Chapter One At Least The Neighbors Are Quiet #2
“I swear I haven’t. I promise, Johnny. But she is an awful nice kid.”
“Kid? She’s twenty-two. Two years younger than me. I’m not some dirty old man snatching up an ignorant little girl who don’t know better. Believe me, Harry, she knows plenty.”
Harry looks at me, and something in his eyes makes me stop.
I don’t know that look.
I know a lot of looks. Lived with three brothers and a father who weren’t shy about telling me exactly what they were thinking, and a lot of times, the conversation started without a sound, just with a lip or an eyebrow.
Harry’s face is all tight. Unreadable. Closed for business.
“Oh. It’s like that?”
“Well, it’s like... You know what it’s like. I remember damn well that story you told me about the WAC you picked up in Honolulu.”
“And I remember that girl in Bensonhurst who almost broke your leg when you tried to fuck her when she was in her roller skates. We talked a lot in the last three months, but you don’t talk about Nancy like you love her.
Or even like you want her. It’s like... It’s like you found a good shoe and it fits, but it’s not the pair you had your eye on.
No, it’s like you want that Bel-Air in your drive, but you’ve got someone’s old Studebaker.
It’ll do. It’s working. It’s gonna get you where you wanna go. ”
“You’re talking about my woman like she’s an old junker?” I hiss, rubbing my side.
Harry’s eyes are cold. “You sure that she’s your woman? Maybe she’s supposed to belong to someone else.”
“I... I... Oh, God.”
Sweat is forming on my face like I’ve been running in the rain. The pain that seizes me is sudden, sharp, and worse than when I got a bullet in the shin. It wasn’t much of a wound, but it hurt, damn it. This is worse.
This is worse, and Harry’s a doctor, or close enough.
“You’re not okay. Maybe you oughta call this off, Johnny. You look sick. Real pale.”
“Call off what? Tonight?” I groan.
“Tonight. Everything. Nancy deserves someone who loves her, all out.”
“Who says I don’t?” I demand—and then I have to turn to the sink and heave my guts up.
“Something you ate?” Harry asks, standing next to me. His face is still closed over.
I almost tell him that he’s the medic. He should check me.
But something stops me. The way he’s acting.
Pieces fit together fast and frighteningly. Harry doesn’t want me to propose to Nancy. He wants her for himself. He slipped me something. He slipped me something from the hospital dispensary, probably put it in my drink while my back was turned to keep me from proposing to Nancy tonight.
He slipped something into the beers we just drank, or maybe into the water I poured while I was getting the ziti out.
That snake. What kind of a dirty trick is that?
He needs to leave.
“Go, Harry. I’ll call Nancy and tell her it’s off for tonight.” No, I won’t, but I want him to think that before he can punch me while I’m doubled over. I see now that he’s no fair fighter.
“Okay. Okay, but—”
With the last of my strength, I push Harry out of the kitchen door and watch him stumble out of the house. He catches himself on the hedge, staggers, straightens up, and just stares at me. He doesn’t move for a long time.
When he does, I knock over half the glasses in the cupboard, pushing past the aspirin and Bisma Fizz, past the bandages and Mercurochrome, all stocked by Mama when she came to see me in July.
Ipecac. The little brown glass bottle stares at me from the dark interior, an amber savior. I unscrew the black cap and swallow half of the bottle and wait for the vomiting to pull all the poison out of my system.
As soon as I’m better—I’m gonna beat the shit out of Harry Rogers.
I didn’t get better.
I threw up everything I’d eaten that day. Felt like I was throwing up crud I’d eaten back in Brooklyn, for God’s sake.
September 17th, 1954
The pain got worse. And the world got blurry. Then very bright, very sharp, and very empty.
The next day, they must have taken my body out of the house at night, because I remember hovering above it—and then it wasn’t there anymore. Everything was a blur.
I know figures were there, but I wasn’t “there” with them. I was in the empty place, trying to figure out what was happening.
By the time I was back to some sort of sense of time and place, “I” was gone.
The police never came. Nancy never came.
My brothers came. Cleaned out a lot of my things. Left some furniture. Didn’t talk much. All three of them cried when they thought the other two weren’t looking. I couldn’t even figure out how to talk to them.
Gave Pop my car, or said they would.
What’d I do? I watched, and waited, and waited.
And waited. Because Harry Rogers should have been swinging for poisoning me. And my girl should have been there, weeping over me. My Ma gets a pass. She wouldn’t want to set foot in this place, not where I died.
