Chapter 3

Ariel

The music wasn’t doing the trick. I couldn’t hear it over the din of the boys’ thundering feet, riotous squeals, and intermittent bouts of crying. I looked mournfully at the bank of boxes waiting to be unpacked along the den wall and strained to hear the music coming from the portable CD player David had set up for me before he left. Shaking my head, I turned it off, sat down in the middle of the floor, and put my head in my hands. I figured maybe I could shed a few tears and relieve some of the stress that way. As I held my hands over my eyes, one of the boys zipped by me. “Sorry, Mom,” he yelled as his makeshift sword clunked against the back of my head. Duncan.

I grew up believing that if you put a little music on, every job got easier. When I was in middle school and my mom assigned me the arduous task of cleaning my room, I cranked up DeBarge and danced around to “Rhythm of the Night” while I sorted the stuffed animals I couldn’t bear to part with (which seemed to multiply in the recesses of my room) and tried to organize my closet into submission. When I moved into my dorm at college, my roommate, Karen, and I bobbed our heads along with Bob Marley’s Legend album while we turned the tiny space into what we thought was a place of beauty. Now we joke that it looked like Laura Ashley threw up peach and blue. Later, when David and I were newly married and worked together to strip the heinous wallpaper in our first house, I put on U2 and we both sang along to “Beautiful Day,” working side by side, just like I had always imagined married life would be—a series of beautiful days unspooling like ribbon.

But this? This was not anything like what I had imagined all those years ago as David and I balanced on our stools and talked of the future. For one thing, I pictured David around, not off earning a living and traveling constantly for his job, leaving me to fend for myself and care for the wild hooligans we had created. I don’t know why it never entered my mind that if David worked, someone else (me) would have to stay home and actually take care of the children we had imagined. Feed them. Hold them. Take them to places like the library and the doctor’s office and the grocery store. Wipe their faces. Clean up their messes.

“Mama?”

Duncan, my youngest’s, voice. I looked up.

“Yes, baby?”

“You crying?” The look of concern on his face was unbearably sweet.

“Trying to,” I said as I rose from my place on the floor. I had hunkered down in the only spot that wasn’t covered by boxes. I dusted off the jeans I was wearing, David’s jeans, the ones with the hole in the knee that he tried to donate and I rescued for such occasions as this.

“You miss our old house, Mama? That why you’re crying?” Duncan continued. Somehow he’d gotten strawberry blonde hair in spite of my auburn hair and David’s black hair; found it in the depths of our gene pool, making him look part baby, part angel with the wisps flying around his head like an orb of light. At four he was losing his baby look, but his hair still reminded me of an angel’s.

“No, honey. Mommy doesn’t miss our old house.”

“I do, Mommy.”

“I know, sweetie. But you’ll get used to it.”

So many times I had circled this neighborhood—a prime location near Charlotte, North Carolina—the boys dozing in their car seats in the backseat as I eyed the latest listings and pulled sale flyers from the little boxes in the front yards like a stalker. David got tired of me leaving the flyers in strategic places to inspire him to sell our old house.

Our old house had once been a perfect fit. When Donovan joined our little family, it still wasn’t bad. I wasn’t even upset when we added Dylan. I remained stoic as David showed me his spreadsheets of projections about the money we were saving by staying put while all our friends sold their starter homes and moved into more advanced accommodations. After Duncan was born, I stopped being stoic and started bargaining. Eventually, my campaign paid off, and here I was, surrounded by boxes I needed to unpack while my children complained they wanted to go back where we came from.

I loved the way the name of our neighborhood sounded. I’m meeting a client in Essex Falls. It rolled off the tongue.

The master-planned community featured homes with big square footages and price tags to match. Each home boasted a spa bath, master suite with sitting room, gourmet kitchen, and spacious recreation room. The neighborhood amenities included a beautifully decorated community clubhouse with an Olympic-size pool plus a kids’ pool, nature trails, a playground, dog park, and a social committee that hosted parties and events throughout the year. I could hardly wait to be invited to serve on the social committee.

“I miss our old house,” Duncan repeated, apparently still standing at my side. He looked around. “This house is too messy.” Our other house, I didn’t remind him, was also messy because we were crammed in it and there was no room for all of our stuff.

