She stands up, slowly slips her jacket back on. Sam follows her toward the door, so content at the sight of his wife walking in front of him through the restaurant that he barely registers the seductive smile from the pretty blonde at the podium as he passes. He has no need to notice things like that anymore. He’s a changed man.
No, really.
Chapter 2
I wake up hot, the sun glaring at me through the window, a warm square of light aiming right for my eyes. There are footsteps coming up the driveway, and I sit up, seeing a woman in a flimsy blue sundress and two-inch sandals walk decisively past the porch, down the stone path lined with zinnias I planted, to the door to Sam’s office on the garden level. It takes me a minute to reorient myself and remember I’m not in my one-bedroom apartment in the city but here, waking up bleary-eyed from a nap in Chestnut Hill, New York, Sam at work downstairs.
I check my watch—4:16 p.m.—and ease off the couch, staying low as I approach the window and study her, Sam’s last patient of the day. Late forties. Bag is genuine leather. Blowout is recent.
And now it’s time for everyone’s favorite game: Guess the patient’s problems!
Two tween daughters, contemplating a divorce and a real estate license.
Wrong! A pediatrician, staring down menopause, still trying to figure out her own mother.
A steady buzz unlocks the door from the inside. She enters, and I wait for the slam of the outside door, imagining her stepping into his waiting room. I can picture it perfectly: Sam’s in his office with the door closed. She’ll take a seat on one of the four white leather chairs, place her bag on the glass coffee table next to the two neat stacks of In Touch and the New Yorker. （“I’ll know everything I need by which one they pick,” Sam joked when the first issues arrived in the mailbox.） There’s a Nespresso machine on a side table; small glass jars hold tea bags and both brown and white sugar. She’ll be wondering if she has time to make a cup of Earl Grey when Sam opens his office door, four thirty on the dot.
I asked him once what he and his patients talk about downstairs—them on the soft beige couch, him on the expensive leather chair he special-ordered from some Scandinavian company with a weird name. “Come on, just one,” I teased. It was happy hour, and I’d mixed us some drinks. “What sort of problems are the rich ladies of Chestnut Hill grappling with?”
He laughed. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s confidential.”
I linger at the window, taking in the front yard and manicured row of hedges, shielding the house from the street. My house, the Lawrence House, the noble Victorian three miles from the center of town, with a steeply pitched roof and wraparound porch. It’s one of just two houses here on Cherry Lane, accessible via a narrow wooden bridge that crosses the wide creek running along the side of the house, no official name assigned to it on any map I’ve seen.
It was built in 1854 by the town’s founding family—five generations of millionaires hatched right here in this house, with its grand living room, its formal dining room, its library behind a pair of pocket doors—perhaps my favorite spot in the house. It has custom-built mahogany bookshelves that reach the ceiling, the highest accessible via a wooden ladder on a rail. Such a far cry from the last place I lived: a one-bedroom apartment above the Happy Chinese takeout restaurant on Broadway, the pink neon sign blinking on and off outside my window every night.
I head toward the stairs, trailing my fingers along the original oak banister, counting my steps—twelve to the top, eight down the hall, past three spare bedrooms to the master. In the adjoining bathroom, I step into the shower and turn on the water, jolting the old pipes awake, my spirits rising. Forty-five minutes until happy hour, the highlight of my day. One stiff drink on the porch when Sam’s done with work—tonight it’s vodka and lemonade, freshly squeezed from eight of the best lemons I could dig out of the sticky bin at Farrell’s, Chestnut Hill’s Most Pitiful Grocery Store.
Sam will ask what I did all day, coaxing out the details, forcing me to lie （a homemade bisque for lunch and a bike ride into town!）， too self-conscious to admit the truth （an hour shopping at Amazon and another three leaving product reviews!）。 It’s not like I have a lot of other choices. I am a list person, and I’ve been keeping a running inventory.
Ways to spend my days in Chestnut Hill: A List
Improve my Amazon rank. I am the twenty-ninth-ranked reviewer on Amazon, thankyouverymuch. （I’m not bragging, that’s my user name.） Neck and neck with Lola from Pensacola, a woman I’m convinced is actually midwestern.