The Howell family moves into 104 Glover Street in Brooklyn on the Friday before Labor Day.
Overnight storms have scoured summer stagnancy from the air and the sky begs contemplation, no matter how fatigued one might be from a sleepless red-eye cross-country flight in the middle coach seat.
And so Nora pauses on the stoop with her neck arched, taking in the cloudless swath above neighboring rooftops.
As descriptions go, mere blue won’t suffice. Nor cobalt, cerulean, sapphire . . .
Crayola colors.
She closes her eyes, seeing the delicate blue blooms that grew wild in Teddy’s California garden, hearing Teddy’s voice. “These? You like these? Pick all you want. They’re an invasive species.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re insidious. They creep in and take over. I don’t know how they got here, but they don’t belong, and I can’t get rid of them.”
“But they’re so pretty,” Nora said. “What are they?”
“The botanical name is Myosotis scorpioides. Regular people call them scorpion grass. Or forget-me-nots.”
Teddy is not a regular person.
Teddy, unlike so many people in Nora’s life, is unforgettable.
And Teddy, who believes everything happens for a reason, is certain that this move, even if it’s only a temporary corporate transfer, is a dangerous mistake.
“Mom?”
Nora turns away from the forget-me-not sky.
Seventeen-year-old Stacey is crouched just inside the low iron gate beside the dog’s crate, petting him through the bars. Though she recently got contacts, she’s wearing glasses today because of the long flight. Behind the thick lenses, her brown eyes are underscored with dark circles and blinking up into the sun. Her dark hair is frizzy, bedhead-matted at the back. She’s wearing a shapeless hoodie and yoga pants that have never been worn for yoga.
“Can I walk Kato?”
Nora looks to the curb. Her square-jawed, fair-haired husband is talking to the moving van driver who’d pulled up right behind their airport taxi. Keith would say no to sending their teenage daughter out into the city alone minutes after arrival. Keith says no to a lot of things. That’s why Stacey’s asking Nora.
“Sure, go ahead. There’s a dog run that way.” She points toward Edgemont Boulevard. “In the park, three blocks down on the left.”
“Thanks.” Stacey turns to her fourteen-year-old sister perched on the bottom step, digging through her carry-on bag like she’s searching for a lifesaving serum.
Ah, a hairbrush. Same thing, in Piper’s corner of the world. She plucks it out and runs it through her hair. It’s long and straight and blond, like Nora’s. But Piper’s isn’t pulled back into a practical ponytail, and hers is natural, courtesy of Keith.
“Hey, can you bring my bag in for me while I walk Kato?” Stacey asks her.
“Don’t you want to see our new house first?”
“Nah.”
“Wait, where are you going?” Keith calls as Stacey drops a black nylon backpack beside her sister and takes off with the pug.
“To the dog run. Mom said it’s fine.”
“But—” Too late. Stacey and Kato disappear around the corner. He looks up at Nora. “What dog run?”
“There’s one in the park.”
“What park?”
“The one off Edgemont.”
“And you know this because . . .”
“Because I did my homework on the neighborhood, Keith.”
“Do you really think it’s a good idea to just let her roam around?”
“If I didn’t think it was a good idea, would I have let her go? We live here now. She’s going to be on her own in the city. Piper, too.”
“We’ve been here five minutes. What if she gets lost? Does she even know this address?”
“She has her phone. We have our phones. It’ll be fine.”
He doesn’t look convinced, but the movers are out of the van, opening the back and setting up a ramp. It won’t take long to unload. They’re only in New York for a year, and the house is fully furnished, complete with curtains, bedding, and cookware.
“Piper, come on, let’s go in,” Nora calls.
“One second.” She’s traded her hairbrush for her phone, scrolling the screen.
Keith slings his leather satchel over his shoulder and starts for the stoop, then turns back and grabs the empty dog crate. “Guess we’d better not leave anything lying around on the street. Come on, Pipe. Let’s check out the house. You’re going to love it.”
Those were the precise words Nora had said to him weeks ago when they’d flown in from LA to find a place to live.
They’d spent a fruitless day slogging in and out of a warm August rain looking at potential apartments and systematically ruled them all out. Most were too inconvenient or too small, and they couldn’t afford the ones that weren’t. Over dinner, Keith scrolled through Manhattan real estate listings, looking for something they might have missed and could see before they caught their flight home the next afternoon.
“Here, check out this one, Nora. It has outdoor space. You can have your garden.”
She peered at his screen. “That looks like a fire escape.”
“It is a fire escape. But you can put plants on it, and there’s an East River view between the buildings, see?”
“A view won’t matter to the girls as much as having a house. They aren’t used to elevators and laundry rooms and strangers on the other sides of us.”
She showed him a listing on her own phone—a bargain of a Brooklyn row house. “It has a backyard, basement, stairways, even a front porch.”
“That’s just a stoop,” Keith informed her, as if she didn’t know. “Anyway, that row house is no bargain. The rent is as high as the places we saw today.”
