assholes if they actually call “the help” by their first name. “Jane is like family,” Mrs. Reed probably says to the other ladies at the country club, and they all make simpering sounds of agreement and have another Bloody Mary.
My sneakers squeak as I walk down the sidewalk, and I think of my apartment, how it’s probably leaking in that one spot in the kitchen again, the ceiling a darker, dingy gray against the rest of the dingy gray. The apartment is cheap and not in a terrible part of town, but sometimes it feels like living in a little concrete box, and no matter how much I try to dress it up with posters from Target or pretty blankets I’ve picked up from thrift stores, the gray fights back.
There isn’t any dingy gray in Thornfield Estates.
Here, the grass is green no matter the time of year, and every house has flowerpots or window boxes, or huge bushes covered in colorful flowers. The shutters are bright yellow, navy blue, deep red, emerald green. If there’s any gray at all, it’s soft and elegant—dove gray, I heard Mrs. Reed call it. There’s a constant hum of activity from lawn services, carpet cleaners, and housekeeping vans going in and out of driveways, even on a rainy day like today.
Bear stops to pee against a curb, and I use my free hand to push the hood back from my head, cold rainwater slithering down my neck as I do. The rain jacket is old, and the seam on the left side is torn, but I can’t bring myself to buy a new one. It’s an expense that doesn’t seem quite worth it, and sometimes I wonder if anyone around here would notice if an older raincoat went missing.
Too big a risk, I remind myself, but I still spend a solid two minutes imagining walking through this neighborhood in something sleek and pretty, something that doesn’t leak cold rainwater all over me. Something like the Burberry jacket Mrs. Clark had hanging up by the door last week.
Don’t even think about it.
So instead, I think about the diamond earrings at Mrs. Reed’s, how if both went missing, well, that looks suspicious, but one? One could’ve fallen off the table. Could be pressed into the carpet at the country club. Could be loose in a pocket somewhere.
Bear stops to smell another mailbox, but I pull him on, making my way toward my favorite house.
It’s at the end of a dead-end street, set back farther from the road than the others, and it’s one of the few that doesn’t seem to have a steady stream of people going in and out. The yard is just as green as the other lawns in the neighborhood, but shaggier, and the pretty purple bushes that bloom out front have climbed too high, blocking off windows on the first floor.
It’s the biggest house in the neighborhood, rising taller, two massive wings sprouting off either side, two oak trees climbing high on the front lawn. It was clearly older than the other homes in the neighborhood, probably the first house ever built here.
The sameness of Thornfield Estates means that eventually, all the houses blur together. I like that—a beautiful blur is better than the depressing monotony of my part of town—but there’s something about this house, all alone at the end of a cul-de-sac, that draws me back every time.
I step off the sidewalk, and into the center of the road, to get a closer look.
This part of the neighborhood is always so quiet that it doesn’t even occur to me that standing in the street might not be the safest thing to do.
I hear the car before I see it, but even then, I don’t move, and later, I’d look back at that moment and wonder if I somehow knew what was going to happen. If everything in my life had been leading me to that one spot, to that one house.
To him.
2
Almost all of the cars in Thornfield Estates are the same, some version of luxury SUV. They’re basically movable versions of the houses—notably expensive, bigger than could ever be necessary. I barely notice them anymore, just register them as champagne or midnight-blue tanks that roll through the streets regularly.
The car that comes flying out of the driveway of my favorite house isn’t an SUV, though. It’s a sports car, an older one with a growling engine, and candy-apple red, bright as a wound against the gray day.