I smoothed down his flyaway hair and noted that he needed a haircut, but refused to add that to my mental to-do list just then. “Well, it won’t be messy for long,” I told him. Wishful talking. I sighed as I surveyed the boxes again. The number of them had not diminished while I was trying to have my breakdown, I was sad to note. “Mommy’s going to unpack all these boxes and make it feel like home,” I said with more resolve than I felt. “Only a bigger home, with more room to run and play, and a nicer neighborhood with better schools.”

Duncan shook his head. “I don’t want to go to school,” he said, popping his index finger into his mouth, a habit I had yet to break him of. He took the truck he was carrying in his free hand and began to drive it up the back of the couch and down the arm.

“Well, you’ve got awhile before you go to school,” I said, pulling him onto my lap as I sank into the couch, a purchase I convinced David was in honor of our new house. “New house, new furniture,” I had reasoned with a smile while he rolled his eyes. Our other furniture consisted of donated items from family members and pieces found in secondhand stores. I wanted all new stuff, but all I had been able to talk him into was the couch. Duncan kept running his truck across the fabric. I heard the truck catch, followed by a small tearing sound. I looked down to see a thread pulled, the large loop sticking out from my pristine, perfect couch like white pants after Labor Day.

“Duncan!” I yelled. “Look what you did.”

He shrank away from me, his liquid chocolate eyes filling with tears as he pulled his finger from his mouth. “Sorry, Mama,” he said. I tried in vain to push the thread back into the couch so it didn’t show as much.

Ignoring Duncan’s tears, I launched into rant mode, the yelling a substitute for the tears I had tried to muster earlier. “Why can’t just one thing in this house stay nice for longer than five minutes?”

After a brief moment I felt guilty so I stood up and kissed Duncan, then sent him away to escape Momzilla. I pushed past the boxes to the kitchen, which was at least somewhat unpacked. David had insisted we set up the kitchen before he left on his business trip. I still couldn’t forgive him for leaving me home alone with the boys four days after we moved in. “I’m sorry,” he had said, his suitcase in hand, not looking sorry to me but instead relieved to be escaping the chaos. “You knew it would be like this and you said it would be fine.”

“Then go. If it’s so important to go, then go.” I had stood in front of the sink, dumping the boys’ soggy, uneaten cereal down the drain. It was only after he left that I realized he hadn’t kissed me good-bye. As I shoved bowls into the dishwasher, I thought of a book I often read to the boys: “Who wants to kiss a cactus? Who wants to hug a porcupine?” No one wants to be around you when you’re prickly.

I took a clean glass from the cabinet and ran water from the spigot. As the water ran, I willed again for the tears to come, but all I felt was a burning sensation just behind my eyes. I drank the water and looked up to see that Duncan had reappeared, his truck in his outstretched palm. “Here, Mama,” he said. “You can put my truck on restriction since I messed up your pretty new couch.” His eyes were still watery.

I smiled down at him. “It’s okay,” I said, letting my words heal us both. “It was just an accident. Mommy knows you didn’t mean to do it.” I stooped down to his level, remembering my caveat for buying the nice couch. “You are more important to me than furniture,” I whispered to Duncan.

He threw his arms around me, clunking me in the back of the head for the second time as he did. I wondered if a concussion would be a good excuse for not unpacking boxes. “I can help you with the boxes,” Duncan said, totally oblivious that he had injured me.

I put my glass into the sink and wandered back toward the den. “No, honey, I’m afraid you can’t help me with this,” I said. I pictured Tom Sawyer as I spoke, envisioned me sitting on the couch reading a book while I got the boys to unpack for me. Tempting as my fantasy was, I knew better than to put an eight-, six-, and four-year-old in charge of carrying off our belongings to the dark recesses of our house, never to be seen again.

“Hey, Duncan,” I called before he could disappear. “Where are your brothers?”

“Playing at the neighbors’,” he said matter-of-factly.

“What neighbors?” I asked, an edge of concern in my voice. We hadn’t met any of our new neighbors. There was the reclusive man next door who darted inside whenever we waved. David had nicknamed him Silent Joe because he never said a word. He played music from his screened-in porch so loud it could be heard all over our cul-de-sac. In only one week we learned that his tastes ranged from classical to jazz to Sinatra to Springsteen. I swore at one point I heard Christmas music playing.

