I spot another door. It has to be the closet. I have to get in there.
“And where does that lead?” I nudge.
“Oh, feel free,” Jack says, gesturing to go ahead.
I cross the marble, and turn the sleek, brass handle. I feel for the light switch. When I find it, the world momentarily halts. This must be heaven. My soul must have departed my body. What other explanation could there be for a closet that looks like this?
The perimeter is lined with custom storage, painted the same moody blue as the bedroom. Each compartment of hanging clothes is lit from within, like in a high-end boutique. One wall is reserved for shoes, tucked into perfectly sized shelves, and cubbies of folded items in crisp stacks arranged by color. Like macarons in a pastry shop. In the center, there’s an island full of drawers and topped with Carrara. A miniature version of what’s in the kitchen.
I’d be euphoric if I wasn’t terrified. If we can’t have this place, I will literally lie down and fucking die.
Ian comes up behind me in the doorway, places a hand on myshoulder. I hear him suck in a breath. “Holy shit,” he says, before remembering Penny.
“Shoot.” He turns back to Jack. “Sorry, man.”
“No sweat—I probably should’ve prepared you.” Jack laughs. “Shall we head back down before Curt finishes all the martinis?”
On the way, I lean into Ian. “This is it,” I whisper. “It has to be.”
It’s a spectacular evening, almost cloudless and still in the high sixties. Penny takes me by the hand again, guiding me to the backyard. She does cartwheels across the lawn and I pretend to be impressed. But my focus is on the tire swing.
Once she’s done showing me her splits, I point toward it. “Did your dads put that up for you?”
She shakes her head. “It’s always been there.”
I think back to the tax records I dug up for this place. The owners before Jack and Curt had lived here since the seventies. Which means the swing has probably been here my whole life, maybe longer. All those mornings and afternoons, walking to and from my bus stop, staring pathetically at the tire swing that hung in the Satos’ front yard, I was wishing for the wrong one.
Alyssa Sato was a grade older, so even though we rode the same bus for all of elementary school, we weren’t really friends. Her dad sold cars—every few months, they’d have a new one in the driveway—and her mom stayed home. Unless it was raining, in which case Alyssa got a ride all the way to school, her mom would walk with her to the bus. In the afternoons, she’d be there with a Capri-Sun, the straw already punched into its tiny hole, ready for Alyssa to enjoy.
Some of the other kids made fun of this, but I was transfixed. I couldn’t fathom what it must feel like to be the center of an adult’s universe like that. I made a point of sitting behind Alyssa on the bus so I could disembark after her and trail a half block or so behind on the sidewalk. From there, I could pick out bits and pieces of conversation—her mom asking about such-and-such friend orhow Alyssa did on the spelling test. Whether she remembered to turn in her homework. The sorts of mundane things that my parents never brought up.
The Satos’ house was on the block before the town-house complex where I lived. It was the same street, but their stretch was greener and shadier, all single-family homes. By the time I reached their place, Alyssa was usually clambering up onto that tire swing, her mom watching from the porch.
Their life looked idyllic and I wanted badly to be a part of it, so one morning, when I was in third grade and Alyssa was in fourth, I worked up the courage to sit next to her on the bus. I’d decided to invite her to come over to my house after school, figuring she’d have to return the invitation, maybe as soon as the next day.
Instead, she went quiet for several long seconds, before finally admitting she didn’t think she’d be allowed to—“because your parents are never there, right?”
I’d had no idea that other people knew this about me, let alone that the topic had apparently been discussed inside the perfect Sato home. My whole body flushed with shame at the realization that something about me wasn’t good enough.
But finally, after all these years, I can let that go. Because now I knowthistire swing, behind a house far more perfect than the Satos’ ever was, has been waiting for me all along.
I take a few steps toward it. “Do you want me to push you on it for a bit?” I ask Penny.
“Nah, let me show you something cooler,” she says, running back toward the deck.
I have no choice but to follow. Around the side of it, she points out a short flight of stairs leading to a basement.
“One time, our neighbors’ cat Lunchbox got stuck down there,” she says. “He was trapped in our basement until almost bedtime when I heard him crying.”
“Really? But how did he get in?” I ask.
“Come look, I’ll show you.”
I follow her down the concrete steps.
“See?” With hardly any effort, she pushes open the top half of the door at the bottom.
“Oh, it’s a Dutch door?”
