TIMOTHY BEAUJOLAIS

It wasn’t the best day to move to Azalea Court, but they didn’t have much choice. The moving truck had been scheduled weeks ago, and they needed to settle in before Winda’s semester started in January. The college had been very welcoming to her. Hopefully this position would be worth leaving Brooklyn for, worth leaving his job and Imani’s day care center.

Just their bad luck to have an emergency situation on their new street on moving day. Eric, the condo association caretaker, had called that morning to give them a heads-up that an elderly neighbor with Alzheimer’s was missing. He warned them that cops were on the street and the moving van might have trouble getting in. Eric kindly left his number and said to call him when they were about an hour away. When Timothy had called just now, Eric said he had checked their house that morning, that everything was ready for their arrival. He promised to ask the police to move their cruisers to make room for the truck.

If necessary, they could probably crash at his twin brother’s place nearby, but he would rather not for so many reasons. He and Jeremy had never been close. Their weird childhood could have forged a strong bond, but it didn’t. When they went their own ways to college, Timothy had decided to leave all their family craziness behind. He majored in business and worked at becoming an ordinary guy. Jeremy drifted left and got all hot and bothered about climate change and plant species loss. Really, he was pretty embarrassing when he went around chanting the Latin names of extinct plants.

Winda liked Jeremy and encouraged Timothy to be kind. She said that moving back to his western Massachusetts roots would be good for Timothy, for their little family. The ancestors told her that, she said. They also told her that their new home was in a place with a lot of history and that their family had a role to play at the college and in the town. He tried to be open-minded about his wife talking to her ancestors, but what worked in Kenya didn’t necessarily translate well to Northampton. Still, the job was a plum, especially for a first teaching position, and he was looking forward to being a full-time father for a few months while they settled in.

He crossed his fingers that the missing woman would be found, and his family could start their new life on Azalea Court with friendly neighbors welcoming them. Moving to a new town was hard enough. Moving to a mostly white town made it harder. Even with the help of Winda’s ancestors, they definitely didn’t need the bad karma of a missing old lady on their moving-in day.