“They’re at the neighbors’ behind us that have that huge playset,” he answered. He was driving his truck on the boxes now, not the couch.

I dashed out to the back deck that overlooked our small backyard. A fence separated the neighbors’ yard from ours, but somewhere in the history of the house, a gate had been installed between the two fences. When I saw it the day we looked at the house, I pictured Lucy and Ethel swapping stories and baking each other pies as they let themselves into each other’s yards, houses, lives. I did not see myself as Lucy or Ethel and automatically assumed our new neighbors would not like unauthorized visits from my passel of rowdy boys. To my sons a gate meant access, not exclusion. It would be tough convincing them otherwise.

“Donovan! Dylan!” I yelled from the deck.

Two heads popped up in unison from the top of the tower that rose from the center of the ornate playset. “Hey, Mom!” Dylan said. “Isn’t this cool?”

In my sternest mom voice, I said through clenched teeth, “Get down from there and come inside. Now.”

They looked at each other, and I imagined one of them saying, “She’s always ruining our fun.” Slowly they climbed down from the tower, crossed the neighbors’ yard, opened the gate, and made their way to me. I scanned the windows along the back of the house to see if anyone was watching. No one appeared to be, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe they weren’t home and this offense wouldn’t be held against me. I didn’t want to gain a reputation around the neighborhood as “that mother who doesn’t watch her children.”

I narrowed my eyes at my wayward sons as they joined me on the deck. “Do you boys know why I called you over here?”

Dylan looked over at his big brother, the one who always seemed to have the answers. Donovan looked back at him with an expression that said, “I got nothin’.” They both shook their heads.

I put one hand on Dylan’s shoulder and one hand on Donovan’s, pulling them closer to me and to each other. David called this huddling up. He loved having boys, but I still longed for a daughter, even though he made me promise I would stop mentioning trying for a baby girl when we bought this house. “Besides,” David liked to warn me, “it would probably be another boy.”

I was determined to keep my promise and be grateful for what I had. At least until the unpacking was done and we got settled. I will admit to thinking that one of the bedrooms in the new house would make the most perfect girl nursery. But to my credit I did not say that to David. It wasn’t my fault that I had gotten a bad case of baby-girl fever five minutes after they laid my third son on my chest. In four years it hadn’t gone away.

Focusing on the boys, I pointed across the yard. “That playset over there?”

They nodded soberly.

“It’s not ours. It belongs to another family.”

Donovan, always the spokesperson, argued. “But it’s in our yard,” he reasoned.

“No, it’s not. See that fence?”

They nodded again. “That fence is where our yard ends and that house’s yard begins.” I pointed at the large white house that sat behind us complete with a beautiful, straight-out-of-Southern Living screened-in porch. “We stay in our yard at all times.”

Donovan thought for a moment. “But what if they invite us?” he asked. Donovan could always find a loophole. It was a gift.

I looked again at the house. The porch had ferns that swayed when the breeze blew. Delicate, tinkling wind chimes made of breakable materials created a faint melody. A large adjoining deck was handsomely outfitted with expensive-looking deck furniture that was clearly not purchased at Walmart like ours. “Chances are they won’t,” I said, looking at the crack in our glass-top table that resulted from Dylan smashing a planter into it. I doubted the lady of that house would want her House Beautiful furniture to meet a similar fate. I could picture one of my boys batting at the wind chimes with his light saber, the smashed pieces raining down on the floor as she tried in vain to stop what was already done. My boys typically left a wake of disaster wherever they went. I didn’t intend for that wake to extend across our shared yard. The fence was more than a barrier between property lines. It appeared to me to be a line marking two entirely different lives.

“Why don’t I go inside and make us some lunch?” I offered as I noticed the boys looking longingly at the playset. I made a mental note to look into a childproof latch for the fence. Of course, knowing my boys, they would have it figured out about a second after I installed it. Or they would just climb the fence.

“If we can’t play on their playset, then do you think Dad will build us a playset like that?” Dylan piped up.

David worked so much that I knew better. Weekends were left to playing catch-up with all the things he hadn’t done while he was traveling. Large projects like playsets were an impossibility. So I did what I had learned to do when I didn’t want to tell my children no but didn’t want to make a commitment either. “We’ll see,” I said and made my exit.

