The Neighbor's Secret(2)

Annie, who had grown up in a very different kind of neighborhood—on the wrong side of Highway Five—recognized that her neighbors could be a little precious.

They were good, generous people, but most of them didn’t understand that there were far worse things in life than a little graffiti.

Annie did.

Lena Meeker did, too.

Annie had almost reached Lena Meeker’s house at the top of the hill. She still—even now—held her breath when she walked by, like a child going past a graveyard.

The first time Annie had been inside was for a swim-team dinner when she was around fifteen, only a few years older than Laurel now. The Meekers had hosted even though their daughter, Rachel, was young and relatively new to the team, because that was the kind of thing they did.

A teammate’s father had driven a group of them over and after he’d pulled into the driveway, he had squinted and tilted his head against the windshield.

“Is this a resort?” he’d asked.

The house was sprawling elegance, wood and glass, with oversized windows to capture the view. Inside, Annie had leaned her forehead to the glass and looked west. No other houses were visible, just the shimmering wave of aspen leaves on the hills, the snowcapped purple Rockies behind them.

Better than a postcard, Annie had thought.

Now, she walked quickly past the low garden fence separating Lena’s yard from the road. The giant cottonwood tree in the back corner of her lot was the development’s namesake, and every spring, it snowed down fluffy cotton seeds on the neighborhood below.

A few months after they’d moved in, Mike and Annie had, one mild spring afternoon, unfolded aluminum beach chairs in their small backyard. While Laurel napped inside, they’d brought out mugs of lemonade and rested their feet in the grass. For a brief moment, everything finally felt normal.

But then the wind picked up and cottonwood tufts—so many, too many to count—showered down on them with the intensity of a summer squall. Annie had known exactly where they’d come from, and she’d been unable to stop sobbing.

It had taken time and therapy and antidepressants for Annie to pull herself back from the brink and begin to function. But she had. In the past thirteen years, Annie had gotten her master’s, they’d had Hank, she’d gotten a dream job at Sandstone.

Lena Meeker had all but disappeared.

On the night of the swim-team dinner all of those years before, Lena Meeker had seemed to Annie as delicate as a summer breeze. Annie had asked where the bathroom was and Mrs. Meeker had put a light hand on Annie’s shoulder and pointed down the hall. There you go, dear. Her touch had been so gentle, the air around her so sweet, that Annie wanted to sink into it all like a feather bed.

Annie remembered staring at the back of Rachel Meeker’s small head, the mass of dark curly hair coaxed into an elaborate braid—probably Mrs. Meeker’s careful work—and feeling a strong current of jealousy, even though Rachel was just a little kid.

A group of them had gone upstairs, peeked in a room that had to be Rachel’s: canopied bed, personalized art, a giant giraffe stuffed animal whose neck stretched almost to the ceiling.

Life’s unfairness hit Annie like a slap that night. She wanted a mother who’d braid her hair and a beautiful room with a ridiculous stuffed giraffe. Rachel Meeker probably didn’t even appreciate any of it.

Annie now winced with shame at the memory.

Lena Meeker had lost so much—

Annie’s front teeth scraped her bottom lip. For distraction, she glanced at the copper mailbox and came face-to-face with its large round goofy eyes, oblong nose.

Not eyes—goodness, were those?—testicles.

A giant smiling penis had been graffitied along the entire side of Lena’s mailbox. Annie could practically hear a dopey teenager still guffawing somewhere in the valley below.

Annie grew irate thinking of Lena Meeker innocently checking her mail, seeing the damage and feeling that stunned but-why-me victim’s shame. The woman had been through enough. Someone should warn her.

How many times had Annie pictured knocking on Lena’s door? You won’t remember me, but …

(The fantasy was always brief: Annie had never been able to decide what she’d say next.)

For the rest of her life, Annie will remember how she’d dragged the confused dog up those three wide stone steps to stand at Lena Meeker’s front door. She felt the morning sun on her back, a buzz of nervous adrenaline in her stomach. She was vaguely aware of how tightly she gripped the leash with her left hand, how the rough nylon abraded her palm.

Annie balled up her right fist and knocked.





CHAPTER TWO



It wasn’t that the knock frightened Lena, although it was startling.

She had been deep into chapter 7 of Beyond the Fields (just wonderful!). Odile, escaped from the concentration camps, was hiding up in a tree in a Bavarian forest, salivating at the smell of cheese and bread from the German family’s picnic a few feet below her. Trying to stop herself from fainting from hunger, Odile shifted slightly in the tree and accidentally rustled its branches. The family’s little girl looked up and—

Had Lena perhaps imagined the knock?

Nope, there it was again. Three impatient raps.

Tommy, her UPS man, rang instead of knocked and it was too early for packages anyway. Rudy the landscaper wasn’t due until eleven, which reminded Lena, she had to collect fresh mint leaves and get his tea brewing soon.