Chap­ter 15 starts with Patri­cia dri­ving down Mid­dle Street toward James Harris’s house, only to find the white van she had expect­ed replaced by a red Chevy Cor­si­ca parked in the yard. The sight of the car stirred an unset­tling feel­ing in her gut as she drove slow­ly past, hop­ing the van might reap­pear. After the dri­ve, she vis­it­ed Grace’s house, feel­ing anx­ious about a trou­bling thought. Inside, Grace offered her a cup of cof­fee while she pulled out a spi­ral-bound note­book from a draw­er. Patri­cia took the note­book, opened it, and began read­ing through the entries that detailed descrip­tions of vehi­cles and their license plates. As she flipped through the pages, she came across an entry that sent a chill down her spine—a white Dodge van with a license plate match­ing one Mrs. Greene had writ­ten down from a car seen in Six Mile.

Patri­cia shared her con­cerns with Grace, not­ing that she had seen James Harris’s van with the same license plate num­ber, which con­nect­ed him to an unset­tling series of events. Grace dis­missed her wor­ries, attribut­ing the con­nec­tions to coin­ci­dences. Despite Grace’s skep­ti­cism, Patricia’s thoughts raced as she recalled Harris’s odd behaviors—his mys­te­ri­ous iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sto­ry and his con­nec­tion to a large sum of cash he claimed to have found in Ann Savage’s home. Patri­cia couldn’t ignore the mount­ing sus­pi­cion, par­tic­u­lar­ly after hear­ing from Mrs. Greene about a sus­pi­cious white van seen near Six Mile short­ly after Har­ris had moved into the neigh­bor­hood. She spec­u­lat­ed that Harris’s sto­ry didn’t add up and that there might be some­thing more sin­is­ter lurk­ing beneath his friend­ly exte­ri­or.

As Grace con­tin­ued with her rou­tine of clean­ing her grandmother’s wed­ding chi­na, Patricia’s doubts deep­ened. She was con­sumed by the unset­tling pos­si­bil­i­ty that James Har­ris might be involved in some­thing far dark­er than any­one real­ized. Grace, how­ev­er, remained res­olute in her belief that Har­ris was just an ordi­nary neigh­bor, brush­ing off Patricia’s con­cerns as the prod­uct of too much read­ing and wor­ry. But Patri­cia couldn’t shake the sense that some­thing dan­ger­ous was unfold­ing right under her nose. Despite Grace’s dis­mis­sive atti­tude, Patricia’s mind wouldn’t let go of the trou­bling pieces of the puzzle—pieces that all seemed to point to Har­ris, his van, and the strange coin­ci­dences sur­round­ing him.

Patri­cia found her­self unable to focus on any­thing else. She strug­gled to rec­on­cile the life she knew in her qui­et, sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hood with the pos­si­bil­i­ty that a threat could be hid­ing in plain sight. As the evening wore on, her mind kept return­ing to the trou­bling details she had uncov­ered. She couldn’t ignore the fact that a local child had recent­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide, and anoth­er might be at risk. Patri­cia was con­sumed with the idea that, even if these sus­pi­cions turned out to be noth­ing, she couldn’t live with the thought of doing noth­ing. She called Mrs. Greene, hop­ing to talk to Des­tiny Taylor’s moth­er about the strange occur­rences in Six Mile, and found that the only way to get answers was to con­front the uncom­fort­able truth head-on.

Patricia’s inter­nal con­flict only grew as she made plans to vis­it Mrs. Greene, won­der­ing if she was over­re­act­ing or if her instincts were right. She reached out to her son, Blue, to let him know she would be gone for a while, though he was busy read­ing in his room. Patricia’s heart ached as she thought about the dis­con­nect between her fam­i­ly life and the grow­ing unease in her own mind. It seemed that her fears were tak­ing over, turn­ing her ordi­nary life into a maze of sus­pi­cions and hid­den dan­gers. Yet, in the midst of her anx­i­ety, she was deter­mined to seek the truth, even if it meant fac­ing uncom­fort­able truths that no one else want­ed to acknowl­edge. The ten­sion of the evening was pal­pa­ble, and Patri­cia knew that she had to act quick­ly if she was going to uncov­er the truth about James Har­ris and the dark mys­tery sur­round­ing Six Mile.