Died. Did he mean for me to die, or just to get sick enough to call off my dinner with Nancy? When he found out I was dead, did he run for it?
Dead. Died.
What fucking ugly words.
And it’s worse than they tell you. Because if you die with a million questions on your mind... It seems like you don’t leave until you get some answers.
September 17th, 2026
“Why? Why Pine Ridge? I looked at the place, and it looks whiter than mayonnaise.”
“Um, excuse me, but why are you talking like we didn’t grow up in the ‘burbs with the most diverse neighborhood ever? We’re probably the only bunch of kids who could have opened an international food court at our lunch table.
God, I want samosas, jerk chicken, and a side of Mrs. Weinbeck’s strudel right now. ”
“Dang it, Amber. I’m hungry now. And you’re a foodie. You know that place has like a total of six restaurants?”
I close my eyes—which is very stupid considering how I got to this place.
Car accident. Not my fault. Driver was looking down at his phone. Some young guy, drinking an energy drink and texting—slammed into me when he should have stopped at a red light. His dad’s big, heavy double cab truck.
Against my 2002 third-hand compact. Guess who won?
Not me.
Neck brace. Back pain. Broken wrist. Concussion. Blurry vision that they say will clear up—some day. Comes and goes now. Goes more than comes, or I wouldn’t be driving. Wouldn’t be moving to Pine Ridge.
“Look, I’m on FoodFinder.spot right now, and there’s The Pine Loft Coffee Shop, Jade Forest—that’s the Chinese place, One-Bite Pizza—who’s going to want one bite of pizza? Tiramisu, which sounds fancy, but they’re hardly ever open—”
“Honey. I know. I didn’t move here for the food.” I stop my cousin as she rattles on and try to ignore the growling in my stomach.
I moved here because cities now give me PTSD, and I never want to set foot in Boston again.
Manhattan? Oh, hell no. Philadelphia? Only with a Valium in hand.
Four years of college. Four years of climbing the architectural ladder, always with my foot on the lowest rung, no matter where my firm sent me.
No one listening to my ideas. My ideas starting to sound like everyone else’s.
Sometimes... Sometimes I feel like the pain, and everything after the accident, could be worth it if it makes me dream again, chase something again...
Reinvent myself, and not end up someone’s suit-wearing mini-me, following the Big Boys around while they get the deals and I spend hours on hold with the planning permission offices.
“The pollution is like zero. The taxes are low. The houses are cheap. The settlement paid for the house outright.” Because they admitted in court that breaking your wrist and possibly having permanently blurred vision would be “detrimental” for a career in architecture...
“That means it’s a fixer-upper.”
“I know it’s a fixer-upper!” I snap. Honey.
I love her, but she can make me crazy faster than anyone else except my mother.
“I’m going to reinvent myself, okay? Thirty is the new twenty.
Gonna figure out what career I actually want, take my nice, easy electives at the local college, and go to the gym and P.T.
three times a week. And before you make any more whiter-than-mayo cracks about this place, the guy who runs the rec center at the campus is Persian, and my physical therapist is African American—and married.
I saw the ring because I checked. Such a hottie—with a “Doctor” in front of his name, too, damn it,” I shake my head and turn onto Haven Way, “and pretty much every place I’ve been in has been nauseatingly nice, and full of all kinds of shapes and colors.
You’re just jealous that I didn’t ask you to move in with me. ”
“I thought Devon would have.” The hint is there, a way of prying without fully sticking her nose in.
Remarkable restraint from Honey.
“Hm. No. It wasn’t that serious before the accident.”
And after the accident, he split.
I didn’t think it was serious, but I didn’t think we were a “If things are bad, I’ll ghost you” couple.
“Hate ghosts,” I mutter.
“Then why did you move into a house next to a cemetery?” Honey asks, because of course she overhears things.
“Not that kind of— Never mind. Ghosts aren’t real.
And cemeteries aren’t scary; they’re peaceful.
Do you know how much I want some damn peace after living in Boston and not being able to leave my apartment for six months?
How it feels to live next to some of the noisiest bars on earth during baseball season with a continual headache?
” My eyes blur just thinking about it. I feel the familiar headache attack, pounding and dull at once, targeting two regions of my head, above the eyes and in the back, thanks to the headrest that broke off when I got T-boned.
“Pump the brakes, geez, girl. I was just kidding. If Grandma Ellen could hear us talking about ghosts, she’d slap a Bible in our hands and church hats on our heads so fast we’d have whiplash.”
“Insensitive much?” I grumble, but it’s completely true.
“Sorry, babe. I can come out for Halloween if you want.”