’s probably wondering if it was Jared who warned me about day two. That tells me they haven’t spoken since I ran with her yesterday. I almost expected to see him here this morning joining the two of us.

Knowing I might be jumping the gun a bit, I join her in stretching as the church bell in the distance begins to toll and casually say, “I thought maybe your friend would be running with us today.”

She lifts her head from the neck stretch she’s doing and asks, “Who? Bob?”

Odd that she isn’t immediately thinking Jared, but then again, she might not consider him a friend. “No. Jared. I know you guys ran together every day until recently.”

Grimacing, she shakes her head as she bends her leg behind her to stretch her thigh muscles. “Jared and I are no longer speaking. We had a huge fight when I called him last night, so we’re officially over. He can find someone else to run with every morning.”

I smile at what I think may be her unintended double entendre and give her my best sympathetic nod. So Jared is out of the picture. That makes what I want to do a little easier. With him out of the way, that leaves only her to deal with.

“Ready? I don’t have to be at the salon until eleven, so I’m happy to go a little slower since I bet you’re feeling the effects of yesterday right now.”

With a groan, I stretch my arms over my head. “You have no idea. I’m not giving up, though.”

Sara slaps me on the arm, throwing her head back in laughter. “That’s the spirit! Let’s get started because the only way to get to the goal is through it.”

I have no idea what the hell that means, but I start running when she does, instantly regretting my decision to try again. Just need to keep my eye on the prize.

Except that the prize might be far stronger than I thought.

We run for a few blocks while I watch Sara carefully and have to admit she may be hard to subdue. I’m physically bigger than her, but as I study her body, I can’t deny she’s got some strength to her.

“Do you know he came to my work yesterday?” she asks out of the blue, tearing me from my fixation on her body and how I’m going to handle her when the time comes.

“Oh yeah?” I say to keep the conversation moving, even as I struggle to catch my breath.

She looks over at me and frowns. “Yeah. He wanted to get together. I asked him if he was going back to his wife, and he couldn’t give me a straight answer! On top of that, he wouldn’t even say if he was going to get rid of Kerry. She’s the other woman he’s been seeing. I swear he’s out of his mind if he thinks I’m going to be okay with that now.”

That this woman, who until recently was the other woman or at least one of Jared’s other women, now has a problem with his cheating might be the most ironic thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I want to laugh at her outrage because it’s utterly ridiculous, but I keep my expression calm and stifle any hint of a chuckle.

“Sounds like he doesn’t know if he’s coming or going,” I struggle to say as she turns left to head down toward the oldest section of the development.

“What he doesn’t know is a good thing when it’s standing right in front of his face. I hope he gets fat and out of shape now. That other girlfriend of his doesn’t like him to run. Says it makes him sweaty and she can smell the stink on him whenever she sees him. So fine. I hope he blows up to the size of a house. See how much she wants him then, right?”

With every word that comes out of Sara’s mouth, I think I like Jared’s other side chick more and more. At the very least, I like her attitude toward running. Right now as my left calf muscle feels like it’s going to explode out of my skin, I can think of nothing else but never doing this again, no matter how fat and out of shape I get.

“Yeah. Well, good riddance to bad rubbish is what they say,” I mumble before wiping the sweat from my forehead.

Sara sprints ahead a little bit and turns around so she’s running backwards. “You’re really doing well, Adam. I don’t mean to insult you by saying this, but I wasn’t sure you’d come back for another run today. I figured you spent all day in agony after yesterday’s run. I’m impressed that you didn’t throw in the towel.”

If she only knew how much I want to do just that, but the desire to kill her is far more powerful than the wish that I could just stop this right now.

I wave away the very idea that I would give up and laugh, although it comes out far more maniacally than I expected. “No way. I’m in this to win it.”

She laughs at my gung-ho attitude, likely wondering what the hell I think I’m going to win by running with her every morning at the crack of dawn. Oh, I’ll win in the end. Until then, though, I’ll have to suffer through the pain of running to get what I want.

After spinning around to face forward again, she elbows me in the arm. “I like the way you think. You’ve got a great mindset about things. You aren’t like the other people over in that neighborhood. That’s cool.”

Even in my agony-riddled state, I know the beginning of gossip when I hear it. Turning to look at her, I see her grimacing. Oh, yes. She has something on her mind.

“I don’t really know everyone very well, so you might be right. I’m not sure. They’re nice, though. I’ll give them all that.”

In a show of anger, she snaps, “Oh, yeah. Sure. To your face. Then behind your back, trust me, they’re trashing your clothes and the way your hair looks and everything about you. That’s how those kind of people are. Phony. They think they’re so much better than everyone else.”

She isn’t wrong about them. Sara barely walked away from the tent the other day before my neighbors’ tongues started wagging. At the time, I felt like she had it coming since she was intruding on the party her married boyfriend’s wife would be attending.

Now I’m just curious what else she has to say about them. Maybe I’ll find out something about my neighbors I don’t know yet.

“I don’t know them well. I’m the newest person on Park Circle.”

Even as I open my mouth to correct my misstatement, Sara says, “Second newest. The girl in the green house is the newest. I had to hear all about that from Jared when she moved in. He really liked having that house empty, and he was pissed when she bought it. Do you know he thought she was some Only Fans chick or something? I told him there was no way that was happening. She’s not hot enough, and her body isn’t great, so nobody’s going to be paying her to do anything online.”

The mere thought of Caroline performing for strangers in front of a camera for money is so utterly absurd I can barely stifle my laughter. Jesus, that Jared really is a moron.

“No way,” I say between gasping for breaths. “I can’t imagine anyone on that street doing that.”

