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Present Day

My new house sits in a development surrounded by various homes of different colors inhabited by a range of suburbanites who’ve chosen to live just a few miles outside of Philly. The town, Raven Terrace, boasts good schools, low crime rates, and a good tax base.

All of that means little to me. I chose this house two months ago for one reason.

Nobody knows me here.

As is typical in suburbia, the people around me seem to find it necessary to mingle as often as possible. They have block parties and holiday festivals every chance they get. That’s never been my style, but as they say, when in Rome do as the Romans do.

Not that agreeing to join their little events means they get to know anything about me.

I know about them, though. They make it so easy. Well, most of them, but even the ones who seem to want to keep their lives private can’t succeed in hiding from me.

Since I work from home as a human resources consultant in my house at the center of this cul-de-sac, I have a panoramic view of what goes on with my neighbors. The house to the right of mine, a blue one with a small front porch and a picture window in the front that looks exactly like every other house in this development, is the home to Jared and Suzanne Meyers. Every morning, rain or shine, he goes for a run. More than once when an early morning summer storm rolled through, I wondered as I watched him take off down the street in his yellow running shorts and bright green and black running shoes if he’ll be running when the weather turns and it snows. This part of Pennsylvania doesn’t tend to get too many inches in the winter, but big storms can happen.

I suspect he will because his running partner is the woman he’s cheating on his wife with. The blond-haired, blue-eyed, handsome athletic store manager has a thing going with a woman from two streets over who meets him every morning at the corner. Also blond, she wears running clothes that seem more for tantalizing than exercising.

Every day, I watch him meet her and then immediately look back toward his house to see if his wife is watching. I suspect Suzanne doesn’t know what Jared’s up to since she’s gone from the house in her business suit and high heels less than five minutes after he leaves on his daily run. A lawyer at a firm in the city, she’s attractive in a barracuda kind of way and reminds me of every female attorney I’ve ever seen on TV. Driven and focused, she’s smart but distracted from her marriage by her job.

But I have a feeling she’s going to find out about her cheating husband soon.

Sitting up at my desk, I stretch my arms above my head as my mid-morning break starts. Out my front window I see the man who lives in the white house to the left of me. Hunched over, he picks something that looks like a child’s toy off his slightly yellow grass. He’s dressed like he always is—faded jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers—but there’s nothing casual about Aaron.

I think he may have been a fun-loving kind of person at some point, but those days are long gone. Right after I moved into this house, Jared told me that Aaron had lost his wife less than a year ago after she suffered for three years with cancer. He didn’t say what kind of cancer and I didn’t ask, but it’s clear by looking at Aaron that he hasn’t gotten over the loss of her.

They had two children, but I’ve noticed they don’t seem to be around much anymore. Aaron rarely leaves the house, other than to walk around his yard and pick things up off the grass that’s slowly dying. He never attends the neighborhood functions that are so integral to nearly everyone around me.

In that, I can respect him. In everything else, he simply seems lost. We’ve never spoken a single word to one another, but I have a feeling if he ever does talk to me, it won’t be about anything happy. The man wears sadness like a coat he can’t take off.

I step behind the curtain to avoid his next-door neighbor from seeing me this morning. Now there’s a chatty one. Well, the wife. The husband doesn’t seem to care about anything but fishing. Both retired, they appear to have chosen very different paths in their early sixties. She putters around that yard of theirs tending to her roses, which are many and in a variety of different colors. I have to give her this. She seems to have a green thumb.

The husband, on the other hand, is rarely home. Like Jared with his running, rain or shine Harold Kittner drives off in his RAM truck every morning with his fishing poles and tackle box in the truck bed. His face is always sunburnt, and from what I’ve seen from the few interactions with him, he must spend a good portion of his fishing time drinking since he’s often drunk when he comes home.

It seems that doesn’t bother Marilyn Kittner because whenever he rolls up the driveway, she’s there with a smile waiting for him. He never seems happy to be home, always surly looking when he gathers up his poles and equipment and trudges toward her to give her a peck on the cheek. Then after fulfilling his husbandly duty, he walks into the house, and she returns to cruising around their yard to prune one of her rose bushes.

More than once, I’ve watched her tend to her prized possessions and thought she was probably a beautiful woman when he was younger. Now, she’s a gray-haired woman who wears a bun all the time but never seems able to get all her hair into it. The effect is something I’ve termed not unappealing dishevelment. I sense she doesn’t see a need to focus on her appearance anymore, so she pays more attention to her plants than anything else.

She and the wife from the tan house on the corner across from her are the ringleaders for the neighborhood events. In her mid-thirties, I guess, with four children and light brown hair that’s always in a ponytail, Kimmy Marshall is just as chatty as Marilyn, so they get on great.

And yes, it’s Kimmy. Not Kim. Not Kimberly. Kimmy. That seems like an odd name for a woman her age, especially considering the only part of her that looks bright and cheery like her name is her face. Always wearing a smile, even when it’s forced, she spends her time wrangling those kids of hers in her wrinkled clothes.

Her husband, Tim, works constantly at some marketing firm in the city. His workaholic tendencies are probably why he’s balding everywhere but on the sides of his head near his ears. It gives him an odd look that reminds me of Saturn’s rings, just made from brown hair. In the few months I’ve lived here, I think I’ve seen him no more than five times, and each time he seems more harried than the last.

For her part, Kimmy does one other thing in addition to spearheading all these neighborhood things I feel pressured to attend. She yells. A lot. Maybe that’s part and parcel of being a stay-at-home-mom with four young children, but when she gets going, it’s like a banshee has moved into our nice, little cul-de-sac. Three boys, the oldest aged six and the twins aged four, run around like wild things Kimmy constantly has to wrangle while she holds the youngest, a baby girl of eight months, in her arms. I suspect they kept trying until they finally had a girl, but from the ragged look of Tim every night he comes home, he’s working overtime to afford all of them.

