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Chapter One
Ethan
The sun beams down, bright but not too warm, and I can hear the neighborhood kids laughing and shouting as they race up the street. I ready myself to yell at them if they trample my lawn. Guess I’ve griped at them enough in the past, though, because when they run by, they keep their distance.
“Nice day, huh, Ethan?”
The question comes from my next-door neighbor, Jack, from across the fence that separates our yards. He’s like a damn poster child for summer indolence, a beer koozie in one hand and a running hose in the other, which is carelessly sloshing water onto his azaleas.
“Yup,” I reply. “Sure is.”
“You plan to enjoy it at all, man? Or just keep working?”
I don’t bother to explain to him that I am enjoying the day, in my own way. I’ve been waiting weeks for a day nice enough to clean out the gutters.
Instead, I just gesture my chin toward his azaleas and say, “You’ll want to mulch those. Soil’s been drying around them too fast.”
“You think?” says Jack. He looks down at the shrubs, then gives them a tap around the base with the toe of his sandal. “Soil’s looking pretty good to me. And the flowers are coming in real nice.”
I don’t feel like telling him that his azaleas are only still alive because I moved one of my sprinklers closer to his property by about a foot. Either he’ll figure out I’m the one keeping the plants along our property line alive, or he won’t.
Makes no difference to my water bill.
I wish the guy would pay better attention to his yard, though. It’s not like it’s an eyesore, it’s just…underdeveloped. Full of potential. Sometimes I’m even tempted to suggest that he hire a landscaping company. It doesn’t have to be mine. I’ve got some good competition in town, perfectly capable and reasonably-priced guys I could refer Jack to.
I bet Jack’s wife, Claire, would like it too if he put more effort in to the yard. One of the most romantic things a married guy can do is to give his wife the garden of her dreams.
Fuck. Listen to me, talking about romance. What right do I have to have thoughts like that? Jack and Claire clearly don’t need any marital advice.
Especially not from me.
Jack looks like he wants to keep chatting, but I’ve already turned away from him and am setting up my ladder. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him walk away.
Okay. So the guy’s not so bad. But this gutter’s not going to clean itself.
I lock the ladder in place just under where I think a bird started building its nest yesterday. The spreader on my ladder is rusty in places, but still perfectly capable of being banged into place with a little force.
A few seconds later, when I climb up, I see that I was right: there’s a half-built unoccupied nest waiting for me. It’s a delicately woven cloud made of strips of long grass, bits of bark, and what look like feathers. It looks like a nuthatch nest, which is strange, because they usually nest in the hollows of trees. There aren’t a huge number of trees in the neighborhood, though, so maybe the birds are just working with what they’ve got.
Either way, the birds are nowhere to be seen.
I remember that there’s a hollow at just about eye level in the tree around the other side of the yard. Hopefully, if I move the nest over there, the nuthatches will be able to find it and keep building.I carefully scoop up the nest in my gloved hand, trying to keep it as in tact as I can. Thankfully, it holds together pretty firmly. I’m not out here to destroy anyone’s home. Nest in hand, I start to climb back down the ladder.
I make it down two rungs before the ladder buckles.
As I fall, I’m not thinking about myself. I just think about the nest. Stupid, I know. It’s not like there’s any birds in it. But still, I try to shield it, twisting my body as much as I can as I fall to the ground.
I land hard on my arm and shoulder.
“Whoa!” Jack calls out. In my periphery, I see him rushing up to the fence. “Hey, man. You okay?”
Out of sheer stubbornness, I force myself to stand.
“I’m fine,” I grit out.
“You sure? You landed on your arm pretty hard. Can you move it?”
I move my arm to show him I’m fine, but when I do, a sharp pain shoots through the muscles, all the way down my side and up through my neck. Still, it moved. And Jack doesn’t seem to have noticed the pain it caused me.
