AGGIE NORTH

Aggie inched the shade slightly away from the window and peeked out. That odd wizard-named woman from next door was walking again. Every fucking night she walked for hours. What was wrong with her to make her walk like that? What was wrong with this whole place?

She didn’t like giving up. Once before in her life she had bailed on a place, believing that things would be better if she could only get away. She grew up in Temptation, Kentucky, a town so small it never made it to any map. A hollow so isolated you had to drive up the creek bed to get there. A town so poor the only temptations were the oblivions of sex or moonshine or home-cooked meth. She left when she finished eighth grade in the one room school, hitchhiking until her last ride, a female trucker, dropped her off at an interstate exit in Massachusetts, saying, “Try this place, sweetheart. It’s paradise compared to where you came from.” The trucker gave her the name of her cousin who worked for the college housekeeping department. It wasn’t paradise, not for her, but she got a job and met Arnie and they did just fine.

But today was the last straw. It was bad enough living someplace where you so clearly didn’t fit in. Heartbreak enough losing babies one after another, with the empty nursery down the hall mocking her every day. Scary enough having a kidnapper or worse on the loose in their neighborhood, taking that poor old woman right out of her house. But being questioned for hours by those two detectives and then dragged over to Number One, to be alibied by a child, that was the end of it. She felt humiliated and furious. Morgan was the only person she would miss if they left. If she had a daughter, she would have wanted one just like Morgan, although she would have named her something pretty. Like Chelsea or Paisley.

“I’ve had it,” she told Arnie.

“Had what?”

“Had it with this place. This town. This street.”

“Because of today? Mrs. Blum?”

“Because of everything. I want to get out of here.”

“Are you sure?” Arnie asked. “This is so easy, so close to work.”

“I hate it here. They hate us. I can’t live like this.”

“Okay,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Guess it’s time.”