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Annie had the car loaded shortly before eleven, and after advising Charlie to go to the bathroom one last time (good advice

for Annie, too) they hit the road. It took the better part of half an hour to get out of the city, heading south and picking

up the Holland Tunnel that took her under the Hudson River and into New Jersey. She followed without question the verbal instructions

from her in-dash GPS companion, a woman Annie had, in her head, named Sherpa because she was such an excellent guide.

Annie was not the most confident driver. Having grown up in the city, she had never held a driver’s license and never learned

to drive when she was in her teens. Her father had an old Ford, but, what with taxis and buses and subways and the nightmare

of trying to find a place to park, Annie had figured if she did have a license, she wouldn’t make use of it. But when the

money started coming in, and they moved into the Bank Street address, John thought it was finally time to have some wheels.

With a car, they could head out of town on weekends. They had friends who lived out in the Hamptons. They could rent that

Cape Cod beach house they’d always dreamed of spending part of the summer in. Annie said fine, okay, I’ll get a license, I’ll

learn to drive, but don’t ask me to like it.

And she didn’t. But she could do it. It was the downtown driving she hated most. Once she got out of the city, hit the interstate, and could put the BMW on cruise control, wander the Sirius dial, sam pling everything from Springsteen to punk, well, then she could endure it.

What she missed was having someone up front with her.

Charlie was still, for safety reasons, riding in the backseat on a booster seat that allowed him a better view out his window.

When she and John traveled, regardless of who was sitting behind the wheel, all she had to do was turn her head if she had

something on her mind, something she wanted to talk about.

But these days, all conversations were conducted over her right shoulder.

“How’s it going back there?” she’d ask, turning her head slightly so that Charlie could better hear her.

“Fine.”

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Nothin’.”

“You need a juice box or anything?”

“No.”

“You need to make a pit stop?”

“No.”

There were times when he would talk your ear off, and times when he had very little to say. Although the truth was, on this

particular trip, Annie didn’t actually have that much to say herself.

She couldn’t stop thinking about the dream.

Because, of course, it was a dream. John had not come back from the Great Beyond to give her a little snippet of advice.

Still, it had been so real. She’d sensed that familiar stirring in the bed next to her. Even though she was generally a pretty

sound sleeper, she could always tell when John was getting out of bed. It could be three in the morning, but no matter how

carefully he might slip back the covers to head to the bathroom, she would know, and ask dreamily, “You okay?”

“Gotta pee,” he’d say, and she would go back to sleep.

So it had to be that she’d dreamed the stirring in the bed next to her. And dreamed turning over in bed to see what it was. And dreamed seeing John there, head propped up on his palm. And dreamed what he had said to her.

“Don’t go, Annie. Don’t go.”

She’d woken with a start, her heart hammering, her nightshirt drenched in sweat. She had flicked on her bedside lamp, turned

and put her bare feet to the floor, and sat there a moment, catching her breath, letting her heart rate settle down to something

more normal. She went to the bathroom, had a small drink of water, then returned to bed, unsure whether she would be able

to get back to sleep, but after about half an hour, she did.

In the light of day, traveling along 280 West, waiting for Sherpa to tell her to bear left or bear right or take this mountain

pass, she wondered what to make of the dream, if anything. She imagined herself as her therapist, what she would make of it:

Well, maybe you’re giving yourself a warning here. Perhaps you don’t want to leave the city as much as you thought you did.

Maybe you don’t want to go to the country for the summer.

“What do you know,” Annie said aloud.

“What?” Charlie asked from the backseat.

Annie glanced in the rearview mirror, caught a look at him. She thought he’d been sleeping. “Nothing, honey. Just talking

to myself.”

“What about?”

“Nothing. You getting hungry?”

They had been on the road for coming up on two hours and even though they’d had a late breakfast, they were due for a lunch break. When Annie had proposed making sandwiches to eat along the way, Charlie had made the face of a child who’d just been told they were having worms for dinner and asked if they could they stop at a McDonald’s somewhere.

Back in the day, she and John had been organic this, organic that, wheat germ shakes, protein bars. But having a kid changed

all that, and before long her child’s tastes became her own, to the point that there were times when she would kill for a

Chicken McNugget.

Charlie said he was, indeed, hungry, and so Annie hit the voice command button and asked Sherpa if there was a McDonald’s

coming up. The very next exit, she informed Annie. They got off the highway, had something to eat, used the bathrooms, and,

after topping up the SUV’s gas tank, were back on the road.

According to Sherpa, they would reach their destination in another two hours.

When Annie turned off a state-maintained road onto a narrower county artery, Sherpa informed her that her destination was

less than a mile away. Before reaching it, the car rolled gently over a railroad crossing. The fading round yellow sign, the

letters r and r separated by a black x , was acned with what looked like BB-gun shots. She looked in the rearview mirror to see what Charlie was up to, whether he

was comatose. She hadn’t heard much out of him the last hour, not since she had turned off the interstate and passed through

Castle Creek, which really was little more than a gas station with a convenience store and a couple of churches. Sure enough,

he was in dreamland.

“Hey,” she said. “Hey, Charlie. Wake up. We’re almost there.”

Slowly he opened his eyes, took a moment to orient himself, and looked out his window. “Where?”

“Soon.”

She was reading names and numbers off mailboxes. The house she was looking for was 11318 Scoutland Road, and there remained the faded name of one of the previous occupants: smitherton .

She said the numbers out loud as she passed them. “Eleven-two-fifty-eight... eleven-two-eighty-six... eleven-three-twelve...

hang on. I think this is it.”

“Why are there boxes beside the road?” Charlie asked.

“Those are mailboxes. You’ve seen those before. In Cape Cod.”

