When a woman walks alone, she is asserting her independence. When a woman walks alone, she is rebelling against fear. When a woman walks alone, she can’t help but think about what happens to women when they’re alone.

Now, winding the path behind my neighborhood, between the river and the backyards, I think about Philip. He used to say hello. Shirtless, drinking from a mug on his porch when I first met him. He was one of the few neighbors who wanted to know my name, who invited me inside. I laughed in the way I do when I don’t know what to say. Then I thought to say, “Thanks. Maybe some other time.”

I like walking alone because I find no cause to laugh unless something is actually funny. I hear the cough of someone’s HVAC unit turning on. The woods are so much thinner without the leaves. Anyone could see me through the nearly-bare limbs. Perhaps from their kitchen windows. I can’t see them, so I don’t think about them until their appliances communicate with me.

When I catch glimpses of people alone in their houses – when the sun is setting but inside the lights are on and it doesn’t seem dark enough yet to draw the curtains – it depresses me. Everyone’s aloneness depresses me because it reflects my own. The wind blows harder. The surface of the water ripples, and I watch one just-fallen leaf blow across it in the opposite direction of the river flow. I could make it into a superficial metaphor.

I keep walking and tell myself not to think about severed limbs.

My hound would have alerted me if he were still alive, walking with me in these woods. Jeb loved discovering disgusting things invisible to the human eye or nose. I was walking him when the police descended. Two SUVs with Forensic Unit painted across their sides. The lights weren’t on, but we could feel the hum of activity. Jeb nosed his way under a nearby walnut tree and found a stray turd to nibble on before I could yank him away. My neighbor walked by with her miniature greyhound. Out of habit I held open my palm for his tiny tongue to lick. I asked if she knew what was going on. “They’re searching Philip’s house. That missing woman – you’ve seen the flyers – she was a friend of his.”

I love the crunch of dried leaves beneath my feet. The late afternoon sun filters through the tangle of branches and skitters across the water. I turn around to feel it on my face, but the wind blows away the warmth before it can land on my cheeks. Behind me I think I hear footsteps. I turn and see no one. It was a squirrel, I’m sure. Their sounds become amplified when I’m alone. Every small animal is bigger, more threatening, without Jeb around. I turn back and focus on what’s ahead. I try to enjoy myself. This free time, this nature. My next step rolls forward on something, and I almost fall. I look down and expect to see a finger. It’s only a twig. She was left in these woods in pieces. She was a friend of his. Perhaps if she’d been walking alone she would have been safer. I’m safe, I say to myself.

Trees have been falling lately. Maybe they always do, and I just notice them more now, walking alone. One great oak stretches across the river; its roots like a loofah at the opposite shore. I suddenly want to hug the tree standing beside me. I think of the people washing dishes at their windows and lean a hand against its bark instead.

Up ahead I notice a bright spot among the brown. As I come closer, I see it’s one white sock. I inspect it to make sure it's empty. It has been turned inside out, the way I leave mine when I’m too tired, flicking my clothes off after work. I can see a round darkened patch where a big toe has made its imprint. It’s one of those low cut socks they started making when exposed sock became unfashionable.

A woman was here. A woman running. Maybe this fell from her pocket, or it was stuck in the leg of her athletic pants, which she’d been wearing a second time before washing. I imagine her with headphones on. She’s a newer resident, unaware of last year’s local news. She has a position at the nearby university. She is self-motivated, the way runners are, the type who does not have time to think about all the ways she can be murdered. And maybe that’s my real problem, I think. I have too much time to think.

Then there’s a real woman coming towards me, and I stop thinking of the imagined one. I recognize her, this neighbor who speaks to her little white dog but never to me, not even when I say hello and try to make eye contact in passing. Again I say hello, and again she says nothing, just pulls her little dog away from the brush off the trail and scolds him by clicking tongue against teeth. Perhaps not speaking to strangers is her way of coping when she is walking alone.

Shannon McLeod is the author of the novella Whimsy (Long Day Press, 2021) and the essay chapbook Pathetic (University of Indianapolis Etchings Press). Her writing has appeared in Tin House Online, Wigleaf, Hobart, Joyland Magazine, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Prairie Schooner, among other publications. Her stories have been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and featured in Wigleaf Top 50. She teaches high school English in Virginia.