THERE IT WAS, THE end of October, and Stella was watching the stars from the porch of the Woodstock house that she had loved. She couldn’t help feeling that Silverwood loved her back.
She hadn’t been here in so many years, even though she had always wanted to visit again. She hadn’t expected to actually come here to this house, even after she had bought her ticket so hurriedly at Grand Central. It had seemed too impulsive, too crazy, too absolutely wrong to come here. Fueled with grief and anger, she just wanted to be as far away from New York City as she could be, but she had no business coming here. “Where to?” the clerk said, and Stella had purchased her ticket.
She knew that Simon’s parents had long since stopped coming here, and Simon hated this place so much that he’d removed every trace of himself from it, and she had helped him do it. She just needed a place to regroup, to figure out what to do next. She had a feeling that it could all be okay if she could just stay here for a little while.
When she arrived, she had known where the key was hidden, right under the porch mat. EVERYBODY IS WELCOME, it said, and she figured that maybe that meant her, too.
HER FIRST FEW days there, she had worried. Every sound she heard made her jump. She knew that being there could be considered breaking and entering. The neighbors on both sides were far enough away that they wouldn’t see her coming and going, but what if someone drove by and saw lights on and thought something was wrong? She had no idea if Simon’s parents had arranged for a caretaker who might come by, who might call them and then force her out.
She told herself it could be okay. Hadn’t Simon’s parents liked her? Wouldn’t they understand and maybe even forgive her? Anyway, she was just planning to stay temporarily. She rationalized that the house was safer with her in it, better than sitting empty, less likely to be broken into. She loved this house. She wouldn’t let anything bad happen to it.
She knew Simon would probably be looking for her, but he’d never imagine she’d come here. He hated this house. “A burn-down,” he’d called it. Or maybe he wasn’t looking for her at all. Maybe he was relieved she’d left.
Maybe Libby was relieved, too. Stella felt her heart tighten into a fist. Somehow being betrayed by her best friend felt so much worse than being betrayed by Simon. Maybe because she had half expected it from him but never from Libby with whom she’d shared so many things. She’d trusted her so deeply. How could women do that to one another? Libby had been the one Stella had talked to about Simon before she got sick. Libby had been her favorite person in the hospital, the one she always wanted to work with. Well, she was on her own now.
She curled up tighter in the chair in the living room, her favorite now, and then her breath evened. She heard the house breathing around her, a kind of comfort she had almost forgotten, and then she slept.
EVERY DAY, SHE explored a bit more of the house, something she couldn’t do when she had visited years ago, for fear of being a snooper. Now she ventured into all the rooms. But while she admired the wood floors and the high ceilings, she noticed spots in the floor that needed to be sanded, paint in the rooms that had dulled. Things she ached to fix but couldn’t.
She made a trip into town to get a new phone; the new number she’d give only to Bette. No one knew who she was, but everyone was friendly. When she arrived back at Silverwood, she felt that the house was expecting her, delighted to see her again. “Hello to you, too,” she said. She ran her hands over the walls as if she were petting a cat.
She began to go into town, taking one of the bikes from the garage. She put a watercolor pad in her basket, a set of paints, brushes, and a bottle of water. When she got to the village green, she set herself up, waiting to see what might happen. Sometimes no one came to watch her work, and she’d lose herself in her drawings and paintings. Then she’d look up, stunned, and realize the sky was growing dark, that she had been there for hours. But other times, just like in the city, people came around her to watch. They asked her to draw them. They pressed money into her hands.
In the evening, Stella hung out at the Bee diner, all chrome and black-and-white tile, with waitresses in black uniforms and red bow ties. She got to know them. One of them, Pat, who was actually the owner, had a curly head of hair and wore lipstick the same shade as her bow tie. Stella also liked Donna, a photographer who helped Pat out during the busiest hours. She was skinny with cropped boy hair dyed blue and a tiny gold ring in her nostril.
“Draw us,” Donna said, so Stella did. At first, Stella didn’t know if they liked the drawings; they showed things that they might want hidden, such as the fact that Donna pined for her boyfriend who didn’t want to commit just yet. Donna and Pat both stared at the drawings for a while, and then Pat said, “Let’s hang them up.”
Customers loved the drawings. They wanted more hanging up, more to take home, and they were willing to pay for them. “You put up a sign in the diner,” Pat told Stella. “Let them come to you so you don’t have to sit in the park or the diner all day.”
Gradually Stella began to have enough work to keep her busy all the time. She went to clients’ homes, where they served her coffee and cookies. The local art store, Brush Up, gave her discounts. She began to tuck away her money in a drawer, watching in amazement as her income grew.
Stella felt herself morphing again, like there was this San Andreas fault line inside her, pulling her in two different directions, both of which felt dangerous. Some days, she woke up thinking Simon was beside her, and she hungrily reached for him only to find she was alone. Sometimes she saw a movie and thought how Libby would love it, too, and then she remembered what had happened between them. Some nights she had terrible dreams in which she was back in a coma and could hear Simon talking to her. She also heard Libby and her mom, but when she tried to speak, she no longer had a tongue.
Waking, soaked with sweat, she called her mother in Spain. She didn’t want Bette to worry, so she told her she was staying upstate with a friend. She left out the part about Simon cheating, about Libby betraying her, instead telling her that Simon was working and she just needed to get away for a while.
“You can come stay with me, darling,” Bette said, and Stella promised she’d think about it, though she didn’t want to go to Spain, not right now anyway.
In November, Stella opened up a small savings account at the local bank, figuring she could always close it out when she had to leave. When she wrote in her address, she felt immediately guilty. She knew now that she didn’t want to leave Silverwood, that this was her place, but she knew, too, that she’d soon have to find another place to stay. She combed the ads in the local paper, looked on the bulletin boards. She began looking at small one-bedrooms and places with studio space, but they were either too expensive or the light was bad.
One day, she was walking across town when she heard, “Hey, Stella!” and she turned and saw a woman waving at her, smiling. Stella wasn’t sure who the person was, but she smiled and waved back, then continued on. She liked that the locals knew her. She was a part of the place.
She came home that night, and as soon as she saw the house, she felt as if it were saying hello. “Hi, you,” she replied as she opened the door.
All that night, she heard the soft creaks and groans of the house as it released humidity from its beams and settled into the cooler, drier air. The stars were enormous. She sighed at them, deep with satisfaction. This felt like her life. This was her life.