Chapter 2 Natalie #2
a bright pink starfish on the younger woman’s cheek. She’d love to wipe away that smug expression, to see shock and a smidgen
of fear appear there instead.
Glancing down at the business card, Natalie muttered, “I’m not going to get used to it. My brother used to call me Nat the Brat when we were kids, and I swore I’d never let anyone use that name again.” She shoved the box lid back on. “I’ll just have my own cards made.”
Gina shook her head. “Better not rock the boat. Not until you’re on the board.”
Natalie looked at the sales board affixed to the rear wall. All the spaces next to her name, Nat Scott, were blank. No open
houses, no closings, no exclusive listings, and no sales.
She was perfectly aware that she was here on a trial basis and didn’t need Gina to remind her of that fact.
If Natalie didn’t make a sale in ninety days, she’d be gone.
And it’ll be another summer of laundry, vacuuming, cooking, grocery shopping, and swim meets.
Natalie pictured the blue rubber gloves she used for washing dishes, the Electrolux in the hall closet, the mop in the laundry
room, and the trash can under the kitchen sink. If she were at home right now, she would’ve spent the past hour cleaning up
after the kids’ breakfasts, feeding the dogs, and loading the dishwasher. After that, she would’ve refilled her coffee cup
and sat down at the kitchen table to make her grocery list and sort through her coupons.
But she wasn’t sitting at her kitchen table right now. She was sitting at her desk. At work. In her office. She could get
coffee from the staff room whenever she wanted. And the only lunch she’d made that day was her own.
She wasn’t wearing shorts and a T-shirt. She’d traded those for a pencil skirt and a silk blouse. The grubby sneakers she
wore for yard work were sitting in the garage, and her narrow feet were encased in a sexy pair of heels.
I can leave my other self at home. I can be a different person.
Natalie could forget about her kids, her pets, and her house without feeling an ounce of guilt because she had Una.
Una would be waiting for the kids when they got off the bus.
She’d fix them a snack and tell them to play outside before starting their homework.
When they came back in, she’d have a pitcher of homemade lemonade waiting.
She’d listen to them talk about their day before sending them to their rooms to study or read.
The dogs loved Una, too. They’d snooze at her feet while she ironed Jimmy’s shirts or flop on the kitchen floor to watch her chop vegetables or boil potatoes.
Without Una, Natalie could never have gone back to work. Una cooked, cleaned, and took care of the kids and the dogs. She
was soft-spoken and thorough. Everyone on Tidewater Terrace wanted to hire Una, but her time was already taken by the Scotts
and Natalie’s two best friends, Beth and Elaine.
Natalie never stopped to consider that Una might also want to be a different person—that she hadn’t immigrated from Iceland
thirty years ago with dreams of becoming a housekeeper for an upper-middle-class family on Long Island. Natalie had no idea
what Una dreamed about. She’d never thought to ask because she needed Una to stay exactly as she was. She needed Una to step
into her place while she auditioned for a new part. Because Natalie Scott was ready to play the lead.
On the other side of the cubicle wall, Gina pushed her chair away from her desk. The wheel squeaked, snapping Natalie back
to reality.
“I’m grabbing a coffee. Want one?”
Natalie nodded. “Sure.”
“Don’t tell me how you take it,” Gina commanded. “I’m really good at guessing.” Folding her arms across her chest, she openly appraised Natalie. “You’ve had three kids, but you still
have a great bod. Your clothes are classy. Your nails are polished, but they’re short, so you work with them. Dishes, gardening,
that kind of thing. And you’re a neat freak. I bet you like strong coffee with just a splash of milk.”
“That’s incredible!” Natalie laughed despite herself. “Are you a palm reader, too?”
Gina tapped her temple. “I don’t need to read your palm to know that you’re going to have a hell of a time selling that property.”
Natalie’s smile vanished as she gazed down at the photo. “It just needs a little work.”
“Yeah, you could find a buyer even if the roof needs replacing, and there’s zero curb appeal, but those aren’t your real problems.
The location is your real problem. Her woods are right behind that backyard. And on the other side of the woods is her house.”
Natalie didn’t need Gina to spell out who she meant by “her.”
Mrs. Smith.
Gina pointed at the McCreedy listing. “Everyone who goes out to the back patio will see those creepy woods. They’re like something
out of Wicker Man.”
“What’s that?”
“A horror flick.” Gina put her hands on her hips. “Ever heard of Michael Myers? The guy who wears a white face mask and goes
around stabbing people to death? He’d be right at home in those woods. My boyfriend and I watch horror movies all the time,
and that house is just like the one in Salem’s Lot.”
Natalie had seen that movie, but she thought the Marsten House was larger and more sinister than Mrs. Smith’s.
“Wait! You live super close to her, don’t you?”
The gleam in Gina’s eyes raised Natalie’s hackles. “We’re two lots away. There’s a big empty lot between us.”
Gina shuddered. “That would be way too close for me. I’m glad I’m on the other side of the harbor.”
“On the waterfront?” Natalie asked, knowing it was very unlikely. Gina probably lived in a tiny cape near the train station or the high school, whereas Natalie and her family lived right on the water. They had their own private beach. Their own floating dock. Their own boat.
“No. I’m off Church Street.” Gina leaned over and spoke in a stage whisper. “Have you ever seen her?”
Only once. In the middle of the night. She was walking over the grass toward her boathouse. Her gait was awkward. One leg
dragged behind the other. Her hands were spearheads, hanging limply at her sides. Her body was reed thin, all shadows and
sharp angles, like the bones were trying to break through her skin. Her head was capped by a mass of dark hair. It shifted
in the wind, like worms in a bait bucket.
