I hadn’t been back since the day I’d left for Camp Stepping Stone. And even though I obviously wasn’t driving when I was twelve, I could have gotten one of the people staying with me to drive me over there. But I didn’t, and the more time that passed without me seeing it, the more I wanted to avoid it. My friends knew this and wouldn’t drive past there when I was in the car. Not that it came up a lot—the farmhouse was on the very outskirts of town. But now that I’d gone five years without seeing it, I was certain that I didn’t want to. What if the house had been replaced by something horrible and modern? Or—and this was somehow worse—what if it hadn’t? What if it was exactly the same house, and there was some other family eating dinner under my mother’s drawings, getting to see them every day, taking them for granted like I had done?
I punched the address into my phone’s GPS, put the car in gear, and headed over there. I was halfway to the Goetz-Hoffman house when my phone beeped with another text. I kept my hands on the wheel, ignoring it, until it beeped four more times, in rapid succession, and I knew that a text chain had started without me. I made a quick right on a side street, put the car in park, killed my engine, and pulled out my phone, hoping it was an actual all-four-of-us conversation and not just Toby texting until someone responded to her. I looked down at my phone and smiled when I saw everyone was on board.
PALMER
Okay, it seems that being a stage manager
means watching your boyfriend macking
on some random college freshman
BRI
Macking?
TOBY
PALMER
Toby, that is the opposite of
helpful right now
BRI
It was helpful for me. I had no idea
what you were talking about.
ME
You’ve seen Tom kiss lots of
girls in the other plays, P.
PALMER
Yes, but that meant I had to see him do it
only at the performances.
Now I’m having to live with it. Like every day.
TOBY
Egad. I see what you mean.
Or I would, if I’d ever had a boyfriend.
BRI
Please don’t say that you’re cursed
TOBY
BECAUSE I’M CURSED
ME
Seriously, T, you’re not cursed
BRI
Thank you.
I checked the time on my phone and realized that I should probably get going, especially since it was the first time I’d be walking this dog.
ME
Gotta go—I’ve got dogs to walk
BRI
Am I the only one who think that
sounds vaguely dirty?
TOBY
Yes
BRI
You don’t see it?
TOBY
NO. What’s wrong with you?
BRI
Andie?
ME
I am no way getting involved in this, guys
PALMER
Call me later?
ME
For sure
TOBY
PALMER
Seriously, Toby, we’re about to stage an intervention
TOBY
Wait, about what??
I smiled as I turned the sound on my phone to silent, knowing this conversation would probably keep going and that when I looked at my phone again, there would be a dozen or more messages waiting for me. I double-checked my directions to the Goetz-Hoffman house, then turned on my engine and headed that way.
I slowed as I reached Easterly Terrace and started looking for number eight. I pulled up in front of a gray shingled house and felt my jaw drop a little. Unlike the houses in Stanwich Woods, which had all clearly been built around the same time and by the same person, this house had character. It was big, with numerous windows all painted white and a round center section that looked almost like a turret, except really wide. There was a circular driveway with an SUV parked in the turnaround near a three-car garage with the doors down. I pulled around the circle and parked next to the SUV. It was beat-up and mud-spattered, with dents along the side, and it looked like it might have actually been used to go up mountains, unlike most of the SUVs I saw around town, which mostly looked like they were bringing kids to soccer practice. I got out of the car, holding on to an extra leash and the key, in case they weren’t home. As I walked past the SUV, I noticed it had Colorado plates. There was a lot of tri-state-area spillover in Connecticut—New York, New Jersey, occasionally Pennsylvania or Delaware. But Colorado? That one was new to me.
I took a deep breath and let it out as I walked up the wide front steps and pressed the doorbell. “Always knock, until you’re on a regular schedule and sure someone’s not home,” Maya had told me as we’d walked Wendell. “People get funny about you walking into their house, even if they’ve hired you to do just that.”
I didn’t hear anything, so I waited another second before I started trying the keys. There were three on the ring, but as soon as I tried the top lock, the door opened easily. I stepped inside, waiting to hear the sound of barking, a dog running down the hall toward me. I closed the door, then waited another second, but there was only silence. Maya had so prepared me for dogs being protective of their houses that it was a little disconcerting to be ignored.