The investigators walked the block slowly, their boots sinking into untouched drifts. They didn’t argue with the neighbors’ alibis; they let the landscape speak. Each driveway was a frozen confession, each yard a silent witness. Three lay untouched, seamless sheets of white. But Ben’s driveway betrayed him—dark tire tracks carved a fresh path from his garage to the street, a timeline etched in ice.
No one yelled. No one lunged for a defense. The accusation didn’t need words anymore; it had shape and depth and direction. Ben’s denial shrank in the face of what couldn’t be smoothed over or explained away. What unnerved them all wasn’t just the theft, but the realization that their world had been quietly keeping score. The snow had remembered what they hoped would vanish, proving that sometimes the simplest surfaces hold the sharpest truths.
