SEPTEMBER
CHAPTER ONE
It all started that brilliantly sunny Thursday morning, with Janine and her gossip.
As the familiar green minivan cruised around the bend in the road, Annie considered flattening herself against the Jensens’ hedges. She truly appreciated Janine and everything that she did for the neighborhood, but sometimes, especially first thing in the morning, the woman could be a lot.
Like how now, Janine had pulled over to the side of the road with a screech, zipped down her window, leaned out her head, and excitedly flapped her hands in front of her face, like she’d taken a bite of a scalding-hot breakfast sandwich.
Gossip, Annie suspected, as she tugged the dog’s leash to coax her over to Janine’s car. Or worse, bragging.
Janine’s daughter Katie was always achieving things, which was wonderful. In theory, Annie rooted for Katie—for all children—to succeed, but something about Janine’s presentation always caused a flash of panic within Annie: Should Hank and Laurel be composing oboe concertos? Why haven’t they written cookbooks for charity?
Annie would have to remind herself that Laurel’s grades were excellent, that Hank was a joy, that both were curious and kind people, and that people who bragged about their children were usually overcompensating for something.
“Did you hear about the vandal?” Janine asked. Her face was pink with excitement and there was a halo of frizz around her blond ringlets.
“The what?”
“Read your texts, Annie. Someone spray-painted the street sign on Canyon Road, right by your house. It now says SLOW CHILDREN PEE.”
Annie swallowed her laugh and matched Janine’s frown. Janine leaned further out of her car window.
“The Gleasons claim he also yanked the windshield wipers off their son’s van, although honestly that thing is in such bad shape, I’m not entirely convinced it even had wipers before. Anyway. You fixed your conflict for tonight?”
There had been minor drama when Sandstone K-8 had scheduled its annual blood drive on the same night as the September book club meeting. Because the eighth graders handed out juice to the donors, Laurel’s attendance was mandatory.
“Mike’s rearranged his schedule to take the kids,” Annie said. Not like anyone will be eating at the restaurant anyway, he’d said glumly.
Janine gave a satisfied nod. “Until tonight then.” She blew an aggressive kiss in Annie’s direction. “Mwah!”
As she zoomed off, Janine’s voice trailed out the open window, “Remember to park in your garage, Annie!”
Annie and Mike had the only one-car garage in all of Cottonwood Estates: someone was always going to have to park outside.
As she continued uphill, Annie tried to retrieve the vague feeling of contentment she’d been enjoying before Janine appeared. Her daily walks were meditative and, if Annie was honest, less for the dog than for her.
She’d started the habit almost fourteen years before, when Laurel was a newborn. At first, the four-mile loop around her neighborhood had taken Annie hours to complete. Her entire existence had felt wispy and unfamiliar back then, and some days the sound of her sneakers slapping on concrete seemed the sole proof that Annie was real.
(Sole proof! Back then she wouldn’t have had the brain power to catch the pun.)
What had she been thinking about before Janine’s announcement?
Not that.
Janine, Janine, the Cottonwood Queen, May I recommend a little less caffeine? Annie wished she could take credit for the couplet, but Deb Gallegos had come up with it a few years back at a barbecue. Janine had laughed harder than anyone.
The neighborhood would probably be up in arms about the graffiti; it took effort to maintain the safe, deceptively low-key feeling that Cottonwood Estates cultivated, and occasionally, people cracked under the pressure of doing so. Last Memorial Day weekend, all hell had broken loose after the McNeils’ friends parked their RV on the street for three days. There had been months of angry memos and name-calling until an emergency meeting amended the neighborhood bylaws to ensure such a blight would never again stain the pristine lawns of Cottonwood Estates, at least for no more than twenty-four consecutive hours.
Annie, who had grown up in a very different kind of neighborhood—on the wrong side of Highway Five—recognized that her neighbors could be a little precious.
They were good, generous people, but most of them didn’t understand that there were far worse things in life than a little graffiti.
Annie did.
Lena Meeker did, too.
Annie had almost reached Lena Meeker’s house at the top of the hill. She still—even now—held her breath when she walked by, like a child going past a graveyard.
The first time Annie had been inside was for a swim-team dinner when she was around fifteen, only a few years older than Laurel now. The Meekers had hosted even though their daughter, Rachel, was young and relatively new to the team, because that was the kind of thing they did.
A teammate’s father had driven a group of them over and after he’d pulled into the driveway, he had squinted and tilted his head against the windshield.
“Is this a resort?” he’d asked.
The house was sprawling elegance, wood and glass, with oversized windows to capture the view. Inside, Annie had leaned her forehead to the glass and looked west. No other houses were visible, just the shimmering wave of aspen leaves on the hills, the snowcapped purple Rockies behind them.
Better than a postcard, Annie had thought.
Now, she walked quickly past the low garden fence separating Lena’s yard from the road. The giant cottonwood tree in the back corner of her lot was the development’s namesake, and every spring, it snowed down fluffy cotton seeds on the neighborhood below.
A few months after they’d moved in, Mike and Annie had, one mild spring afternoon, unfolded aluminum beach chairs in their small backyard. While Laurel napped inside, they’d brought out mugs of lemonade and rested their feet in the grass. For a brief moment, everything finally felt normal.
But then the wind picked up and cottonwood tufts—so many, too many to count—showered down on them with the intensity of a summer squall. Annie had known exactly where they’d come from, and she’d been unable to stop sobbing.
It had taken time and therapy and antidepressants for Annie to pull herself back from the brink and begin to function. But she had. In the past thirteen years, Annie had gotten her master’s, they’d had Hank, she’d gotten a dream job at Sandstone.
Copyright © 2021 by L. Alison Heller