The sudden realization that they’re Tim and Kimmy makes me chuckle as I poke my head around the curtain to see Marilyn walking toward the Marshall house. Probably time to plan something else. We just had the Fourth of July block party a few weeks ago. I figured August might be event-free, but by the look of the older woman with that notebook in her hand, I doubt there will be a reprieve from my neighbors for the rest of the summer.

Then again, another one of their friendly parties will give me a chance to get to know the newest person in the neighborhood. The woman who moved into the green house next to Harold and Marilyn earlier this month missed the Fourth of July spectacular, so I haven’t had a chance to find out anything about her yet.

Well, other than what I learned when I searched for her online, which wasn’t much. That intrigues me as much as not knowing anything about someone. She isn’t exactly off the grid when it comes to social media, but she’s close to it. That’s suspicious to me. Everyone’s online. Even people who hate social media are on it. Everyone except people who have something to hide.

That’s not entirely true either since I’m on social media, and I have a lot to hide.

She’s pretty with dirty blond hair and a round face that makes her look friendly. I guess she’s in her late twenties, which begs the question how she affords a home in this neighborhood, especially since she doesn’t seem to go to work on a regular basis. I see her maybe once a week get into her car dressed like she’s going to some office job, but I doubt that’s the case since she returns within a few hours each time.

Maybe she won the lottery. That seems like a longshot, though. I don’t know who lived in that house before her, but it was empty for a month after I moved in. Perhaps she was married to the previous owner and got it in the divorce?

Not knowing makes me even more curious about her, so Marilyn and Kimmy planning yet another summertime party I’ll need to go to doesn’t bother me as much. My mid-morning break over, I return to my computer as my curiosity about the new person ratchets up a few notches.

When I return from a run to the local grocery store with my dinner, the heat of the day has become unbearable, and I can’t wait to get back inside the house where it’s air conditioned. Hot and humid, this type of weather might be typical of the northeast in the summertime, but I hate it. It makes me sluggish and drowsy, and I lose my edge and focus on days like this.

Unfortunately, I don’t get inside fast enough, and Kimmy catches me on the doorstep as I’m unlocking my door. I hear her come up behind me, or more correctly, I hear the baby in her arms whining as she approaches me.

“Mr. Prentiss, how are you today?” Kimmy asks in a breathless voice that might sound sexy if I didn’t know what she looked like and all the baggage she comes with.

If only I’d been a second or two faster in the self-checkout line at the store, I might have made it into the air-conditioned comfort of my home by now.

Slowly, I turn around to face her and see sweat pouring down her chubby face and staining around the collar of her wrinkled light blue T-shirt. She really is dedicated to this neighborly thing, isn’t she? Is the party happening tomorrow? If not, I think she could have waited until it cooled down to come see me about her next fun time she’s arranging with Marilyn.

“Hi, Kimmy. Hot out, isn’t it?” I say with a fake smile as sweat begins to form on the back of my neck after only a few minutes out in this weather.

I could invite her and the baby inside. It would be the neighborly thing to do, after all. It would be the gentlemanly thing too.

However, the last thing I want to do is prolong this encounter, so I don’t choose the polite route.

“It is!” she says as she hikes the baby up on her right hip. “But it’s perfect for our next neighborhood get-together this weekend. We’re calling it the Dog Days of Summer Party. Isn’t that clever? Marilyn thought of that. She’s always so good with naming our parties. You’ll be there, won’t you? It wouldn’t be the same if everyone didn’t attend.”

That’s not true, and she knows it. Aaron never comes to these things. Then again, it’s one thing to decide not to invite someone inside. It’s another to bring up the ugliness someone next door is going through as a way to one-up someone.

So I choose to be nice and say, “I’ll be there with bells on.”

Kimmy hands me a bright orange invitation she and Marilyn have been working on all afternoon. “Great! We’re doing a potluck this time, so all you have to do is bring yourself and something to eat. It can be anything, really. We’ll have sodas and coffee, although I don’t know who will be drinking that if this heat keeps up. As usually, it’s BYOB and we’ll all share that. Oh, also, if you can chip in some money for the drinks and decorations, we’d really appreciate it.”

I glance down at the orange piece of paper in my hand and see she’s told me everything on it. Looking up at her, I nod as I reach into my pocket to get my wallet out. “Twenty enough?” I ask as I hand her a twenty-dollar bill.

The little girl on her hip reaches for the money, but her mother grabs it before the child can. “No, Misty. Money is dirty.”

Kimmy stuffs it into her shorts pocket before returning her focus to me again. “She puts everything in her mouth. It’s so gross and a habit I hope she grows out of.”

I nod and smile like I know what she’s talking about, but I don’t. I’ve never had children or even a little brother or sister. In fact, Misty might be the only baby I’ve ever been this close to. She seems pleasant enough, although I suspect as soon as she’s old enough to run around her mother will be screaming at her all the time too.

“Well, time for me to go have dinner. I’ll see you this weekend. I guess I’ll have to come up with something good for the potluck too. Don’t want to disappoint.”

I don’t mean that last part. I don’t care if she or anyone else is disappointed by what I decide to bring to this unnecessary party. They’ll be lucky if I don’t grab a coffee cake off the day-old bakery rack at the store and be done with the whole thing.

As I turn to walk inside, behind me Kimmy says, “Okay, thanks! See you then. Come on, Misty. We have more people to invite to our extravaganza!”

I look back to see her and the baby on her hip trotting over to Aaron’s house. Kimmy is exactly the kind of person who would think someone in mourning needs a distraction like a neighborhood potluck to be happy again. I might not have ever been married or loved someone, but even I know it’s not as easy as that.