23 May The Mossy Rocks and the Block Party

From the first time I laid eyes on them, the Wylie twins creeped me out.

I watched, through the second-floor window of what had once been my husband’s office, as a U-Haul parked outside what had, for the last eight months, been the empty house next door.  A burly pair of movers team-lifted furniture while a tiny woman and a tall, rotund man sauntered back and forth with cardboard boxes.

The twins, a matching set of school-aged girls with identical blonde pigtails, played in the driveway, bouncing a rubber ball back and forth, seemingly unaware of anything but each other and the rhythmic, hollow thud of the ball hitting concrete.

Fitting occupants for Barb Lewis’s old house, I remember thinking.

* * * * * *

It was inevitable the twins would be sucked into the orbit of my own daughters’ social lives.  It happened, the month after the Wylies moved in, at Theo Lim’s third birthday party.

Theo lived with his parents and older sister five houses down from me.  Eight-year-old Tiffany Lim was friends with my girls, so I was duty-bound to make an appearance at Little Brother’s special day, necessitating an investment of twenty bucks for a picture book about dinosaurs, and three hours of my life pretending I was bedazzled by Katie Lim’s perfectly Instagrammable suburban life.

See: Katie’s Pinterest Board vision for her toddler’s Under the Sea-themed birthday.

A dolphin ice sculpture towered over shrimp and crabs legs, rosewater-persimmon macarons in the shape of starfish, and a bartender mixing blue margaritas.  The kids – usually the focus of a backyard birthday party- were left with little to do but wander Katie’s well-maintained garden and try and climb the locked gate to the Lim’s tennis court.

I told my girls to stick to the veggie tray.  Avoid the seafood.  That mess had shit-your-pants written all over it.

An hour into the affair – an hour before I could justify gathering my kids and leaving – I stood against the hedge nursing a bottle of Stella, watching my daughters etch chalk doodles with Tiffany Lim and Luna Morris.  At the other end of the backyard, the Wylie twins sat cross-legged in a lonely corner, playing the sort of patty-cake hand-slapping game I’d played with my friends in the second grade.

That’s retro of them, I thought.

I inadvertently made eye contact with Carissa Bauer, then stared down at my beer.  Too late.  Carissa, glass of drugstore Chardonnay in her hand, had locked in.  Carissa was my age, a stay-at-home mom, and a local girl; when we’d met, I’d somehow given her the impression I was a lost American puppy in need of a box and belly rubs.

Carissa reached my side and clutched my wrist with her claw-like nails.  “We have’t talked shit about your new neighbors yet, have we?”

I scanned the crowd for the twins’ parents.  I caught sight of them at the seafood station, poking uncomfortably at the pile of warm crabs legs.

“That’s them, right?” Carissa hissed.

I nodded, surreptitiously checking my phone for the time.  Forty-five more minutes.

“It took them forever to sell Barbara Lewis’s old house,” Carissa purred.  “I mean, I get it.  How long did Barb rot for?  A month?”

“Six weeks,” I corrected.

Slightly less than a year before, Barbara Lewis, my 80-year-old, hemiplegic neighbor, had fallen down the stairs and broken her neck.  Her body lay decomposing until a gardener became concerned enough about the smell to call the police.

Carissa smiled conspiratorially.  “C’mon.  I want to meet them.”

Before I could dig in my heels, Carissa got hold of my arm and dragged me across the party to the diarrhea-shrimp and the Wylies.  She stuck out her hand.

“I’m Carissa.  I live around the block.  You must be the couple who just moved in.”

The woman gave Carissa’s hand a dainty shake.  “Lena Wylie,” she said.  “And this is my husband, Conrad.”

I shook hands and mumbled a greeting.  Lena wore a long skirt and lace-up top; she’d pulled her mouse-brown hair into a long braid and hadn’t bothered to touch up the grey roots.  Conrad had on a pair of board shorts and a t-shirt with Good Vibes Only printed across it.  They might as well have been wearing labels.  Hippie.  Granola.

“Our girls are running around here somewhere,” Lena Wylie continued.  “The blonde twins.  Aurora and Agatha.”

I forced my face not to cringe.  I couldn’t stand it when parents gave their kids matching names.

“They’re adorable!” Carissa gushed.  “My little guy, Gabriel, is the redhead digging a hole.  So where’d you guys move from?”

