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Chapter One
Next Door
In most cases, hearing that your next-door neighbors of ten years were getting divorced elicited either indifference—if you weren’t close to them—or sympathy—if you were. Most people, even if they knew the match had been strained for years, nodded somberly upon hearing the news, maybe muttering under their breath that they’d seen it coming. In rare circumstances, relief to see a toxic relationship finally end accompanied the news. Still, no matter which of these emotions the news sprouted within someone, they didn’t usually fist pump the air elatedly upon reading the ill-tidings through a text message.
Liam Carr committed such an act—six raucous punches over his head—upon reading his mother’s message on December 4th. The divorce between Tess and Douglas Levine was finalized. And right before he headed home from his first semester of college. Christmascouldcome early.
Foranyof his other neighbors, he would have commiserated for the end of a decade-long relationship. Really. But this one… this one he celebrated. Wholeheartedly and unabashedly, confusing his roommate as he went around grinning ear-to-ear during finals week, he celebrated. His Human Anatomy and Physiology I professor could have slammed his finals paper on homeostasis and the importance of organ systems as complete intellectual sewage, and Liamstillwould have spent the drive home singing boisterously alongside the radio blaring through his car.
For a seventy-thirty split of selfless to selfish reasons, he figured he was still in the clear to face Tess once he made it back. On the selfless side, Douglas wasan utter jackass. A man of dark glares and irate temperament, Liam had seen little of the man growing up, and what little he saw didn’t lead him to pity the sparseness of their interactions.
He was an overworked actuary for a major accounting firm, or so Liam thought he remembered. For all the time he spent evaluating and assessing the risks and likelihoods of the future for his company’s business decisions, Liam wondered if he’d foreseen the end of his marriage coming. If he had, had he weighed his prospects for the future and decided that letting it end would be for the best?
If he had, he was the biggest fool of all time.
Liam couldn’t fathom how Tess, who was practically an angel, had ever let the unpleasant scowl of a man slip a ring onto her finger. As curious as he was, he didn’t imagine it was a question he should ask until a healthy burden of time separated her from the freshness of the divorce. Ten days probably wasn’t long enough.
As he reached familiar neighborhood streets, his car hummed with the boisterous work of the hot air flooding its compartment. With it well past six o’clock at the end of his journey, darkness would have swathed the houses in its clutches if not for the Christmas lights stabbing colorful light into the night. Frost glistened on the grass, turning lawns pallid blue-white. Liam wondered if he’d see any snow over the break. So long as it didn’t bury him indoors like a nasty blizzard had two winters ago, he wouldn’t mind waking up to a winter wonderland.
Taking the slope down into his neighborhood carefully, unsure if his car beams had seen ice on the asphalt, he turned off the road forhisstreet after it flattened. Curving along the street he’d grown up on, he looked from side to side as he eked toward 4401 Cherry Lane.
He saw Ernest’s lonely haunt, where the physicist cloistered within had left his home as one of the few untouched by holiday decorations. A few more down, he passed Clint’s family home, where memories of roasted chestnuts and toasty glazed hams filled his nostrils with their delectable scents. As an adolescent, he’d spent more Christmases there than in his own home just six houses down.
His house appeared in view on his right. Unsurprisingly, though not due to any lack of holiday spirit, it was one of the few dark splotches on an otherwise colorful street. The houses to either side radiated bright and colorful, with Gary sticking enough lights and decorations on and around his large home to give Clark Griswald a run for his money. By comparison, Tess edged in the middle of blindingly overdone and completely devoid.
I wonder if she put them all up herself, Liam thought as he turned into his driveway. His was the only car there, as it would likely be throughout the entirety of his winter vacation.
His parents, dentists both, hadn’t meant to have a second son sixteen years after having their first—their last, according to their doctor, who’d told his mother she was lucky to have borne even one child. With the man retired years before his unexpected conception, Liam’s parents had sent him a droll family picture when his mom was in her third trimester.
Throughout his childhood, he knew it’d pained them to put their world-traveling plan, ones they’d formed even before they’d had Charlie, his older brother, on hold to raise their unanticipated second child. Already nearly fifty when he was born, he had no complaints about the love and attention he’d received from them. He didn’t begrudge them for their desire to travel either.
