Kiersten
Questions about the diaries absorbed Kiersten’s thoughts as she raced home from school pickup with the boys in the back of the minivan.Who was Dottie? Why were her diaries hidden inside a set of encyclopedias? How did they end up in her basement? And where did all that cash come from?
It was 4:32 p.m. before she finally managed to feed the boys, then hustle them out of the house and back into the minivan for the trip to Pennsylvania. She’d often wondered why the wordsget in the carweren’tstrong enoughon their own, and why she always had to augment this phrase with amendments likeright this minuteornoworbefore I lose my patience.
A missing uniform shirt eventually found balled up under Matt’s bed ensured that she would now leave just in time to hit peak rush hour traffic on the Beltway. A penalty administered by the universe for her many organizational failures, both in the laundry room and in life as a whole.
“Mom, why doIhave to go to Matt’s baseball tournament?” asked James, one of her perpetually aggrieved middle children.
“Because Dad is gone, and I cannot leave you home alone overnight at the age of nine or the police will come and charge me with a crime.”
He squinted up at his mother, clearly unsure how much of this explanation was true and how much was hyperbole.
His eleven-year-old brother, Luke, snorted in derision as he climbed into the coveted third row. “You’re too little to stay home alone.”
“But I don’twantto go to Pennsylvania,” James said plaintively.
She flipped open the back hatch and inserted the many items piled beside the car: baseball bats, cleats, coolers, snacks, and overnight bags filled with goggles and swim trunks—because the team hotel had a pool—plus uniforms, one of which waswhite, for stunningly impractical reasons she would never understand.
As she finished, a flash of color in her neighbor’s yard caught her eye.
“Mom, who’sthat?”
She turned to look, and her mouth dropped open.
In the yard next door, a tall blond woman raised her arms to the heavens like a priestess performing a powerful incantation and unfurled a blue-and-white-checked picnic blanket. She spread it under the enormous sweet gum tree in front of her beautifully restored mid-century home, tastefully decorated for fall with autumnal gourds.
Two little girls scampered onto the picnic blanket, clad in white eyelet dresses. The younger held a bouquet of wildflowers, which seemed to match the little crown of wildflowers adorning her head. The older girl unpacked what appeared to be a vintage china teapot with matching teacups and set them on a tray.
Like their mother, the girls were lovely. Hair so blond it looked white, with rosy cheeks and blue eyes. It looked like a Fairy-Tale Princess Convention. Perhaps the small woodland creatures were stuck at the registration desk waiting for their name tags and would show up later.
Kiersten realized she was staring. “Good afternoon!” she called out in her friendliest voice, to prove she wasn’t a stalker.
Of course, her neighbor probably had lots of stalkers. Kiersten would be happy to have stalkers, too, if she could be six feet tall and skinny, with lustrous blond hair and children who could lay out an entire picnic basket without breaking anything, fighting, or shooting each other with Nerf bullets.
Her neighbor stepped gracefully over the teapot and crossed the yard toward her.
They hadn’t actually met, but this neighbor had left a basket of delicious muffins on her front steps the day they moved in, along with a handwritten note on engraved stationery welcoming them to Beaverbrook Lane.
Kiersten racked her brain, trying to remember her neighbor’s name before she reached the driveway. It was something vaguely horticultural. Camilla? Azelea? Jasmine?
“Hi!” the woman said in a cheerful voice. “I’m Aspen Davis.”
“Kiersten Cleaver,” she replied, extending her hand.
Aspen didn’t shake her hand. Instead she embraced it, making a sort of hand sandwich between her own soft and manicured fingers.
Aspen looked her directly in the eye. “It isso wonderfulto meet you.”
Kiersten felt a little stunned by this earnest welcome. “It’s a lovely day for a picnic,” she finally managed, recovering the ability to speak.
Her neighbor squinted at the horizon. “It is. The light is perfect.”
“We’re heading to a travel baseball tournament, but maybe we can get together when we get back. If you have time,” she added hastily. Perhaps spa treatments and shopping for picturesque aprons took up a large portion of her neighbor’s day.
“Oh, I have lots of time,” Aspen said with an airy wave.
“Where do your girls go to school?” Kiersten asked.