Just as I opened the door to the house, I heard Donovan educate his younger brother. “That means no,” he said as he followed me into the house offering a counterbargain. “If we can’t have a playset, can we at least have a Popsicle?”

“Yeah! Popsicles!” Dylan brightened, pumping his fist in the air.

“If you eat a hot dog and some fruit first, I’ll let you have a Popsicle after. But you have to eat it on the deck.” It was an easy concession. I could unpack at least one box while they ate their Popsicles. I would work all afternoon and evening, parking the boys in front of a video during the hottest part of the day. Perhaps I would make a significant dent in the work by the time David returned home the next evening. He would be impressed.

I was halfway through my third box when Donovan came running into the house, his face covered with red Popsicle juice that had dripped down his arms, making him look like he was bleeding. I glanced up at him, all too familiar with this scene, before returning to my box. Donovan was panting from his short run, always one to indulge in a bit of drama, as if our lives didn’t include enough without creating more. “What’s wrong, bud?” I asked.

“Mom,” he huffed. “I can’t find Lucky.”

I groaned. I did not have time to stop the groove I was in to go in search of our escape-artist dog. We had named him Lucky after the old joke about a lost dog with a myriad of problems, the punch line being that the dog answered to the name Lucky. Turns out the name was either prophetic or self-fulfilling. I could never decide which.

I looked out the window into the backyard and our neighbors’ yard beyond. Part of the appeal of this house was the fenced yard that, we thought, was high enough to keep the dog contained. I had flashbacks of chasing him through our old neighborhood. Our former neighbors all knew him and brought him back when they would find him wandering. No one knew us—or our dog—here in Essex Falls.

“Did you check under the deck?” I asked, hoping for the easy solution.

“Yes, Mom. He’s not under there. Come on!” Donovan yelled, his panic mounting as he waved me toward the deck, where the other two boys were perched like spies on the railings, hoping for a glimpse of Lucky. I heard them taking turns calling his name.

I prayed for the first time in several days as I walked out to the deck. “Lord, please let us find that stupid dog,” I whispered. My spiritual life had taken a turn for the worse since the move. It was as if I expected to eventually unpack it from somewhere in the boxes, putting it back in its rightful place in our home.

From my vantage point on the deck, I spotted not the dog but the culprit. The boys had left the back gate open when they had come in, but I had been too focused on the neighbors’ playset to notice whether or not they closed it. I pointed to the gate. “I see how he got out,” I said. “See why we have to keep that gate shut?” Donovan and Dylan nodded, frowning.

“We’ve got to find Lucky,” Duncan said, his finger in his mouth so his words were garbled.

“Dunc, finger,” I said. He pulled it from his mouth and blinked back at me.

“Okay, well, let’s find Lucky, boys.” I tried to sound more hopeful than I felt as I surveyed the landscape of unfamiliar homes occupied by complete strangers. I missed David.

Donovan was wringing his hands like an anxious old man. “But where could he be?” he said as he paced. “We don’t know anyone here.”

Dylan chimed in. “Yeah, remember in our old neighborhood we always knew to start at Mrs. Montgomery’s house.”

“That’s ’cause he liked her dog’s food,” Duncan added.

I raised my hands and sighed. “Okay, all I know to do is get in the van and drive around to see if we find him,” I said. “Fair enough?”

“Can we stick our heads out the windows and yell for him?” Dylan asked. By the way he was hopping from one foot to the other, I could tell that this was an adventure to him.

I frowned, picturing an accident in the making and ending up in a worse situation than a lost dog. “No,” I said.

The boys followed me to the van and jumped into their respective places. It still felt like a major accomplishment that they could now dress themselves and get into the van on their own. I drove slowly down the street, my eyes trained to discern movement in bushes to spy any 105-pound black animals lolling in the shade in someone else’s driveway. It felt like a vain exercise, but what else could I do?

After slowly circling the entire neighborhood three times, I pulled back into our driveway. “Let’s see if he’s back in the yard,” I told the boys, hoping for a miracle. “Some help would be nice,” I prayed as I rounded the house and entered the backyard. I looked under the deck, which had quickly become Lucky’s favorite place to cool off. No black tail wagging, no sound of panting. I stood up to face my sons’ disappointed faces.