Once he’d turned thirteen, mainly because he had several neighbors happy to look after him, they’d spent more and more months in the summer and around the holidays off in Rome or Hong Kong or Sydney. They were carousing through Denmark currently, probably skiing on slopes or staying warm by the fire in a wooden cabin surrounded by snow. Liam knew he’d find plenty of pictures of their trip on the fridge when they finally made it home.
Once he’d parked in his driveway, Liam prepared for the hectic sprint through the cold, one he’d need to make at least a few times to get his clothes, laptop, and other effects all indoors. Finding his winter coat in the backseat and donning it, after which he retrieved a duffel bag full of clothes and the backpack that his laptop and various electronic cords sat in, he shivered in advance, body anticipating the gelid chill awaiting him. It was all of twenty steps between his front door and where he’d parked his car, so he shouldn’t need to spend too long dashing through the cold. Thrusting the door open, no longer swaddled by the heat his car had put out during the drive, he made the first one.
Electing to hurry through the grass, unsure if there’d be any ice ready to make a fool of him on the concrete path leading to his front door as he was, it crunched noisily beneath his shoes. Careful when he needed to leave it so he could step onto his porch and fiddle with his keys to gain entrance inside, he shivered as the cold seeped through his uncovered ears with wicked glee. White clouds puffing in front of his face, he found the key, inserted it, and shoved his way indoors.
Brrr.
Shaking his body as if he could banish the frigid cold like a dog freshly emerged from its bath shaking off water, he set his things down in the foyer, flipped on his porch lights, and readmitted himself to its unpleasant touch. Grabbing his rolled-up comforter and one of his pillows, he tromped loudly through the grass, making it back inside and groaning under his breath about the cold. All that remained was his tv, which he now regretted having brought home with him. No one else would share the house with him this winter break, and there were televisions aplenty in it.
In complete dissimilitude from his parents, his older brother, an English teacher who lived and taught in South Korea,hatedflying. It was something of a minor miracle—primarily due to his then-fiancé’s insistence—that he’d ever made it to the peninsula and met her family. And, well, he’d seemingly been more than happy to stay there. Liam couldn’t remember the last time he’d come to visit; it was almost uniformly the other way around, not that he’d minded visiting Seoul every year or two. Besides, with sixteen years of separation between their births, he’d been off to college by the time Liam was learning his first words. Their relationship was cordial, but they were hardly close.
Alright, once more into the breach,he told himself. Rubbing the arms of his jacket, he propelled himself back into the frost and darkness, looking to reclaim his tv, make it back inside, and forget all about the cold when he cranked the house’s heating—currently sitting at an unpleasant 66 ever since his parents’ departure last weekend—up to 72 degrees.
He was confident they’d have left the house well-stocked, so he wouldn’t need to worry about heading back out for food for a week or so.
As he scraped through his car’s backseats and grasped cold plastic, he hefted his wide but thin tv. Pulling it free, he nudged his car door shut with his hip and fumbled for his keys to lock the door. Fumbled—and then dropped. He swore under his breath as they clinked loudly on the driveway, then crouched, holding his tv awkwardly under his left arm, and scraped his fingertips over the concrete as he swept them up.
“Hi, Liam,” a silvery voice warmly said. “Do you need any help?”
His eyes shot up, fingers clutching his keys tightly. There, standing a handful of paces away, he saw a woman. She was bathed on one side by the meager light of his porch lights, what little of it extended this far. What the darkness kept from him, vivid memories of her indelible beauty more than filled in the blanks.
She was a walking paradox. As benevolent and considerate as an angel but as astonishingly beguiling as a succubus, he oscillated like a pinball hitting every bumper between adoring her for her warmth and lusting over her for her irresistible allure. She enticed every part of him each time she entered his mind, let alone his field of view.
Kneeling in the dark and freezing cold, it remained an emphatic truth.
“No, I’m good!” He hastily jumped to his feet as if he was spring-loaded. “But thank you!” he quickly added.