“I know, right? They’re all so prim and proper. They wouldn’t even know what to do if someone stuck a camera in front of them like that. The only one I would have even thought it could be possible with was the woman who lived in the green house before this one. You should have seen her. I don’t know how old she was, but she liked to wear these tiny dresses and parade around her yard like she was Miss America or something. She had this gardener who used to come over a couple times a week, but he wasn’t just tending to her bushes and flowers, if you know what I mean.”

That stuns me, and I barely keep up my pace with Sara as I try to process all she’s said. I wonder why nobody has ever mentioned her before. She seems like someone they’d all like to gossip about.

“I had no idea. I have to admit I’m most curious about the guy who lives next to me. Him and the woman in the green house,” I say, hoping she’ll tell me all she knows about Aaron and Caroline.

Once again, Sara sprints ahead and then turns around to face me as she runs backwards. “The guy whose wife died and then her parents took their kids to live with them? Oh, yeah. He’s a basket case. He was walking around the streets the other night. Jared and I ran into him, and all he could talk about was God knowing the bad things we do. Jared was sure he was talking about us together, but I told him that’s ridiculous. The guy never leaves his house. Probably just guilt, if you ask me.”

I need to get her off the topic of that idiot ex-boyfriend of hers and back onto my neighbors, so as smoothly as I can, I say, “I heard he was in a bad way. Aaron, that is. Not Jared. But nobody seems to know much of anything about the woman in the green house. Caroline. It’s like she’s an enigma.”

That seems to upset Sara, who twists her face into a hard grimace as I finish my comment. “Why? Because she’s not from around here? Jared thought there was something strange about her, but I told him she just likes to keep to herself. A woman is entitled to some mystery. Not everyone needs to know her business.”

“True, but considering my neighbors, I’m surprised they haven’t found out more than she used to live in Maryland.”

I’m getting nowhere with Sara, and now a Charlie horse is making my thigh feel like someone’s tugging on both ends of my muscle like some sadistic taffy pull. I consider begging off with some claim that I have to work early today as I look for the next street to turn off, but just then she begins unloading about all she knows about Caroline.

“I don’t know about where she used to live, but I know I saw her in town at the hardware store the other day. She was buying rope and those eyebolt things like she was planning on attaching them to the ceiling and hanging something heavy from them. That seemed weird to me. Then yesterday after we finished running, I saw her when I was taking my break standing outside the salon on the other side of the street. I got the feeling she was watching me.”

Caroline bought rope and hooks to hang something from the ceiling? That’s odd. She doesn’t strike me as a do-it-yourself kind of person.

“What kind of rope? Maybe she was planning on hanging plants,” I suggest.

Sara shakes her head. “Nope. Big fat rope. There’s no way she’d use that for hanging plants. The only time I’ve ever seen rope like that was when the next door neighbor kid hanged himself when I was a teenager. Unless she’s planning to tow a car, there’s no good use for rope like that.”

Odd. Is Caroline unhappy and suicidal? I’ve never gotten that feeling from her.

As unusual as it is for me to be concerned about someone, I find myself hoping she isn’t planning on taking her own life. Suicide is so useless.

But Sara isn’t worried about that. She’s more fixated on why Caroline seemed to be watching her down at the salon yesterday.

“And what’s with practically stalking me? I bet that Suzanne put her up to it. She probably paid her to follow me to see if her precious Jared is still seeing me. She didn’t have to bother. Maybe she should pay attention to his other girlfriend and leave me alone.”

I nod as a dozen thoughts as to why Caroline would be so interested in Sara race through my head. It’s got nothing to do with Suzanne paying her to do it. I’m not even sure Caroline and Suzanne have ever had a single conversation. Even if they have, I don’t believe either woman is that focused on Sara.

As I ponder what the reason could be, happy to have something to think about other than my aching muscles, Sara suddenly trips over a branch and tumbles onto the pavement. Hitting hard, she cries out in pain, grabbing her right foot.

“Ow! My ankle!”

Instantly, I stop and crouch down to see her ankle swelling right before my eyes. She’s not bleeding, but it looks like at least a bad sprain.

Sara rocks back and forth, moaning, “Oh, God. How bad is it? Tell me. I can handle it. How bad does it look?”

“It’s definitely not good. We need to get you to your house. Can you stand on the other foot?” I ask as I walk behind her to help her up.

She nods and pushes herself up onto her left foot while I pull her up with my hands underneath her armpits. Although she’s clearly in pain, she stands up on her own before she begins hobbling to keep her balance.

“I’m so stupid. I always feel like I want to talk face-to-face with people. This is what I get for being too polite.”

“We need to get you home. Some ice to take the swelling down and something for the pain is about all you’re going to be doing today.”

Sara throws her arm around me and starts walking toward her house. “This is going to kill my running for at least a week, if not more. Damnit! I’m going to have to miss work too.”

As we slowly walk down the street back toward her road, I try to be supportive. “Maybe only for a few days. It might not be too bad. You’re in very good shape. I bet you heal pretty quickly.”

Turning her head to face me, her mouth is only inches away and she smiles. “That’s very nice of you to say. I hope you’re right. Today, though, I’m going to be out of commission. Thank God my air conditioning is working because if I had to stay in on a day like this without it, I’d die.”

And right there as she leans against me and I feel how frail she is without the use of her right leg, that’s when I decide today is the day Sara dies.

“Thank God for that is right. Nothing like being immobilized and boiling in a hot house. Are you sure you can walk? I can carry you, if you like.”

I can tell by the look in her eyes that she thinks I’m hitting on her. That’s the last thing on my mind right now. Seeing how much she weighs so I can figure out if her injured right ankle will be enough to make it possible for me to do what I want is all I care about.

“I’m good, but thanks, Adam. You’re a real lifesaver, you know that?”

If she only knew.