He rolls down the window, braking.
That’s why he recognized the address. Old Wallace, the walking skeleton who rarely leaves his home.
In middle school, James and his friends would ride their bicycles here to throw pebbles at his windows. The curtains were always drawn, but they were terrified of a gaunt, pale face popping up behind one of the pollen-dusted panes. It never happened.
In retrospect, James shouldn’t have been scared.Oldwas unfair for a man probably in his late thirties. And a man who had been through so much.
One unfortunate night twenty-two years ago, a faulty wire caught fire at 23 Blackwood Road. Within minutes, both stories were engulfed. Rumor spread quick. By the end of the night, everyone heard that the fire had taken two lives. Wallace Quill’s wife and daughter were never seen again.
Then he rebuilt an exact replica of his historic home, painting it the same forest green. Afterward, he mostly disappeared. No one saw him at festivals or in the bookstore. Only at Tim’s Market, every other Tuesday for groceries, though he moved like a ghost and never spoke. Rumors circulated that, along with his wife and baby, the smoke from the house fire had killed his vocal cords.
Did James mishear Nelle yesterday? No, without a doubt she said 23 Blackwood Road. Maybe Wallace moved. Or died. Then again, heisn’tthatold, and surely word would have traveled through town if he had left.
Guess I’ll find out.James pulls into the gravel driveway.
A green colonial home peeks through the pine trees, camouflaged by the forest. Chopped wood sits stacked outside, half covered by a red tarp. A porch wraps the house, topped with a tin roof that reflects the sun, and a brick chimney. The only car is a 2004 Jeep beneath a droopy willow.
James swats through clouds of gnats and climbs the porch steps. The dead light by the front door is spotted with moths. His heart pounds, blood thrumming like static in his ears. All day, he has imagined this moment. What he will say. How she will respond.
Taking a deep breath to cool his wildfire nerves, James raises his fist and knocks.
Nelle forgets her unfinished oatmeal and the cut across her palm. She squints to make out the silhouette beyond the door, but the window is fogged glass, and all she can see is a dark head of hair. In her two decades, they haveneverhad a visitor. Her throat tightens.
“Who’s that?” Father calls from his office.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I can’t see.”
Then it clicks. Dark hair, broad shoulders, the only person she has ever given her address to. The boy she talked to on the square. The boy she hasn’t stopped thinking about since.James.
Father locks his study door behind him and grumbles across the kitchen, past the table, to the front door—
“Wait,” Nelle blurts.
She wishes more than ever to go whereshewants to go.Whenshe wants to go. Right now, she would go lock herself in her room for a week. Because when Father opens that door, when he sees James on theother side and learns that Nelle not only spent hours with a boy, but that she gave him theiraddress...
She shudders, glued to her seat.
Father’s ice-cold eyes narrow in suspicion.
The door screeches open, and James’s smile drops on the other side.
Old Wallace Quill’s black hair is combed behind his ears, his beard untrimmed, his irises dark like chunks of coal. Behind him, Nelle sits at the kitchen table, unnaturally pale, holding a spoon.
“Who are you?” Wallace Quill demands.
James extends his hand. Up close, Quill has a disturbing stare, though nothing else about him seems exceptionally off. But this is not the playful, intelligent Nelle he had the pleasure of being enchanted by last night.
“Hi, sir,” James says. “Nice to meet you. I’m James. I met Nelle the other night at the square.”
Wallace doesn’t take James’s hand. He swivels slowly to Nelle. She is trembling—silent, meek, forcing herself not to meet his stare—like a skeleton hung in the wind.
“You met herwhen?” he asks.
James isn’t sure if Quill’s grin is meant to be inviting or terrifying. “Yesterday at the square. At the fireworks show. Sir.”
“Thanks for stopping by, but my daughter is busy with homework right now. Maybe another time.”
“Oh, okay,” James says. He waves to her as the door eases shut in his face. “See you later! And nice to meet you, uh, Mr. Wallace.”