She was completely naked.
In the middle of March.
“No.”
The lie came easily because Natalie had told it many times before. At swim practice and teacher conferences. While waiting
for Jill’s Girl Scout or J.J.’s Youth Group meetings to finish. She’d been asked at the library, the beauty salon, and the
deli. Even at the Macy’s makeup counter.
Mrs. Smith was the most talked about woman in Cold Harbor.
Natalie didn’t believe her neighbor was a witch. Or a psychopath. She didn’t think she’d escaped from prison or the loony
bin. She wasn’t a convict or a lunatic, but she wasn’t normal, either.
Normal people went outside.
And they don’t swim naked. At midnight. When the ground still crackles with frost.
Gina scooped her coffee cup off her desk and said she’d be back in a minute, but Natalie didn’t hear her.
She stared down at the McCreedy listing like she was trying to memorize every detail, but she wasn’t thinking about their house at all. She was thinking of the woods that formed a protective horseshoe around Mrs. Smith’s house.
Mrs. Smith’s woods were made up of sharp, spindly trees crowded together like needles in a pincushion. Some were lightning-scorched.
Others were storm-lashed and bowed close to the ground like penitents. Curtains of poison ivy hung down from their branches
and oriental bittersweet vines girdled their trunks.
The vines curled skyward in thick ropes, squeezing the trunks and branches in their vise-like embrace. Masses of green leaves
with serrated edges exploded from every vine. Half of the woods were shrouded in oriental bittersweet.
Eventually, the trees would suffocate under its weight.
Eventually, they would die.
When that happened, the vines would seek new hosts. They’d slither over fences and walls in search of healthy trees. The roots
would burrow under a forest floor pockmarked with holes.
The soil in the woods was treacle brown and always smelled of decay. Rocks jutted out of the ground, colorless and jagged
as broken teeth. In the few places the sunlight penetrated, there were weeds with knife-sharp leaves and fetid flowers. Giant
tangles of pricker bushes formed a perimeter around the woods. The thorns were as big as arrowheads and the berries were the
color of dried blood.
Mrs. Smith’s woods were always chilly, even in the middle of summer. Frost whitened the ground well before winter’s first
freeze and clung to the ice and snow long after the spring thaw.
Natalie had never seen a squirrel or songbird in Mrs. Smith’s woods. Occasionally, a murder of crows would haunt the trees,
and at night, moon-pale moths would flutter out from dark cavities, only to be devoured by swooping bats.
Natalie and her friends had spent countless garden club meetings complaining about Mrs. Smith’s property, but short of dousing it in gasoline and tossing a lit match into the heart of the eerie forest, there was little they could do about the neighborhood eyesore.
Gina’s laughter tripped down the hall, followed by Sid’s hyena chuckle.
Natalie rolled her eyes. She’d never flirt with their boss. She planned to earn her way to the top of the sales board without
tossing her hair or giggling at his stupid jokes. But seeing as Gina was busy sucking up to Sid, Natalie decided to peek inside
the folder on her coworker’s desk.
When she saw the property, a charming three-bedroom cape within walking distance of the elementary school, she felt a hot
surge of jealousy. Natalie knew the house well. It was daffodil yellow with a covered porch and a spacious backyard. A family
with young children would grab that house in a New York minute.
This should be my listing. What does Gina know about kids? About all the food they eat. Or all the laundry they create. Or how their stuff takes
over every room. Their clothes, their toys, their bikes, their video games. Does she have any idea how their noise travels
through a house? How much energy it takes to make sure they’re safe, healthy, and happy?
“She doesn’t have to know,” Natalie grumbled. “That house will sell itself.”
Closing the folder, she returned to her desk to focus on her own listing. Pulling a legal pad out of her briefcase—an old
one of Jimmy’s—she sat straight as a ruler and prepared to make a list.
Natalie loved lists. She loved tidiness and order. She loved organizing things and was happiest when she was given the chance to beat chaos into submission with colored pens, file folders, and a pocket planner. With organization came control. And that was what she wanted. Control. Power.
It would take a lot of creative thinking to sell the McCreedy place. And the first thing Natalie had to do was to start seeing
9 Idle Day Drive as the first house she was going to sell.
This meant finding a way to make Mrs. Smith’s property less threatening when potential buyers gazed at it from the McCreedys’
backyard. She had to find positive phrases to use when describing Mrs. Smith’s gloomy gray house and oppressive woods.
Natalie wrote:
Single occupant who keeps to herself
Quiet
Wooded buffer / Nature preserve
Historic mansion
Studying her list, she wondered what she’d do if a potential buyer asked if Mrs. Smith’s house was haunted. And they would ask. They might laugh nervously as the question left their mouth. They might blush in embarrassment, but they’d ask all the
same.
Is the house haunted?
Are the woods cursed?
Gina returned carrying two cups of coffee, and Natalie put her pen down to accept the steaming mug from her new coworker.
She took a sip and stared forlornly at her list. Next to her, Gina made a slurping noise that set Natalie’s teeth on edge.
She glanced at the other woman, taking in the lipstick stains on her mug. The gap in her blouse that revealed a red satin
bra. The beauty mark on her round, smooth cheek.
When Gina slurped her coffee a second time, Natalie saw herself pushing the tip of her pen right through her coworker’s beauty mark.
Fed by this fantasy, something dark uncoiled from deep inside Natalie. It moved through her, seizing control of her muscles
and nerves, causing her to add a note to her list in spidery block letters that bore no resemblance to her precise and elegant
cursive.
LIE THROUGH YOUR TEETH