This is clearly a mistake. It should be the easiest thing in the world to prove wrong

 And the third letter—well, the third one is from my health insurance. It contains a medical bill. Right away, something about it stinks to high heaven.

My previous bills would list procedures taken to keep me alive, dating back to the time I was in coma. But no, that’s not what’s in this bill. I recall that Linda had a mastectomy recently. With my own eyes, I saw the scars on her flat breast. So I prepare myself for seeing a phony charge for that procedure. But no, that’s not it, either. The procedure I’m being billed for—get this!—is a vasectomy.

What?

I rub my eyes, look at it again, laugh out loud.

This is clearly a mistake. It should be the easiest thing in the world to prove wrong. First thing, tomorrow morning.

Utterly exhausted, I park for the night at UCI campus, in a secluded spot shaded by trees. Through the branches, I have a partial view of the apartment I used to rent just before the pandemic hit. Someone else lives there now. Someone else has just turned off the light.

I snuggle down in my sleeping bag. The moonlit scene, this dreamy image of my past, seems both familiar and alien to me now. I close my eyes and, despite the lack of certainty in my future, feel as if in the end, everything will be all right. Somehow.

Overdue

(Volume IV of Ash Suspense Thrillers with a Dash of Romance)

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"This novel has it all! Mystery combined with murder, mayhem and so much more....including the Russian mob...Wow...doesn't get any better than that for me as a reader. Toss in the Virtual Reality scenes and this author has a home run with this novel...(I will admit freely that I had to take a break from the 'blue room' last night. I had to allow myself time to absorb those scenes)."

Serenity, Hall of Fame reviewer