Conrad made a waving hand gesture.  “We met in Seattle.  The twins were born in Toronto… then we spent a couple of years hopping around Australia, then lived in Jakarta for a year, and then we went on a South American tour… Buenos Aires, Rio, Costa Rica…”

“How could you possibly afford that lifestyle?”  Carissa cut in.  “One of you must have a trust fund.”

Carissa Bauer, ladies and gentlemen.  No self-awareness.  But the Wylies didn’t so much as flinch.

“Our work allows us to travel,” Lena said.  “I’m a writer.  Romance.  And Conrad’s a self-employed massage therapist.”

Carissa shook her head.  “I don’t get it. If you can go anywhere, why Vancouver Island?  Why Chemainus, of all places?”

Lena smiled.  “Well, our girls.  They’re going to be nine this year, and we decided it would be best to give them a normal childhood.  Girl Scouts, soccer games, play dates, all that.  And Conrad actually grew up in Victoria.”

“Serious?  I grew up in Nanaimo.”

While Carissa dove into her “I’m-a-townie” spiel, I looked for my daughters.  With an uncomfortable jolt, I saw Hannah, my nine-year-old, had migrated to the corner, where she’d taken up with Tiffany Lim and the Wylie twins.  Aurora and Agatha had split up: one played patty-cake with Hannah, the other with Tiffany.

“Becca’s American,” Carissa was explaining.  “She’s from California.”

“My husband grew up here,” I cut in.  “He was a pharmacist, and we came back because he inherited his father’s pharmacy.”

“How was immigration for you?” Lena asked.

“Not particularly rough.  The girls are dual citizens, and I’m a nurse.  That pushed me to the front of the line.”

“Which pharmacy is your husband’s?  Conrad’s got the worst allergies, and…”

I felt my lips spasm in an involuntary snarl.

“Ex-husband,” I clarified.  “He walked out on the girls and me last year.”

* * * * * *

Hours later, I sat in Michael’s – my ex-husband’s – old office, taking one last hit off the vape pen I was supposed to have quit six months ago.  I stared at Michael’s toolshed in the backyard, locked and rotting.  I needed to have that eyesore knocked down.

In the distance, a door slammed.  I peered down into the Wylie’s backyard.

When the house had been Barb Lewis’s, the yard was an obstacle course of overgrown weeds, untamed bushes, and piles of wood from her long-deceased husband’s long-abandoned home improvement projects.  The realtor tasked with selling the place had done a fairly decent clean-up job: the back lawn was now green and unoffensive, surrounded by well-groomed dirt plots the Wylies had mentioned turning into a vegetable garden.

The one element of Barb Lewis’s that remained was a waist-high pile of stones in the far back corner.  I wasn’t sure why they’d left it.

There was something mildly calming about the rock pile.  The large rocks that made up the base fit together in a configuration that years of winter storms had failed to topple, coated with a thick layer of turquoise-green moss.  Smaller, flatter, rounder stones lay about in a semicircle like children at their parents’ feet.

From my window perch, I watched as the twins – Aurora and Agatha – dashed across the lawn and plopped themselves down in front of the rock pile.  They began stacking the small, flat, round stones on top of each other.  When their little towers were to their liking, they demolished them piece by piece, laying the dislodged stones side by side in the dirt.  Then, they flipped the stones over like playing cards – before switching them out with new stones and starting all over again.

I had no idea what sort of game they were playing.  But I watched for a good quarter hour, until my own daughters’ pleas for dinner drew me away.

Later that night, I heard giggling from my girls’ room.  I tiptoed down the hall and pushed open the door to find them both sitting cross-legged on Hannah’s bed, playing the same patty-cake game she’d played with the Wylie twins at the party.

“Well, this is awkward,” I announced to the girls.  “My phone’s telling me it’s nine-fifteen, and I seem to recall bedtime is nine o’clock.”

The girls froze and regarded me with wide puppy eyes.

“Technically, we’re in bed, Mom,” Hannah said with a saccharine grin.

I suppressed a giggle.  My cute little contract attorney.

“We’re just practicing, Mama,” Olivia, the eight-year-old, offered.  “Aggie and Rory taught us this fun song, and we want to teach it to Ava when we go to her house tomorrow.”

Aggie and Rory?  Agatha and Aurora.  The Wylie twins.

I smiled at my girls.  “Okay.  I’ll level with you.  Why don’t you show me the song that Aggie and Rory taught you?  After that, it’s lights out.  Got it?”

“Okay, Mom,” the girls said in unison.

