Natalie drove home chasing the three-quarter moon. The car radio prickled with static, so she turned it off and listened to the crackling hum of the asphalt underneath her tires as she drove past old farmsteads and orchards. Finally, she was home.
The old house needed a lot of work. The gray paint was peeling off the siding in flakes as big as maple leaves. You couldn’t tell what color it had once been—white or green or yellow—who knew? The windows were drafty and the window frames were warped. She needed to replace them with updated energy-efficient windows. The house bled heat. She couldn’t stand the thought of going through another winter hopping from electric heater to the stove, crouching over inefficient heating vents and warming her hands on the toaster, for fuck’s sake.
Moonlight invaded the interior of the big drafty house. She dropped her stuff on the living-room sofa and thought about moving across town to one of the nicer neighborhoods where it wasn’t so isolated. She’d been thinking about renovating and selling this one. At the very least it would keep her busy, now that Halloween season was over and done with. Max Callahan, an old friend of hers from her high school days, had been advising her that she should probably work with a contractor, but she wanted to do it herself. It was liberating to think that no one would be able to stop her. She could strip off that fugly, faded-fucking-flowery wallpaper, replaster the ceiling, and repaint the walls. She could flip this house and relocate to a vastly more modern residence with up-to-date fixtures and a dishwasher that actually worked.
But deep down, Natalie understood why she’d probably never leave Wildwood Road. The house contained countless little mysteries, shiny beads of memory, dust particles of daydreams. The sun slanted down hard in the morning, highlighting the kitchen’s cubbyholes for knickknacks and the little hideaway ironing board. The refrigerator magnets that once held Natalie’s homework now displayed Ellie’s postcards. Out back, past Deborah’s overgrown garden, was the pet cemetery for the girls’ goldfish, hamsters, and guinea pigs. In the living room, the old pine shelving her father had put up one long-ago summer still contained her and Grace’s and Willow’s favorite childhood books. Natalie cherished these memories and couldn’t imagine her life without these daily reminders.
Now she wandered into the kitchen, thinking she should eat. She opened the cupboards—Kashi cookies, cinnamon Pop-Tarts, instant cocoa with baby marshmallows, Snapple iced tea. She didn’t want anything. Just water. She fetched a glass from the cupboard and dropped it. It shattered on the worn tiled floor.
“Oh, shit.”
She got the dustpan and broom from the narrow closet and swept everything up, then realized she’d broken one of her mother’s prized possessions—it was probably a collector’s item by now—those cheap Fred Flintstone jelly glasses Deborah inherited from her mother, Grandma Lilith, who used to save money in the early 1960s by purchasing Welch’s grape jelly and using the jars as drinking glasses. There were only a dozen left—Pebbles, Bamm-Bamm, Dino the dinosaur, Fred, Betty Rubble. Scratch that. Now there were eleven.
Natalie burst into tears.
Everything she touched broke.
She cleaned it up, tossed it out, then went upstairs to bed. She got undressed, put on her extra-large T-shirt, slipped under the covers, and closed her eyes. Behind her eyelids, ghosts came to life.
Natalie, Grace, and Willow—the three of them hanging out in the backyard, swinging, and riding their bikes. Sometimes they had friends over, Daisy and Bunny and Lindsey and Bella and Adam and Bobby and Max.
Natalie’s mental exhaustion was beginning to supersede her physical exhaustion. She didn’t know if she would be getting any sleep tonight. She had to get up early in the morning, since she’d volunteered for the annual cleanup—another ploy to keep herself busy. The festivities had been going on for the entire month of October, and now thousands upon thousands of tourists would be packing their bags, and tomorrow’s mass exodus meant that they would be leaving behind block after block of litter in their wake. Tons of it. In some areas, the trash would be so thick you’d have to wade through it. Mountains of trash bags would pile up on every corner. Recovery could take days. One year, it took an entire week. Natalie had signed up to help with the voluntary efforts, and the longer it took them to clean up, the busier she would be.
Oh God. Not another sleepless night.
She lay awake, staring at the green glow of the digital clock, impatient for dawn.