Very Slowly All at Once

Chapter 1

They spent just over a million on that house, which seems like a lot for two people with pretty ordinary jobs.

A big chunk of that price tag was for the lot—on the corner, close to the lake, best one in the Magpie Court development.

Not a huge piece of land, not the rolling hills that the mansions on the shoreline have, but theirs is the only spot on the street that gets you views of the lake and the sailboats lined up outside the Shoreby Club.

Even the neighbors farther away in the mansions, your plastic surgeons and your tech magnates and your battle-scarred bankers who have taken on the upkeep of the estates built by the great Cleveland industrialists, even some of those guys must sit in their train-station houses with leaky roofs and outdated paneling and envy these sleek new builds.

Most people would take a custom kitchen and a first-floor master over a chilly ballroom and a cracked swimming pool any day of the week.

The downside to the houses in Magpie Court is the name: The developers insist on referring to them as “cluster homes,” on account of the smaller parcels of land. This is a terrible piece of marketing if you ask me. Only bad things come in clusters: headaches, viruses, bombs.

Fucks too, and not the good kind.