“Those were shoeboxes.”
“Because it was Manhattan. Trust me, you don’t want to live in a borough.”
“Trust me—I don’t want to live in a shoebox. I guess we’d better check out the suburbs. New Jersey, or Connecticut, maybe—”
“No way. We’re moving to New York to live in New York.”
“Brooklyn is New York.” Seeing him waver, she touched his arm. “Come on, Keith. We need to find something if we’re going to do this. Let’s check out the house. You’re going to love it.”
“I doubt that.”
“Please?”
“Fine, Goldilocks. Guess it can’t hurt to look.”
Oh, but it could.
The next day, they took a cab to 104 Glover, the second address from the corner on a block lined with tidy and welcoming redbrick nineteenth-century row houses. All had three tall windows on the top floor; two alongside the front door a level above the street, and smaller, iron-barred basement windows. All had corniced roofs and stone stoops atop twelve steep stairs bordered by ornate black grillwork. They were indistinguishable from each other save a few small details. At 104, the white trim was freshly painted and the stone planters flanking the bottom step were spiked with red fountain grass and trailing blue lobelia.
The property manager, Deborah, greeted them with a warning that it was brand-new to the rental market and they’d have to jump on it if they wanted it. Nora already knew that she did, but she wanted Keith to want it, too. She needed him to want it.
After Deborah’s tour and some wheedling on Nora’s part, he grudgingly agreed.
Flash forward a month and he’s acting as though it was all his idea, eager to show off the house to Piper, hustling her along as she dallies over texts to her friends back home.
“They’re not even awake at this hour, Pipe! Let’s go!”
“Okay, okay, just let me send this last one, Dad!” She presses a button, tucks the phone away, and picks up her own bag, then her sister’s, with a grunt. “What’s in here, boulders?”
“Books,” Nora tells her, “and I’m sure they’re all about Lizzie Borden. That’s her latest thing.”
Keith takes the heavy bag from Piper. “You know Stacey. She’s always obsessed over one thing or another. Too bad it’s never anything like—I don’t know—kittens, baking, yoga . . .”
“Who’s Lizzie Borden?”
Keith answers with a casual shrug. “Axe murderess who killed her parents back in the 1800s.”
“Ew. Why does Stacey like gory death stuff?”
“A lot of people are interested in true crime,” Nora points out.
“Well, I’m not.”
Piper is such an agreeable teenager, just as she was an easy baby, toddler, and child.
She was spared colic, terrible twos and threes, tantrums, baby fat, acne, adolescent angst, bullying. Spared everything that tormented her sister, and thus Keith and Nora, as they saw their firstborn through each stage. By the time Stacey was in preschool, they’d revised their plan to have a large family. Two children would be more than enough, and parenting was so all-consuming that Nora stopped toying with the idea of eventually going back to work.
They’re in the homestretch now. Next year at this time, Stacey will be preparing to head off to college. Until then, Nora hopes that things will go better for her here in New York than back in California; that she’ll find friends and fit in.
For her sake, she assures herself. Not for mine.
“Got the key, Nora?”
“Right here.” Her hand trembles as she fits it into the lock and turns it.
She opens the door, steps over the threshold, and takes a deep breath scented with furniture polish and something vaguely fruity.
The house is dim and shadowed, tall windows shrouded in shades and draperies. She feels along the wall beside the door, presses an old-fashioned button switch, and light floods from the vintage fixture high overhead.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Keith asks Piper.
She takes in the ornate oak staircase, polished hardwoods, and antique furniture, and points at a wall niche, where a glass case holds a coppery black orb the size of a cantaloupe. “What’s that?”
“Revolutionary War cannonball. It was dug up right here in the backyard. That doesn’t happen in California, right?”
“I guess not. What’s that?” She’s zeroed in on the cast-iron radiator tucked alongside the steep staircase, and Keith explains that it will heat the house when the weather cools.
Piper indicates the sepia Victorian family portrait on the wall above the stairs. “Who are they?”
“They lived here back in the olden days. See the carved mantel behind them? It’s the same one that’s on the living room fireplace. Here, I’ll show you.”
Keith leads Piper through the archway like a listing agent.
Remembering how reluctant he’d been to even consider this house, Nora marvels at his proprietary air now. She might find it sweet, or amusing, if she weren’t so numb.
The move was exhausting, and she hasn’t slept in so long, and . . .
And now that they’re here, emotion is swelling in her throat, threatening to spill over.
She closes her eyes.
Just breathe. It’s going to be good here. Everything’s going to be all right now.
When she opens her eyes, she spots the fruity scent’s source: a vase filled with spiky bright red blooms on the marble console table by the door.
Salvia elegans—pineapple sage.
“It symbolizes healing,” Teddy’s voice whispers in her head.
Nora smiles. It’s a perfect welcoming touch for their new lives in the perfect house for a perfect family . . .
On the surface, anyway.
Let the healing begin.
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