The things you’d assume everyone, even a kid, would know, but when they’d grown up in the city, the country turned out to

be full of surprises, even totally mundane ones.

She slowed the car to a crawl and put on her right blinker, spotted a mailbox with 11318, and turned into the driveway.

The house sat back a good hundred feet from the road on a slight rise, making it look taller than its two stories. It was,

in fact, imposing, like something off a postcard. It was everything Finnegan had promised. Stately, but also charming, with

its dormer windows, wraparound porch, a forest backdrop, painted in a shade of blue that matched the sky. Annie felt a hopeful

swelling in her heart, that this was everything she had hoped it would be.

The driveway was circular, allowing Annie to bring the car right up in front of the house, at the base of the steps up to

the porch. Charlie was trying to disconnect the seat belt that held him and his booster seat in place but couldn’t reach it.

“Let me out! Let me out!”

“Hold on, pal.”

She put the car in park, killed the engine, got out, and came around the other side to free Charlie. He leapt out and ran

up the three steps to the porch, wide-eyed.

“How much of it is ours?” he asked.

That made Annie laugh. Another city-vs.-country perception. In New York, you got part or, in their case, maybe most of a building. But even they rented out the basement, which was a totally self-contained unit.

“All of it,” she said.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. I mean, we don’t own it, we’re just renting, but we can use every single room if we want to.” Annie couldn’t imagine that they would. There was

probably twice the square footage of their home. It had three floors, and this house had but two, but the brownstone was narrow,

tall and skinny, and this house spread out, like it was trying to use up as much of the land as it could.

Annie said, “See if there’s a key under the mat.”

That was equally mystifying to Charlie. He knew about keys, even though their brownstone was accessed via a keypad, but he

was not familiar with the notion of leaving a key where anybody could find it. But he did as he was told, lifted up the corner

of the mat, and shrieked, “It’s here!”

Annie reached the porch, took the key from Charlie, unlocked the door, and let it open into the house.

“Wow,” Charlie said.

They stepped into a spacious front hall. A few steps directly ahead of them was a broad staircase leading to the upper floor.

To the right, a large living room with a wall-mounted big-screen television. To the left, a dining room. Alongside the stairs,

on the right, was a hallway that led to the kitchen.

“Where’s the bathroom?” Charlie asked with some urgency.

Annie shrugged.

“Never mind, I’ll find it.” Charlie ran down the hall to the kitchen, vanished, then reappeared in the dining room, having

done a loop of the first floor.

“Find it?”

“No!” he shouted somewhat frantically.

He went running up the steps while Annie headed for the kitchen, wanting to know if that Nespresso machine was really there.

Not only was it sitting on the counter, but there was a box of pods next to it in a variety of flavors. If it didn’t get any

better than this, that was fine with her. But in fact the fridge was well stocked—even with milk and cream that had not yet

reached their expiration date—and the pantry as well. Plus, on the kitchen island was a gift basket overflowing with high-end

jams and cookies and caramel corn and God knew what else, with a note from Finnegan that read: “Enjoy.”

Charlie came running into the kitchen, breathless.

“Did you find the bathroom?”

He nodded. “Just in time. I nearly exploded. And I found my room.”

“Spider-Man bedspread?” He nodded. “Yep, that’s your room.”

And then he was off again, investigating. He rounded a corner and shouted, “I found another bathroom! A little one!”

Annie smiled to herself as his footsteps carried on. She climbed the stairs, checked out what would be her bedroom, then wandered

into what had been the photographers’ studio. There was a height-adjustable worktable, an Aeron chair, a small table already

kitted out with paper and pens and brushes and tubes of watercolor paints.

“You bastard, Finnegan,” she said under her breath. Just as she had suspected.

Shaking her head, she turned away to start bringing stuff in from the car. She was at the bottom of the stairs, about to head

outside, when she realized Charlie was around the corner, picking up a remote on a living room coffee table and pointing it

at the wall-mounted TV. The set came alive.

“The channels are all different,” he said. “I can’t find Nickelodeon.”

“I don’t know what the setup is here,” she said. “Could be satellite, could be cable. Maybe it’s just antenna.”

“What’s an antenna?”

“I’m gonna start unloading. You helping?”

Charlie shook his head. “I’m figuring out the channels.”

Any other time she would have insisted he pitch in, but he was happy. His instant acceptance of their new, if temporary, home

had so exceeded her expectations that she didn’t want to be a buzzkill.

She stepped out, descended the three steps from the porch, and happened to look toward the road. She hadn’t seen any other

traffic since their arrival. Not a car, not a truck, not so much as a motorcycle, and that was fine by her.

Across the road was a white story-and-a half house in what Annie believed was modeled on the Arts and Crafts style, with its

broad porch pillars supporting an overhanging roof.

There was an old woman sitting on that porch in an oversized wicker chair. Annie was guessing she was maybe in her eighties,

thin, with silver hair pulled back tightly. She peered in Annie’s direction through thick-framed round glasses. On a small

table next to her sat a cup of coffee or tea or, who knew, maybe something a little stronger.

Annie figured it was never too soon to introduce herself. This wasn’t New York, after all, where you could live next door

to someone for years and never know their name. Time to make more of an effort.

But when she raised her hand in a friendly wave, the woman did not respond. Annie surmised those glasses she was wearing weren’t

for distance, so she strolled down to the foot of the driveway and called out, “Hello! My name’s Annie and my son and I are

taking the house for the summer and I just wanted to say—”

But the woman was putting her hands on the arms of the chair, slowly pushing herself up, and turning her back to Annie. She went inside and closed the door with enough force that Annie could hear it from across the road.

She stood there a moment, slightly dumbstruck, then shrugged and turned around to start unpacking, thinking maybe it would

be easier to get used to her new surroundings than she might have first thought.

“Just like New York,” she said under her breath.