“Mom, call Dad,” Donovan offered. David was his hero and, by his estimation, could fix anything—even a missing dog from all the way across the country.

“That won’t help, dummy,” Dylan said, socking Donovan in the arm. “What’s Dad gonna do?” Though Dylan was voicing my own thoughts, I still sent him inside for hitting his brother and calling him a dummy.

He stomped up the stairs hollering, “It’s not my fault that Lucky’s missing!” I thought of the gate I found open and wanted to yell back that it was his fault, even though I didn’t know technically which brother didn’t bother to latch the gate. I glanced at the boxes through the window and wanted desperately to get back to work. I had lost valuable time, not to mention motivation, with this latest crisis. And David wondered what I did all day.

I rested my hands on Donovan’s and Duncan’s shoulders for a moment. “Boys, I’m afraid there’s nothing left for us to do except wait for him to come back.”

Duncan’s lip quivered. “But he doesn’t know his way home,” he said. “He might not know where to go.”

I picked him up and held him close, inhaling the earthy, sweaty little-boy scent I had grown to love over the past eight years. “Lucky knows where to go. He has an incredible ability to smell his way to places. He can smell things human beings can’t smell.”

Forgetting his trouble for a moment, he giggled. “Like poop?”

I smiled. Leave it to a little boy to go to bathroom humor in the midst of a crisis. “Like lots of things. Like you and me and Donovan and Dylan. He knows each of us by smell, and he can find his way back to us by smelling his way.”

I put him down, and he crouched on all fours with a big grin on his face, pretending to sniff the ground. “Hey, Donovan, I’m Lucky. I’m smelling my way home.”

Just then I saw Donovan raise a finger and point to our backyard neighbors’ house. “I think I see Lucky!”

I tried to follow his line of sight but saw nothing outside, no movement, no black figure. “Honey, I don’t see anything.” I ruffled his hair and was about to walk back inside to get out of the heat for a moment, but he persisted for me to look again. I wrote it off as his eyes playing tricks on him.

“No, Mom. Inside the house,” he said, jabbing his finger toward the house.

I looked again, through what I assumed was the kitchen window. Sure enough, I saw a woman petting a large black dog. “Boys,” I said cautiously, “that might just be their dog. We don’t know that’s Lucky.”

“It is Lucky. It is! I can see him!” Duncan said, jumping up and down with enthusiasm, though I doubted from his height he could see much of anything. He climbed up on the deck railing to get a better view, but I pulled him off before he could fall. I had no choice but to call for Dylan to come with us and, flanked by my band of merry warriors, trek into the neighbors’ yard.

The boys clustered behind me, satellites around my orbit, as I pressed the neighbors’ doorbell. The dog—who I now knew was Lucky—barked his head off as I heard our neighbor unlocking a series of dead bolts, which incidentally seemed excessive in this safe suburban neighborhood. “I heard Lucky in there!” Duncan smiled around his finger, which had worked its way back into his mouth on our walk. I didn’t bother telling him to remove it.

The door opened a crack as the woman checked us out. Apparently assuming a mother and her three little boys were safe enough, she swung the door open with a smile. “Yes?” she asked.

I gestured at the boys, who were all pressed close to me, suddenly shy. “We were looking for our dog and wondered if maybe he wandered over here,” I said.

On cue, Lucky pushed his nose through the space between her and the door, shoving her out of the way with his big head as he bounded toward the boys. “Lucky!” they all shouted at once.

“I was just on the phone calling animal control,” she said with a look of relief. Her face looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place her. She gestured at the dog. “He wasn’t wearing a collar.”

I felt oddly scolded. “I know, yes. Well. He has a collar. We just took it off, and I … well, I forgot to put it back on him. We just moved, and everything’s been—”

“Are you the new family who moved in behind us?” she asked. Her hand rose to her sleek bob, smoothing down her hair, although it looked perfect to me. She wore lipstick, even though she didn’t appear to be going anywhere. I wondered what I looked like in David’s baggy, ripped jeans; stained, threadbare T-shirt; and greasy hair desperately in need of shampoo. I wore lipstick only to special events. She smiled at me, displaying perfect straight white teeth and dimples. I imagined she got her teeth bleached at a dentist. I hadn’t been in for a cleaning in over a year.

I shoved my hands into my jeans pockets. “Yes, we are. I’m Ariel Baxter, and these are my boys, Donovan, Dylan, and Duncan.”

