It was still light out by the time the family finished packing the house up. They gathered the three dogs and, with some water and biscuits, put them into the gray van with Albert, Billy, and Elias. As Francine and Patrick checked out the living room, making sure they had left nothing behind, Francine felt a pang of regret. She had grown accustomed to sleeping on the comfortable king-size bed, looking out at the small apples dangling from the tree each morning. But she knew, too, that there was a chance the cops would find out about the accident ten years ago, how it was Albert driving his friend’s tow truck with the sign MERCURY on it, how he had hit the old guy and just kept going. It all spelled nothing but trouble.
Francine felt an anger churn deep inside her, and she held back from screaming. To think that, after all these years, that accident had come back to haunt them! She’d had a bad feeling about their return, but it wasn’t bad enough to stop them from leaving Norcross. And now she was going back. Francine knew that the death of a dog wasn’t such a big thing, not enough to get Elias any real time. But the accident ten years ago, when Albert had borrowed his friend’s tow truck just to make a few extra bucks, just might be the thing to put Albert away for years. What if the driver had been hurt? Or worse yet, killed? Albert might not see Billy again until he was a grown man. Police had records about such things, and Francine wasn’t taking any chances.
But Patrick was even angrier than she was, mad about the whole thing. Mad about the dog who had never done nothing to nobody, but mostly mad about having to move yet again, so mad that just before he closed the door, he casually dropped his cigarette, the tip still glowing, onto the carpet in front of where the TV used to be. This time, it really did light something; this time, the lie became truth.
The orange spark tested the air a bit before gaining courage, and, seconds later, the points of light grew into flames that raced in a line across the carpet toward the wall separating the living room from the kitchen, where, engulfing the wall, they shot straight up toward the white ceiling. Francine slammed the front door shut.
Francine settled into the black van next to Albert just as the tip of darkness came into view. That was when she saw her. Her arms were crossed as she stood on the corner, the old woman called Florrie who would take the check from Francine’s hand precisely on the first of each month. They were breaking the lease, only by a couple of months, but so what? Francine fixed her eyes on the woman, who defiantly glared back at her, a strand of her steely gray hair waving in the wind. And in that moment, seeing her there, Francine knew that it was she who had called the police. The stuck-up bitch.
Finally, after about an hour into their travels south, Patrick turned the vehicle onto a rural road, hugging the water, opening onto a void, nothing but wide-open space in the distance.
Francine relaxed, letting her head fall back as she closed her eyes and tried to sleep. Someday, she thought, just before dozing off, someday I’m gonna get that farm.
PART V
AN OPEN DOOR
TWENTY-SEVEN
Florrie, 2010
She could hardly be called a woman, she appeared so young. The girl was standing at the front door, her fifth and last appointment of the day. She was dressed in navy-blue tapered cotton pants and a white button-down shirt with red swirls and a raised collar. Of tall stature, like Florrie herself, she had a nervous smile plastered to her face. Florrie thought her ordinary looking at first, but then as the guest wiped a stray hair off her forehead and entered the home with the older woman following behind, Florrie noticed something about her that was indeed unusual. Her hair, a long silky copper brown, half of it fastened in the back by a turquoise tortoiseshell comb, reached down past her hips.
As Florrie examined her guest, the girl ignored her and turned her head slowly, taking in the narrow hallway with its lone bulb at the ceiling, the square-shaped living room with its sparse furnishings, the off-white leather couch, the glass-topped coffee table on which rested a slender white vase with a single purple orchid, the recessed lights, even the linear molding at the periphery of the white ceiling.
How odd, Florrie thought, that this guest was so concerned about each detail. The others, young couples with families, all prospective buyers sent by a Realtor, no longer renters, had breezed through the home, counting bedrooms, a few flushing toilets. But this woman, stopping next to the coffee table, didn’t seem so eager to explore the rest of the house. Her long neck stretched as she took in each intricate detail.
“Would you like to see the kitchen and—”
The girl/woman—Florrie remembered her name, Mrs. Landau—put out the palm of her hand, stopping her in midsentence.