At one point, she thought maybe she’d been spotted, recognized, despite the steps she had taken. As she was passing by the meat counter, a man, shopping alone, attempted to engage her in conversation. He was probably fifty, gray hair, tweed sport jacket, white shirt with a button-down collar. Handsome and, she was betting, divorced or widowed, because he was clearly hitting on her.
They were almost shoulder to shoulder when he picked up a roast wrapped in cellophane and said, “How long would you cook something like this?”
Trying to strike up a conversation.
“I’ve no idea,” she said. “I don’t eat meat.”
Not the best comeback, considering she had already dropped a small package of ground beef into her cart. The man noticed, and said, “Well, you might want to put that back, then.”
She ignored him and quickly pushed the cart farther up the aisle, pretty sure she heard him mutter, “Bitch,” under his breath.
As she went down the aisle stocked with multiple varieties of potato chips and other snacks, she thought one woman had given her a second look, but then convinced herself that she was being paranoid. It wasn’t like anyone had stopped her and said, “Hey, is that you?”
She was starting to wonder whether this shopping excursion had been such a good idea, but she’d really believed it necessary. Anyway, by this point she thought she had enough in the cart, and headed for the row of checkouts. She’d bought half a dozen too many items to qualify for the express line, and wondered whether to put a few things back. But in the time it would take to return them, she might as well go to one of the regular checkouts.
“You need bags?” the hefty woman at the register asked.
She nodded.
“You got one of our points cards?”
“I’m sorry?”
“A points card.”
“No, no, I don’t have one of those.”
When the groceries were bagged and in her cart, the cashier said the total was fifty-five dollars and twenty-nine cents.
“How you paying?”
The woman reached into her purse and brought out three twenties. “Cash,” she said.
“Okey dokey,” the cashier said.
The woman had her hands on the cart and was turning it around to point it toward the exit when the cashier said, “Lady, your change?”
She’d been so distracted, she hadn’t thought to wait for it. She held out her hand, took the money, and dumped it into her purse.
She wheeled the cart out into the parking lot and opened the tailgate on a black, mid-2000s Volvo station wagon. She put the bags in, closed the tailgate. Affixed to it was a license plate with letter and numbers smeared with enough dirt and grime as to be illegible.
She got behind the wheel and waited the better part of a minute for other cars to pass before she backed out. Given that it was a Saturday morning, when a lot of people did their week’s shopping, the parking lot was busy.
“Don’t have a fender bender,” she said to herself. That was the last thing she needed.
Once she was out of the lot, she headed across town into one of Milford’s west end neighborhoods.
She put on her blinker when she saw the Mulberry Street sign and turned down it. There was a lot of activity in the neighborhood today. Being the second of April — one day too late for April fool’s, she thought grimly — many homeowners were engaged in yard cleanup. Raking leftover debris from the fall before, jamming it into paper recycling bags. Men wielding leaf blowers that made as much racket as a low-flying jet. A woman ran alongside a girl, no more than five years old, as she learned to ride a bicycle. Two other women stood at the end of a driveway, one of them still in pajamas and a housecoat, each holding a mug and chatting.
What a nice neighborhood, the woman in the Volvo thought. Like something out of one of those 1950s TV shows. Not that she was old enough to have seen them when they first ran, but hey, was that June Cleaver over there, bringing a tall glass of lemonade out to Ward? Was that young Opie running past with a slingshot sticking out of his back pocket?
To think that something so horrible could happen on a street such as this.
Oh, there it was. Her destination was just up ahead.
She put her blinker on again, waited for a kid on one of those motorized skateboards to whiz past, then steered the Volvo into a driveway. She noticed that at the house next door, a man was sweeping the steps of his front porch. She put the car into park, got out, and went around back to raise the tailgate. She grabbed two bags, came around the side of the car, leaving the tailgate open, and it was at this point that she actually gazed upon the house.
It was, clearly, a new build, judging by the architectural style. Sharp angles, huge panes of glass. Solar panels built into the roof. A modern, contemporary design.
The woman stopped, as though she’d bumped into an invisible wall.
“What...”
The man sweeping his porch glanced over in her direction.
The woman turned her head to look at the house to the left, then the house to the right, as though confirming to herself that she was in the right place. Finally she focused on the number affixed to the door of the house she stood before.
Thirty-six.
“Where...”
She dropped her groceries to the ground. A carton of eggs toppled from one, the lid popping open and a single egg shattering onto the driveway.
“Where is my house?” she said aloud. “Where the hell is my house?”
The front door opened and a teenage girl with pink highlights in her hair and wearing workout sweats poked her head out. “Can I help you?” she said.
“Where’s my house?” she cried, a frightened edge in her voice. “An old house. Red brick. A porch, a railing. Where the hell is it?”
The man next door took several steps in her direction.
The girl said, “Uh, I think maybe you’ve got the wrong place?”
“Thirty-six,” the woman said.
“Yeah, that’s right. But maybe you’ve got the wrong street?”
“Thirty-six Mulberry,” the woman said. “This is thirty-six Mulberry.”
“Yeah,” the girl said slowly.
“This is all wrong. This house doesn’t belong here. There’s supposed to be an old house here. With... with red brick and a porch, that kind of sagged. My house. It was right here. Right here! How does a house just disappear?”
“Yeah, well, that house you’re talking about? They tore that down like three years ago and my parents built this one. Did you say your house?”
“This is not right,” the woman said.
The girl shrugged and went back inside, leaving the woman standing there, staring open-mouthed at the three-year-old home.
“This is not happening,” she said.
The man with the broom was standing at the property line now. He studied the woman, narrowing his eyes as if trying to improve his focus, like maybe he didn’t believe what he was seeing and needed to be sure.
“Brie?” he asked.
The woman glanced in his direction, her face blank.
“Jesus, Brie, is it you?” he said.
Suddenly the woman got back into her car, keyed the ignition, and backed out of the drive, crushing the remaining eggs with the front wheels as she turned, the tailgate still in the raised position. The car’s transmission whirred noisily as the car bounced into the street, narrowly missing the kid on the motorized skateboard making a return trip.
The Volvo’s brakes squealed as the car came to an abrupt halt. It sat there for half a second while the woman put it into drive, then took off down the street, the man with the broom watching it speed away.