And this is how I wind up in the driveway of a modest yellow house with a small front yard, right where the highway curves. In a cornfield across the road, a big silo painted up with MOONVILLE, OHIO welcomes tourists to our neck of the woods.
“Turn the headlights on, it’s too dark to see,” Zelda says, reaching between Luna and me from the backseat.
Luna twists around, stern. “Did you have your seatbelt on during the drive over? I’ve told you, I don’t care if we’re driving for a minute or an hour, you’d better buckle up.”
“Yes, Mom. I unbuckled a second ago.” (No, she didn’t.) Zelda switches on the headlights.
“Hey!” I swat her hand, then quickly turn them off. Whoops, no, I don’t. I accidentally turn on the windshield wipers.
“Stop it!” Luna turns the lights off, but then turns them back on again while trying to flick off the wipers. Everybody hollers. We’re flashing our high-beams through the front window of Alex’s alleged house. Gilda Halifax’s information isn’t always one hundred percent reliable.
My phone rings. “It’s the cops!” Aisling yells. “Drive, Mom! Step on it!”
It’s Alex. I stare at his name on the screen, then at the window, its curtains drawing apart. And there he is in his living room, presumably, one hand on his hip. We all duck down in our seats.
“Caught,” I wheeze. “This is mortifying. We should have idled on the street. Why’d you park two feet from his window?”
“You can’t see anything good from the street, Romina. If you’re gonna be a creep, don’t half-ass it.”
I let the call go to voicemail, which he ignores, redialing.
“You gonna answer that?” Zelda asks.
I’m still hiding my face behind my knees, feet propped up on the seat. “No. Do you think he can see me?”
“You have white hair. It’s kinda the only thing noticeable in a dark car. And the light from your phone is probably illuminating your face.”
I drop my phone with a quickness. Luna laughs.
“Y’all are chickens.” Zelda rolls her door open, vaulting out. “I want to see this thing over here. This a wishing well? Romina, your man bought lawn ornaments and everything!”
I join her. “Look! There’s a tire swing in the back!”
Aisling and Luna come running, shoving each other aside in their bid to reach the tire swing first. Ash wins. “Push me!” she demands.
Luna notices that Ash isn’t wearing shoes and lectures her on the dangers of running through strange yards barefoot. Then she pushes the tire swing with so much gusto that Ash almost swings upside down.
“Zelda, look.” I’m crouched in a strip of mulch that runs along the side of the house. It would be the perfect area for a garden, but nothing lives here. I show her a squat, bearded figurine in a red dunce cap. “It’s a GNOME.”
It’s a family of gnomes. With mushroom houses, a miniature bridge, and pebbles surrounding a shallow lake crafted from a yogurt lid. Two fairies and a few LEGO people sit at a small table, enjoying a feast of shriveled blackberries on acorn cap plates. “It’s a fairy garden.”
I clap my hands over my heart and fall back into the grass. “He made a fairy garden for Miles. That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard in all my life.”
“My teeth are rotting out of my mouth,” she remarks, handling a tiny birdbath with a Fisher-Price chicken roosting in it. “I can’t believe he just up and friggin’ moved here. That’s bonkers. You realize that, right? I can’t imagine moving for anyone—well, anyone except for you, Ash, and Lune.”
“And here I thought Alex was normal!” Luna chimes.
“Oh, he’s disturbed. A truly dark individual.” Zelda flicks me. “All that trouble for this little elf?”
“Him moving has very little to do with me, probably,” I say archly. “The real estate market is . . . doing things. Prime opportunity to move, perhaps. And he grew up here, after all. Who wouldn’t want to live in Moonville?”
The window above us opens. I cross my arms over my head as if that will disguise me.
“Nosy Nancies,” Alex scolds. “Don’t eat any of those blackberries. Those are for the fairies.” His gaze snaps up, past me, through the yard. “You don’t have to drink from the hose, you know. You can ring the doorbell like a civilized human and ask for a drink.”