“Oh, you did Ds,” she said. “We did Cs.”

“Pardon?” I asked.

“Your boys’ names. All Ds. My girls are Cameron and Caroline. Cs.” She smiled and extended her hand. We shook with the stiff formality of strangers. She then shook each of the boys’ hands while they looked at me questioningly but, thankfully, went along with it.

“I’m Justine Miller,” she said. “I guess we’ll be neighbors now.” She laughed. “I apologize for not coming over yet. I saw movement over there and should have been by with some goodies for you.” She seemed to be scolding herself. Lucky flopped down by our feet on her front porch. “You guys look thirsty. Would you like to come inside for some lemonade?” she asked.

“Sure,” the boys said in unison, never ones to turn down juice or the chance to potentially destroy someone else’s house. Before I could protest, Justine waved them all in, including Lucky. “I could go put Lucky back in the fence,” I offered.

“Oh no. Lucky’s fine.” I noticed he walked in like he owned the place, the traitor sticking close to Justine. She giggled. “He knows I have treats for him in here.” She ordered him to sit while she opened a canister and threw two dog treats at him, which he greedily swallowed after catching them in midair. I looked around but saw no dog anywhere. I decided not to ask. It was none of my business why this woman kept dog treats in her house but didn’t own a dog.

We all stood awkwardly in her kitchen until she commanded we sit down. Each of the boys took a seat at the table, where she placed a plate of sugar cookies. “I just baked these today. I’m so glad I did,” she said. The boys snatched the cookies off the plate just as greedily as the dog had gulped down his treats. I didn’t say a word but made a mental note to go over manners with them when we got home. I looked up to see Justine studying us, the full lemonade pitcher in her hand, a puzzled look on her face.

“So you said you have two girls?” I asked, to make small talk. Two perfect little girls would explain the perfectly appointed house full of breakable knickknacks, the time to bake homemade cookies, her calm demeanor. I surveyed the large kitchen/eating area/living room. Not a thing was out of place.

“That’s right. They just got home from summer camp and are upstairs resting for a bit. They get so tired from a full day of activities,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

My boys never rested. They had two speeds: bouncing off the walls or passed out. She turned to the boys. “I know my girls would love to meet you. You all could play together. We have a lovely playset outside, and you guys are welcome to come play anytime.”

Donovan looked over at me with a look that said, “See, you overreacted earlier.” “That’s a nice offer,” I said, “but we might want to put some limits on it. Trust me—you don’t want my boys constantly in your yard.”

“Oh, the more the merrier, I always say,” she replied, grinning broadly at the boys. “I noticed you don’t have a playset, and my girls don’t play on it nearly enough. Might as well get some use out of it.”

I felt stung, as if our lack of a playset was some sort of commentary on my ability to provide entertainment for my children. “Well, we have the trampoline,” I said. “The boys love that, and it’s a great way for them to get some energy out.” Why did I feel the need to justify our outdoor play-equipment choices?

“Your girls are welcome to come jump anytime,” I added, matching her kind offer with an equally kind one, I thought.

She shook her head gravely. “No, I had a friend whose child was severely injured on a trampoline. Our girls know not to get on one.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling chided and a little embarrassed. I took a long swallow from my lemonade and calculated how quickly I could get out of there. I looked up to see Dylan and Duncan using Justine’s long scrolled candlesticks as guns, pretending to fire them at each other. This, I remembered, was why I didn’t have nice decorative touches in my home. I plucked a candlestick from each boy’s hand and deposited them back onto the wrought-iron holders in the center of her glass-top table, which, I noted, was strangely devoid of fingerprints, smudges, or smears. Except for the ones my boys had just added.

“Well,” I said, draining my glass, “it’s really nice to meet you, but we’d better get back home.” I eyed Donovan so he would follow my lead. I stood up and hoped the boys would too. Instead all three of them snatched the rest of the cookies off the plate and gulped the lemonade like orphans.

“Oh, I wish you didn’t have to rush off so fast,” Justine said. She was wearing a perfectly pressed pink polo shirt and white shorts. Maybe they were new. Or she actually ironed. Which meant that we could never be friends.

