“How are your neighbors?” I ask.
“Next door?” she asks, looking over at the house where the girl has gone inside. “A really nice family. They had me over for dinner last week. It’s just the parents and their daughter. She’s your age.”
I go into the house, and Aunt Bree nods ahead of us. “The kitchen is in the back. Living room over here, dining room, and office on the other side. Bathroom down the hall. My bedroom, another bathroom, and a room I haven’t come up with an identity for are on the middle floor. Come on up, and I’ll show you your room. I brought your stuff up there already.”
“You didn’t have to do that. I could have gotten it.”
“I know. I just wanted it to feel like home when you got here,” she shrugs.
The second flight of steps is shorter, curving up behind a door and ending on a landing that feeds out into a room that looks like it was once the attic of the house. I smile and gesture toward one of the two windows facing each other from opposite sides of the room.
“The lace curtains are a nice touch,” I grin.
Bree rolls her eyes as she tosses my backpack onto the bed pushed up against one wall.
“They were what I had on hand. I’ll change them out for you,” she says.
I laugh. “It’s fine.”
“There’s a bathroom over here. It’s not very big, but it has all the necessities. The door over there leads to a storage area. There’s some Christmas stuff and a few old boxes in there, but there’s room if you have something you want to stash away.”
“This is great. Thank you, Aunt Bree,” I say, mostly to stop her. She needs to calm down.
She nods. “I’ll let you settle in. Come on down when you’re ready. I’m going to order pizza, and we’ll catch up.”
She closes the door behind her, and I look at the collection of boxes on the floor. It was some of what I sent, but not everything. Walking over to one of the windows, I push back the lace curtain and look outside. A window lower down on the house next door lets me peer into a bedroom. Sheer curtains do little to conceal the pink and white bed and fluffy white rug inside. A massive scrolled mirror above the dresser reflects the girl I saw walking out of the car. She stands in front of it, sweeping a mane of loose curls the color of molten copper up into a ponytail.
The heavy coat she was wearing is gone, and she’s changed from the jeans she had on before to a pair of stretchy pink pants and a matching hooded sweatshirt. She looks designed to accessorize the room. She pauses, and her hands fall away from her hair, lightly grazing her sides as they lower down.
“Tal? What do you want on your pizza?”
I let the curtain fall back into place and head downstairs to where Bree leans against the doorframe of the kitchen with the phone perched on her shoulder, waiting to order dinner.
3
Wren
The sound of a delivery truck on the street isn’t something I’m used to hearing just after the sun comes up on a Saturday morning. I’m awake but haven’t gotten out of the cozy recesses of my bed. I’m jostled up by the squealing of brakes desperate to stop the heavy vehicle from careening the rest of the way down the street and ending up in the swamp beyond the cul-de-sac.
Throwing a bathrobe around me, I head downstairs. It’s not unusual for me to be the first one out of bed in the morning, and this one’s no exception. I start the coffee, and while it’s brewing, head to the window to see why the truck is at the house next door.
It only takes a few seconds for my father to come shuffling into the kitchen, which means it wasn’t the smell of the coffee that lured him out of bed.
“Is that a truck?” he asks in a groggy voice.
“Yes. It’s at the house next door,” I nod.
“This early in the morning?”
“Evidently.”
My mother comes into the room in her favorite threadbare blue bathrobe, her hair still wrapped around pink foam curlers she refuses to trade-in for any number of electric hair styling devices.
“Marjorie, there’s a delivery truck at the house next door,” my father says. “Why?”
She laughs and kisses him before accepting the mug of coffee I hold out to her.
“It’s probably another delivery for Bree’s nephew. I told you she mentioned he was going to be staying with her for the rest of the school year.”
My father nods. “That’s right, you did. I just don’t understand why it has to be so early.”
“I’m sure they won’t be here for long. Why don’t you go on back upstairs and lay down?”
My father doesn’t protest. During the week, he is always busy. If he’s not at work, he’s doing something around the house or at any number of the volunteer positions we do together. Saturday is his morning to catch up on all the sleep he doesn’t get the other days. Accepting another kiss from my mother, he makes his way back up to the bedroom.
“Bree’s nephew is staying with her?” I ask. My mind goes back to yesterday and a fleeting glimpse of a boy about my age in the front yard when Isaiah brought me home from theater rehearsal after school.
“She said he’s visiting from Atlanta, which is where she’s from originally. He’s her older sister’s son. He’s a senior, too.”
“Why is he coming in the middle of the year? School is going to be over in just a few months. Wouldn’t he want to finish his senior year at home?”
“She didn’t tell me much. Just that he was having some trouble, and she thought he’d do better here with her.”
“What kind of trouble?” I frown.
“I don’t know, Wren. I barely know the woman. She didn’t pour her soul out to me over cinnamon rolls. She just mentioned Talon was dealing with some things back home and is going to finish the school year up here. And from the deliveries she’s gotten, he’s making himself right at home.”
She takes her coffee and heads back upstairs to the bedroom so she can drink it while reading in bed next to my father as he sleeps. Turning my attention back to the window, I notice a figure in a black coat standing with his back to my house, watching something get unloaded from the back of the truck. It will probably leave soon, which means I could go back to bed. But I feel strangely awake. I head back to my bedroom and get dressed. My time slot volunteering at the animal shelter isn’t for another few hours, but I could go early and take some of the pressure off the morning staff.
The delivery truck is gone by the time I’m bundled up and heading out of the house. But the figure is still there. Only now, the long black coat is draped over the edge of the porch, and the boy I saw yesterday is crouched at the side of a motorcycle, meticulously rubbing a blue microfiber cloth to make the black body of the bike gleam. He catches me staring at him.
“Have you never seen one before?” he asks.
I’m taken aback by the arrogance in his voice, but something draws me across the yard toward him. His intensely blue eyes flicker up to me again.
“I’ve never seen one come out of the back of a delivery truck at the crack of dawn,” I say.
“What’s wrong? Didn’t get enough beauty sleep? Looks like you need it. The company was meant to deliver it yesterday. They didn’t, so they rectified their mistake,” he says.