Aisling grabs the hose that Luna’s drinking from and sprays it up in the air. Freezing cold droplets rain down on Zelda and me. “Aghh! Turn it off!”
Zelda, alight with malicious joy, pushes Luna into the stream of water. Luna wails.
Alex shakes his head.
I flash him a smile that I hope is charming. “I like your gnomes.”
“She likes more than just your gnomes,” Aisling hoots. “Your face is the background of her phone.”
“It is not.” I dive for her, but she skips away. I turn back to Alex. “It’s not.”
“Is it the same picture I uploaded to Instagram two years ago that you liked at four in the morning last week, then quickly unliked?” He’s gloating.
“I was hoping you didn’t notice that.”
“I notice everything.”
I glare. “Damn you, Alex King.”
He smiles at me, eyes molten.
“Do you have ice cream?” Zelda asks, as I wrap my arms around her middle, lumbering her backward toward the minivan. I’m not strong enough to toss her inside, so I poke her ticklish parts until she surrenders and clambers in.
“Bye!” I call. “We were never here!”
“You saw nothing!” Luna picks up Aisling and piggybacks her to the car. My niece’s feet are filthy, brown ponytail bobbing.
Alex vanishes from the window and teleports to the front door. He watches us leave, hands in his pockets. I turn in my seat so that I can make out his shadowy form until it recedes from view, then I yell nonsense at the top of my lungs. Aisling’s laughing her head off.
“Think we scared him away?” Luna muses.
“Are you kidding?” Zelda rolls her window down, slipping her hand out to allow an early summer breeze to weave between her fingers.
The sky is indigo, trees inky scribbles. We soar into town like a homing pigeon, slowing at the empty stoplights, headed toward Pit Stop Soda Shop (“Yes!” Aisling and Zelda cheer). I rest my cheek against the car door, a smile tipping up the corners of my mouth, happy to exist in the midst all these little lights hiding in a sprawl of woods and hills in southern Ohio. I can’t imagine living anywhere else. And now, it’s finally acquired the few finishing touches necessary to render it perfect. “You remember how obsessed he was with Romina back then?” Zelda adds thoughtfully. “If anything, she’s catching up.”
The following morning, Alex texts to ask if I have evening plans. No, I reply.
At six o’clock, I stroll into late golden sunshine to find his truck parked out front, two bicycles loaded into the back. One is my mint green Schwinn, the other a mountain bike I don’t recognize. “Hey, sexy!” he catcalls, beeping his horn twice.
“Thanks!” Trevor yells back, doing a twirl on the way to his car.
Alex smothers a laugh, then says to me, “I wanna take you on a date.”
“Will there be corn muffins?”
“Not telling.”
“Sharks?”
“No more guesses.”
“Bikes?” I try again, gaze sliding to the truck bed.
“How’d you know?” He waves me over. “Hop in. Can I have you for the rest of the day?”
I sniff. “Only if you make it worth my while.”
“I wasn’t going to, but all right. If you insist.” He eyes my plaid pinafore, layered over a loose white dress with puffy sleeves. “I should’ve seen right through that lie about you wearing a blazer with gold chains for a date with Trevor. Look at you. You look like you’re ready to go on a picnic in the Hundred Acre Wood.”
I gasp.
“In a good way! I love Winnie-the-Pooh. Your style—it’s very you.”
I take my time approaching the truck. Once I’m close, Alex lurches forward five feet, then stops. Waits for me to reach for the door before lurching ahead another five feet.
“Alexander.”
He beams at the look on my face. “Darling.”
Oh, that word does something to me, especially the way he rumbles it. I feel it in my knees. “You’d better stop that.”
He stops. Goes. Stops. Laughs.
I cross my arms over my chest. It draws his notice to the area and his eyes get a bit glassy. “I ought to go home. I’ll draw a bath and enjoy a lovely evening with myself.”
He revs the engine, daring me, while holding my gaze. “You won’t.”
