Page 1 of The Intruder

NOW

CASEY

There is at least a fifty percent chance that in the next twenty-four hours, the roof of the cabin I’m renting will collapse and kill me.

It’s an apt metaphor for the rest of my life.

There’s not much I can do about my shattered life, but the roof issue is more surmountable.

I have been calling my landlord, Rudy, for the last month to try and fix it.

Every day, I find a few new shingles on the ground next to the cabin, and one day, I’m fairly sure I’ll sit on my living room sofa and look straight up to see the moon.

And then a few days ago, my calls became more urgent. There’s a storm coming, and if this roof doesn’t get fixed ASAP, I could die. So I told Rudy he needed to get his butt over here—now. I wasn’t nice, but I said what I had to say.

Now, a dozen messages later, Rudy is finally here in the flesh.

As we stand together just outside the cabin, Rudy squints up at my roof with his droopy blue eyes.

He’s a scrawny man in his late fifties who looks like he only eats one or two nonliquid meals per day.

He scratches the gray stubble on his chin and adjusts the worn gray baseball cap he always wears.

As usual, he reeks of cigarette smoke. The stench of it was overpowering when I first moved into the cabin, and it took me a week to get it aired out.

It still clings to some of the furniture months later.

“Looks okay to me, Casey,” he says.

My fists clench in barely restrained rage. “How? How does it look okay? There are shingles all over the ground!”

I in fact gathered the flat rectangular shingles into a little pile that I now gesture toward angrily. I don’t entirely understand how a roof is constructed, but I know those things are needed to keep it together. The fact that they are falling off does not bode well for my roof.

At least this is just a rainstorm. Once it snows in a month or so? Forget it. I’m going to wake up one morning in a snowdrift.

I wish I could afford a decent isolated shack in the woods.

“It’s not safe,” I insist.

“You worry too much.” Rudy grabs a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket, and before I can ask him not to, he lights one up and takes a deep drag. I’ve never known him to go more than two minutes without a smoke. “You need to learn to relax a little, Casey.”

You need to learn to relax a little. That was my goal when I moved out to this cabin in The Middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire.

I wanted peace and quiet, which is exactly what I got.

Even with all the chirping birds and crickets and woodpeckers, it’s so quiet that I’ve got no distractions from thinking about the complete mess I made of my life.

I came out here after I lost my teaching job.

I had this idea about living off the grid for a little while, but then I discovered what living “off the grid” actually meant.

As much as I enjoy roughing it a bit, I very much did not want to build my own septic system.

So here I am, not living off the grid—I have electricity, running hot and cold water, and a working landline telephone—but I do not have a television, and I look back with disdain on the days when my smartphone was glued to my right hand.

I sold the phone before I came out here.

Living off the grid is great. As long as you can still use the toilet. Oh, and you definitely need a roof.

I grit my teeth. “I want my roof fixed, Rudy.”

I wish I were anywhere else but here. I especially wish I were back in Boston, in front of my classroom. I miss my students. I would have done anything for those kids.

Except that’s what got me into trouble.

“Just hold your horses, little lady,” he says. “I can’t fix the roof now. That storm is coming.”

I clench my fists. I know there’s a thunderstorm coming tonight. There will be buckets of rain and winds strong enough that I’ll likely lose power. I’ve mentioned it in every single one of my increasingly urgent phone calls to Rudy.

“Yes,” I say in a clipped tone. “That’s why I want you to fix it.”

“Yeah, but I don’t got my tools,” he points out. “Or a ladder.”

“Why the hell not? I told you my roof needed to be fixed.”

“I had to check it out first, didn’t I?” Rudy takes another drag from his cigarette. “I’ll fix it when the storm is over, okay? Next week.”

He doesn’t give me a specific day or time, which is par for the course. Undoubtedly, he’ll call me with an hour’s notice, and if I happen to be out, then my roof just won’t get fixed that day. I’ll have to annoy him as much as I can to make sure this gets done.

“And one other thing…” I add.

Rudy grunts impatiently. “There’s more?”

I shoot him a look. On a scale of one to ten, Rudy gets a two on the landlord scale.

Not only does he never answer my messages, but he refuses to believe there’s a problem with anything.

When the refrigerator randomly stopped working a few months ago, his response was, Well, it was working when you moved in.

“I’m worried about that tree,” I tell him.

Rudy cocks his head in the direction I’m pointing, at the tree on the edge of my property. I don’t know what kind of tree it is, but the trunk is wider than three of me, and it towers over the cabin.

“And why are you worried about the tree?” he asks me in a patronizing voice.

I stomp over to the culprit in my waterproof boots and press my palm against its bark. In response to the pressure, the tree groans threateningly and shifts over about two inches.

Rudy frowns. “So?”

“So trees aren’t supposed to move like that.”

“Sometimes they do.”

“No, Rudy. They are inanimate.”

He takes a long drag from his cigarette, then blows out a giant cloud of smoke. “Fine. I’ll call a landscaper. Happy?”

No. I’ll be happy when the tree is gone. I’ve been worried about it for the last month, and now that a storm is coming, I’m really worried.

I look up at the roof of my house. It will probably hold. And the tree probably won’t fall down. I probably won’t die tonight.

And if I do, the good news is that nobody will miss me.