They took a deep breath.  Then, they began, slapping hands in a complicated rhythm:

Nine two, nine two, one two five!
Pull out the middle, put it in the beehive.
First it goes up, then it goes down
Twist it in the Loonies and spread it all around.

One is the ponies, and two is the plains
Three is bananas, and four is spy games.
First it goes up, then it goes down.
Then the Stove Creek Boys are tearing up the town.

The girls dropped their hands and stared at me, panting and giggling.  The rhyme was nonsensical, but to be fair, most playground chants don’t hold much logic.  I recalled Miss Susie and her steamboat with a bell.

I clapped.  “Yay!  Good job!  Now, it’s bedtime.”

* * * * * *

The next evening, I was packing my daughters’ lunchboxes when I was interrupted by the repeated jangling of my doorbell.

I ensured the girls were occupied with the Disney Channel upstairs in their room, then peered through the peephole.  Ryan McKittrick stood on my doorstep.  Ava’s dad.  He looked pissed.  Just a few hours before, my daughters had been around his house to play with Ava.  Beautiful, I thought to myself.  Hannah and Olivia must’ve broken something, or taught Ava a fun new four-letter word. 

I opened the door.  “Hi, Ryan.  I…”

“Who the fuck told you, bitch?” he snarled.  “Who did you talk to?”

I wasn’t friends with Ryan McKittrick.  I only knew two things about him: he’d met his Texan wife, Kayla, while he was an international MBA student in Austin, and she was a sorority girl. He also worked in Finance, Not Otherwise Specified.  Now, he was growling like a wild animal and yelling without abandon.

“Was it Jackson?” he screamed.  “Or, fuck, was it Kayla?  Is this some fucking new game she’s playing to get custody?”

I took a step back.  “Ryan, I don’t know what you’re…”

“The fucking patty cake game!” He howled.  “The rhyme… your brats… Ava’s been repeating it all day!  Who fucking told you?  Who?”

I glanced around for the hidden cameras.  There was no way Ryan McKittrick could possibly have been driven to this cussing, snarling fit by a nonsensical children’s rhyme.

“The rhyme about the Stove Creek Boys, something something, up and down?” I asked, incredulous.  “That’s… my girls learned it from the Wylie twins.  It’s just a kid’s…”

“Fuck you,” Ryan snapped, with a raised middle finger.  Then he turned roughly and stormed off towards the Wylies’ house.

I followed him, legitimately concerned.  I found Lena on the front porch, arms crossed, while Conrad lurked in the doorway.  Ryan paced back and forth across their lawn, yelling less at the Wylies than God and/or the universe.

“Are you SEC?” he snapped.  “Or, what?  FBI?  CIA?”

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Lena asked, her face a mortified clone of mine.

“Did fucking Kayla talk to you?”  Ryan continued.

“Who’s Kayla?”

“My bitch of a wife!” Ryan howled, so gutturally and animalistically, that I froze and Lena dove for the safety of her husband.

Conrad took a step forward.  He revealed he was clutching a baseball bat in one meaty fist.

“Leave,” he said firmly.  “Or I call the police.”

Ryan seethed like a caged wolf.  But he, with a wise surge of self-preservation, turned and fucked back off to his house, shooting me a nasty glare as he went.  I glanced up and met Lena Wylie’s eyes.

On her face—for a second, before Conrad closed the door—I saw a flash of a mischievous little smirk.

* * * * * *

Three weeks later, a fleet of black sedans parked outside the McKittrick’s Mediterranean-style mini-mansion.  After that, in spurts of gossip at spin class and girls’ lunch with Katie Lim and Carissa Bauer, I was brought up to speed on the whole sordid tale.

Apparently, Ryan McKittrick’s American business school buddies had been running a boiler room out of one of their fathers’ Brooklyn office.  The scam was your standard pump-and-dump: buy up penny stocks, pimp them out to trusting clients, drive the price sky-high, then sell and watch the whole house of cards crumble.  Their operation – specifically, Ryan’s part in it – was a unique twist.  The scammer crew would launder their profits by wiring them into a Canadian shell corporation, managed by Ryan, which supposedly invested in currency futures.

They’d run the game three times.  And they must’ve gotten reckless, because one of Ryan’s American co-conspirators warned the others that the SEC had put in a couple of calls to Daddy’s office.  So Ryan was nervous enough as it was.  Then, my daughters taught his daughter the Wylie twins’ rhyme—which outlined, in disturbing detail, Ryan and the Americans’ crimes.

Nine two, nine two, one two five!
Pull out the middle, put it in the beehive.
First it goes up, then it goes down
Twist it in the Loonies and spread it all around.

