Story code: ST-000201
Part 2: What Was Snapped
The strap lay in the grass between the drone and the fence like it had been pulled free at speed. I reached for it, held it up, and saw that one end was shredded where the fibers had torn instead of cut. It was not part of my tools. It was not part of the mulch bag. It was attached to a small black clip that still had a smear of dried mud on it.
Evan’s eyes tracked it, and his jaw moved once before he said anything. Mrs. Alvarez was still standing at her gate. Tom Reed had shifted his weight and was looking harder now, the way people do when a simple scene stops staying simple.
“I don’t know,” Evan said, but the words came out flatter than before.
I looked at the drone again. The front arm on the side that had struck the ground was bent inward at a strange angle, not the kind of bend you get from a clean fall onto grass. Something had caught it. There was a narrow line of bright scrape on the casing near the battery compartment, and a second one on the edge of the camera housing. That kind of damage did not match the picture Evan had been selling across the fence a minute earlier. He kept saying I had hit it while I was working near the flower bed. But the marks I could see were lower, closer to the ground, and the strap in the grass looked like it had failed before the drone landed.
I stood up with the strap in one hand and the drone in the other, careful not to shake either one. “You said I hit it,” I said. “Hit it with what?”
Evan pointed at the shovel leaning by the bed. “That.” His answer came too fast. Then he looked at the shovel again and seemed to realize what he had done. The blade was still clean. It had not been moved. It had not been raised. It was exactly where I had left it while dragging mulch.
Tom Reed cleared his throat. “That thing came down pretty hard,” he said, but he was looking at the broken strap now, not at me.
Mrs. Alvarez leaned forward on her elbows over the fence. “If it fell, it fell,” she said. Not a defense. Not an apology. Just a sentence that sounded different from the first claim in the yard.
Evan gave a short laugh that did not sound amused. “You all saw it drop here,” he said, and he lifted his hands in a quick, frustrated motion. “That is not what matters. What matters is she was right there when it happened.”
I held up the strap so everyone could see it. It was narrow and weathered, the kind of thing that could hold a tether or a mounting piece. There was a tiny square of reflective tape still stuck to one side. On the back of the clip, under the mud, there was a number written in marker. I could not read it from where I stood, but I could see enough to know it had not come from my yard.
Nobody spoke for a second.
Then Evan took one step closer to the fence and said, almost under his breath, “Where did you get that?”
That was the first time his voice sounded like it had gone off script. He was not looking at me anymore. He was looking at the strap, as if he had just noticed something he did not want the rest of us to see. And if the drone had not been mine to touch, then why did that strap look like it had been pulled free before it ever hit my grass?