Starter House A Novel Read Online Free Page A

glass down hard in surprise, and tea spilled onto the bright tabletop. “You’ve seen him?” he said.
    “You know the one I mean?” Lacey was disappointed; if Harry knew the child so well, he must live nearby and be a problem in the neighborhood.
    “Children on bicycles, they come, they go. . . .” He busied himself with a napkin and wouldn’t meet her eyes.
    She leaned forward across the table. “Does he live on the street?”
    Long after the table was dry, Harry kept rubbing the napkin in circles, staring at his hands. At last, he looked across the table, but his eyes were fixed on Lacey’s glass, not her face. “No. He’s never shown himself to me.”
    Lacey had seen this kind of evasion when she asked other teachers about certain children. If the child’s first-grade teacher said, I didn’t know him well or he’s probably changed since then, she knew she had trouble. Refusal to answer was the answer. “Thanks for the tea,” she said. She’d watch for this neighbor boy and get to know him; trouble was her specialty. “I’d better get back. Eric will be home soon.” Maybe—she hoped.
    “I’m thinking, CarolAnna changed the locks, but did she get the back door?” He opened a drawer next to his sink. “Key, key. Let’s see if this works.”
    She followed him out the back door, looking over her shoulder for one last glimpse of his sister, Dora, with her violin in the front room, her predecessor in the house. They walked between the two Cape Cods, underneath the maple where no grass grew. New mulch left a sulfured scent in the evening air. The back lawn was mowed in diagonals down to the row of cypresses, and around the brick patio the sentry boxwoods stood neat and tight. Lacey knew that Harry had been maintaining the Miszlaks’ yard along with his own. She hoped she and Eric would be able to keep it this nice.
    Harry offered her the brass key. “Give it a try.”
    Lacey wriggled the key into the lock. She pressed it hard, and something pushed back. Her hand jerked with a reflexive shock, as if she’d touched a centipede. She hated the touch of many-legged things, so wrong, unnatural. The key dropped to the doorstep. When she picked it up, it was warm in her hand, and it wouldn’t enter the lock at all.
    “No,” she said, suddenly furious. The whole bitter, frustrating day came down to this: the door, the key, the lock. She wasn’t about to let Eric find her waiting to be let in, like some stray. She had found this house and chosen it—it was hers . She forced the key. The lock yielded slightly, then seized and would not let the key release or turn.
    “Wait,” Harry said. “I’ll go get the WD-40.”
    It was too much. Her house had shut her out— her house, the house she had loved when it was broken and dirty—now clean and beautiful, it shut her out? No. She found a chunk of gray stone under the boxwoods and hammered the window, ignoring Harry’s protest. Her anger felt entirely reasonable to her; one way or another, she was going in. The glass clung to the frame for three seconds before releasing to shatter on the kitchen floor. She put her hand through to reach the inner lock, and something bit her—no, it was broken glass in the window frame. Blood ran down her palm from a diagonal gash, shockingly cold, as if she’d reached into a freezer and grabbed the coils. She gripped her wrist and looked at Harry, so disoriented by her own behavior that she could not imagine what to do next. And the angry thought, rooted in her mind as deeply as the baby in her body, pulsed relentlessly, My house, mine, mine .
    “Wait,” he said. “Don’t go in.” He hurried across the grass to his own back door.
    She saw a roll of paper towels on the kitchen counter, so she reached through the broken window and unlocked the door. Fat handfuls of blood spread on the newly grouted floor. They had chosen light blue tile for the floor and gray granite for the countertops. She hoped her blood wouldn’t