One is the ponies, and two is the plains
Three is bananas, and four is spy games.
First it goes up, then it goes down.
Then the Stove Creek Boys are tearing up the town.

“First it goes up, then it goes down” was an ode to the nature of a pump-and-dump scheme; “twist it in the Loonies” referred to the Canadian money laundering.  Beehive Investments, Incorporated was the name of Ryan’s shell company.  Nine two nine, two one two five: the seven-digit phone number he used to communicate with his pals in New York.  The Stove Creek Boys referred to the Stove Creek Bar in Austin, where the guys used to blow off steam during business school.

The first penny stock they’d exploited was a small medical device company, Steel Pony.  The second, an oil speculator called Plains Energy; the third, Bananarama Apparel.

I blew every gasket in my brain trying to figure out how the Wylie twins were privy to any of this information.  It was possible Ryan’s wife, Kayla, could’ve confided in Lena Wylie about her husband’s shady business, and she’d in turn passed that information along to her daughters.  But that seemed unlikely.  And it didn’t explain the matter of the fourth penny stock: the American scammers’ twist ending for Ryan.

See, the New York boiler room boys planned to cut out the Canuck; they’d found a better laundry service in one of their brother-in-law’s Hong Kong syndicate.  They’d already settled on a fourth penny stock – Spy Games Electronics – a development which, I can’t stress hard enough, Ryan McKittrick didn’t know about.

Spooked by the rhyme, Ryan went straight to the authorities and hung himself – or, depending on how you looked at it, saved himself.  In one final twist, neither the FBI, nor the Canadian authorities, had been onto Ryan and his friends at all.  The SEC call to his co-conspirator had been about his father’s business, not the boiler room.

Because he came forward as a whistleblower, Ryan was only sentenced to a couple years’ probation.  But his legal fees were hefty, and – with no more dirty American money coming in – he was forced to sell the house.  Kayla left him and took the kids back to Texas.

Life moved on, and memories smoothed like rocks in a tumbler.  No one could explain how eight-year-old twins had regurgitated information even the FBI didn’t know.  So we deliberately misremembered.  But I couldn’t force myself to forget.

I’d find myself sitting in Michael’s office, surveilling the Wylie’s yard.  Sometimes, I’d see Agatha and Aurora out there, bouncing their ball back and forth.  Other times, they’d sit at that rock pile, staring, as though watching a movie I couldn’t see.  Then, almost in a trance, they’d pick up the round, flat rocks and stack them, lay them out, and flip them over.

Barbara Lewis, I remembered, used to sit in the same spot.  Arranging and rearranging rocks, in what I’d assumed then was a quirk of dementia.

* * * * * *

In May, a new young family moved into the California-style house at the end of my block, right beside the dirt road that led to a creek that fed into the Pacific Ocean.  They threw a backyard potluck and invited the entire neighborhood.

The new couple were Roxanna and Tyler Loewe, thirty-somethings from Vancouver: him, a patent attorney; her, an interior designer.  They were one of those couples who look uncomfortably like siblings, both pale and slender and round-faced, with matching dishwater-blonde hair.  Their daughter, Daisy, was six, and Roxanna was enormously pregnant with their second, a boy.

They seemed lovely; Roxanna treated my sad attempt at fajitas like it was a rare delicacy, and she and Tyler made the rounds of the assembled neighbors with a fascinated enthusiasm I couldn’t have faked if my life depended on it.

The Wylie family arrived a half hour into the affair; Lena in a hippie dress, Conrad in board shorts, and the girls in matching skorts and unicorn tees.  I was chatting with Roxanna Loewe when they approached, casserole dish outstretched like an offering to the gods.

“It’s Brazilian barbecue,” one of the twins said cutely, after the hand-shaking and name-exchanging.

I was thinking Brazilian barbecue an odd choice for a dogs-and-cheetos neighborhood get-together when I noticed the look on Roxanna Loewe’s face.  By that look, you’d have thought the twin presented her with a live snake.

“Brazilian barbecue,” Roxanna repeated, her voice a pitch too high.  “That’s… unique.”

“It was the girls’ idea,” Lena Wylie said.  “We lived there for a year, in Rio de Janiero.”

Roxanna nodded curtly, her cheeks pale.  “Did you… have you ever lived in Vancouver?”

The Wylie parents shook their heads.  Roxanna mumbled something and excused herself, and I checked on my daughters.  I found Olivia doing handstands with Tiffany Lim and Luna Morris, and Hannah teaching little Daisy Lowe how to draw colored-pencil flowers.

