A couple of hours later, I let Porkie out to do her business and sat down on the porch steps to wait. It had become a routine for us by now: she would wander the yard, making her inspections, and I would stay on the porch, watching her or checking my phone until she was ready to go back inside.

This time, I got absorbed in scrolling Instagram. Before I knew it, ten minutes or more had passed, and Porkie hadn't come back up to the porch.

I stood up, walking along the porch toward the side of the house, my flip flops scuffing against the boards. I searched the yard for the dog. I could see a broad swathe of the yard from where I was, slanting down far away and ringed by dark forest. It was only partially mown, which was odd.

Down in that area was where the pond lay, not clearly visible from here. I had loved the pond when I was a little girl because you could hear the frogs singing on some chilly nights, and of course you could watch the tadpoles if the season was right. There were ducks all the time, and every once in a while, a blue heron. Probably snacking on frogs.

Between me and the pond was a lump of dark brown: Porkie. She stood on her stubby legs, staring toward the pond again. What was it about the pond that so fascinated her?

"Porkie!" I called, a bit more sharply now.

She flinched, her head dropping a little, but she did not turn to look at me. When she did, it was to take a couple of slow steps back from the pond.

I braced myself against the post of the porch. "Porkie, come!"

Finally, she turned her head and trotted toward me, shame-faced and slow, and when I turned back toward the house, I noticed that Mark's truck was still in the driveway.

It was odd. I had heard the lawnmower running earlier, but it struck me now that I hadn't heard it in some time. As Porkie passed me, making her way up the three steps onto the porch, I pulled my phone out to check the time.

It was 3:43 PM. He had said he was going to be done in just a couple of hours, but he'd been here for almost three and only half of the lawn had been mown: a broad, neat strip from the driveway back to the edge of the forest, several yards wide but still hardly touching Gran's property.

I looked around, wondering if I'd simply missed him working somewhere, but I didn't immediately see him. I went down off of the porch and made a circuit of the house, but he was nowhere to be seen, and the lawn behind the house hadn't been mown, either.

The notion that he was out here somewhere unsettled me. I looked again at Mark's truck, just to reassure myself that he had a company logo on the side of it. His T-shirt had been emblazoned with his company information, too. I'd gotten his contact information off of Google. He really did have a landscaping company. Surely that meant I was safe, even if he was MIA on the job.

I had the sudden madcap notion that he had gotten into the house. Glancing up at the second story windows, I almost expected to see him staring down at me, but the windows were empty.

I retreated back toward the porch, taking my cell phone out of my jeans pocket on the way.

ME: Hey Ana, the landscaper came to the house today.

I snapped a photo of Mark's truck, including the license plate, and sent it to her.

ME: Now I can't find him which is kind of weird. He didn't finish mowing but his truck is still here.

Poor Anabel. I had inherited Gran's house, but she had inherited her nervous wreck of a granddaughter, but if I did happen to be assaulted and murdered, at least now Ana would know the last person to have seen me alive.

"Let's call him," I told Porkie. I turned around again, taking another long, lingering look around the property. It was likely that Mark had just ventured into the tree line and gotten distracted. Or maybe he was hurt, out there with a twisted ankle or something. He hadn't called me or called for help of some kind, so that made this notion an unlikely one.

I tapped into my contacts and selected MARK LAWN GUY, tapping to initiate the call. I stood with one arm folded across my abdomen, my phone to my ear. The sound of a cell phone trilling cut through the soft shush and murmur of the early summer wind in the grass and the trees. It was coming from somewhere outside.

Somewhere in the general direction of Gran's pond.

I hesitated, not sure I wanted to go trekking after Mark. If he was fine, I'd have to explain myself.

If he wasn't...

I grabbed the broom from the porch to be a makeshift weapon and started slowly through the grass toward the pond. By then, the ringing had stopped, but I kept my cell phone in my other hand. Porkie followed at a distance, making the best progress she could on her little old legs.

As I finally crested the gentle rise, the pond came into my sight, and so did Mark.

He was lying face down on the ground near the pond, tall grasses and cattails rising around him. His neon yellow shirt had made him impossible to miss the second it had come into sight. Mark's riding lawnmower stood several yards away from the pond, near the tree line.

I stared in confusion, wondering what he was doing. He was lying flat, and I couldn't see his face from my vantage point, but the first explanation that rose to mind was that he had leaned over the pond to look at something in the water.

"Mark?" I called.

He didn't move. He didn't move at all, not even to react to the sound of his name.

A sense of dread settled over me. I took two slow steps closer, noticing more: his arm was at his side, his hand turned palm-up, lending him no support at all. His legs were splayed, his left foot at an odd angle.

"Mark?" My voice was sharp with panic. Porkie had paused next to me but now started down the gentle slope toward the pond. "Porkie! No!" I barked.

She stopped and looked up at me. I passed her, pointing at her on my way by. "Stay. You stay."

I was so scared as I approached Mark that I couldn't think straight. I couldn't think at all. My mind was radio static.

I got close enough that I could have leaned down to touch him, and I might have said his name again, but all I remember was seeing how motionless he was. He was as still as a rock or a branch in the landscape, completely lifeless. As I edged closer, cold with fear, it didn't even occur to me to check if he had a pulse or if I could feel him or hear him breathing.

I could see his head now, through the fringe of tall grass.

It was half-submerged in still, murky water.