“Well, I still have quite a bit of unpacking to do,” I offered, gesturing at my house, which was clearly visible from the bank of windows in the room we were in. My eyes rested on the framed portrait above her fireplace, a portrait I remembered taking at a charity event. That was how I knew her. It had been one of my first real gigs, a nightmare afternoon of families full of fussing children moving on and off the front porch where I was shooting the pictures. One family after another had paid an exorbitant fee for fifteen minutes on a porch swing flanked by ferns.

Justine had picked the one of just the two girls, each dressed in white eyelet dresses, huge bows on top of their blonde heads. I remembered taking some good ones of their whole family and wondered why she hadn’t chosen one of those. Her husband, I recalled, had been quiet as Justine told me exactly what shots she wanted done, as if she was the expert and I was just the hired hand. It was all coming back to me the longer I stood there. I pointed at the photo. “I remember taking that,” I said and smiled at her.

Her eyes widened as she realized what I was saying. “You? That was you that day?”

I chuckled. “You’ll do just about anything when you’re first starting out, trying to build a name for yourself.”

“Well, you must’ve really wanted to build a name. It was hot as Hades out there,” she said and laughed, fanning herself dramatically to make her point. “I nearly melted.” She looked at the photo for a second, as though she had forgotten it was there.

“I remember you have a beautiful family.”

She smiled brightly again. “Well, thank you.” She pointed at the portrait. “And you do good work, even when it’s 112 degrees outside. Wait till I tell everyone that you live here now. You’re going to be super busy once everyone finds out that you are here. I get oodles of compliments on that portrait. There are a ton of families in this neighborhood that would love your services. Do you have some cards?”

“Yep.” I smiled. I had just received in the mail the new ones with our updated address. “I’ll run some over here sometime.”

“Or I’ll just stop by if that’s okay. I am going to personally see to it that you stay busy, just you wait and see.”

“That would be fine for you to stop by, but I have to warn you the house is a disaster.”

“Oh, girl, you just moved in. It’s fine. No one’s expecting House Beautiful.”

I wondered how to tell her that my house would never—barring a miracle—be House Beautiful, that I could already tell that was her area of expertise. Instead I asked, “How long have you lived here?”

“Five years. We love it here,” she added quickly.

“We’re very happy to be here,” I said. “But I’ll be happier once I get everything unpacked and organized.”

“Well, you might be in luck because organizing’s kind of my thing. You know, like photography is your thing. So if you need any help, just say the word.” She visibly brightened as she said it. From the looks of her house, I knew she was telling the truth. How organizing could be anyone’s thing was a mystery to me.

“I just might take you up on that,” I said and smiled back at her, though I doubted my smile was as high wattage as her ultrawhite one. “Well, come on, boys, it’s back to work.” I tried to make my tone match her cheery one. I made my way to the door, the boys and Lucky dragging behind me. As I put my hand on the knob, Justine’s voice stopped me.

“Are you coming to the summer-kickoff party?”

I turned to her again. Her smile was still in place and she wore an expectant look. I vaguely remembered a flyer affixed to our mailbox when we moved in. The sun had faded it slightly so that the bright red paper was a pinkish color by the time I brought it in and laid it down on the built-in desk in my kitchen. It had been buried under other papers since then.

“Remind me what it is?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s just the hottest thing going in this neighborhood. You just have to come! I’ve already got the girls’ bathing suits picked out. Cutest little matching polka-dot bikinis!”

I thought about my boys’ mismatched suits and wondered if I needed to do a quick shopping trip so they, too, would match.

“It’s this Saturday,” she added. “I hope you’ll come. If you do, I’ll introduce you around and tell everyone how lucky we are to have you living here. You can become our official neighborhood photographer!” She clapped her hands together.

I found myself nodding along with her. “Sure,” I said. “We’ll be there.”

The truth was David and I had promised each other we’d spend Saturday doing nothing but unpacking. Oh well, the packing could wait a day longer. And we didn’t have to go to church on Sunday anyway. That could wait. Making friends in our new neighborhood couldn’t.

I reminded the boys, “Say thank you for the cookies.”

They all imitated angel children and thanked her. I breathed a sigh of relief that they had complied. We really needed to work on their manners. As we tromped back across the yard, stopping to wave to Justine, who was watching us through her kitchen window, I couldn’t help thinking that, compared to Justine, I had lots to work on.