“She rotted for six whole weeks!”  Katie Liu’s shrill voice transcended the sound of polite chatter.

I wandered over to where Katie stood, with Roxanna Loewe and Stephanie Morris, loudly regaling the new girl with the horrific details of Barbara Lewis’s death.  Stephanie noticed me first and frowned.

“I’m sorry, Becca,” she said.  “I know you were close with Barb.”

Close was a stretch. It was more like Barbara Lewis had been a game of chicken I’d lost.  She was confused and paralyzed and alone and I flinched first, establishing myself as the nice nurse who checked in on her a couple times a week.  I nodded forgivingly, for Stephanie’s sake.  She lived across the street, and I liked her a lot better than the other moms in the neighborhood.

“You gotta admit, though,” Katie continued, “old Barb was an odd bird.  She barely left her house, but she… knew things.  Gossip.  Who’d lost their job, who was getting a divorce, whose kid failed algebra.  Stuff like that.”

“Remember when Nancy Koppel had cancer?”  Stephanie added.

“She warned someone to get tested for cancer?” Roxanna asked, eyes wide.

Stephanie shook her head sadly.  “No.  Nancy was Stage One, supposedly treatable.  But Barb knew she was going to die.”

The conversation was interrupted by a loud child’s voice.  “Paolo’s Pasteria!  Get your dumplings from Paolo’s Pasteria!”

The voice belonged to Tiffany Lim, flanked by Olivia and the Wylie twins, all carrying paper plates filled with mud pies.

“Mama, do you want a dumpling?” Olivia asked me.

Katie and Stephanie smiled indulgently.  Roxanna Loewe stood stock-still.  If she’d looked like she saw a ghost before, now it was as though she’d been sucker-punched.

“The dumplings are brown!” A Wylie twin chirped.  “Like the baby in your tummy.”

At that, Roxanna snapped out of her shock.  And blew up.

With one violent motion, she knocked the plate from the Wylie twin’s hands.  “Who told you to say that, you little turd?” she shrieked.

The polite chatter around us fell silent.  Olivia ran to me; Tiffany Lim froze like a trembling statue.  Roxanna, eyes wild and ravenous, turned on her husband, who’d been conversing with a couple of the neighborhood dads.

“Are you kidding me, Tyler?” Roxanna screamed.  “Did you tell the whole neighborhood?”

“What are you talking about, Rox?” Tyler snapped, his face pale.  “I… I didn’t say anything.”

With one last glare at Tyler, Roxanna laser-focused on the next target of her ire: her little daughter.  In great, heavy bounds, Roxanna crossed the party and grabbed Daisy, roughly, by the shoulders.

“Did you tell them, Daisy?” Roxanna seethed, her tone low and dangerous.  “Did you tell your friends about Paolo’s Pasteria?”

Daisy, clearly confused and afraid, shook her little blonde head, tears in her eyes.

“Did you tell them?” Her mother repeated, shaking her.

“No, Mommy!” Daisy wailed.  “I promise!  You’re hurting me!”

Her daughter’s plea must’ve hit the reset button in Roxanna’s squirrel brain.  She let go of Daisy, stood upright, and peered around her backyard with wide doe’s eyes.  Then, Roxanna broke.  She collapsed into a heap in the grass, bawling like a child.

Before any of the guests could decide how to handle the situation, Tyler Loewe stepped in.

“Thank you all for coming,” he said, kindly but firmly, “but I think it’s time to go.”

* * * * * *

The gossip found its way to me, as gossip tends to do.

Back home in Vancouver, Tyler and Roxanna Loewe had gone through a rough patch in their marriage.  Roxanna booked a great gig, designing a hot new eatery: Paolo’s Pasteria, the latest project of Brazilian-Korean chef Jorge Kim.  Paolo’s Pasteria would feature Chef Kim’s dumplings, a favorite at his upscale Vancouver restaurant.

The Chef and Roxanna got along well.  Too well.

The affair went on for three months before Roxanna confessed to her husband.  They started couples’ therapy; she asked for forgiveness, he decided to give their marriage another chance.  By the time they’d settled into Chemainus and threw their backyard potluck, Roxanna’s affair had been over for a year.

Should’ve been over for a year.

Except that one night, when she’d snuck away to Jorge Kim’s Vancouver condo to say a final goodbye.  One night.  One time.  They’d used a condom.

I was friendly with the nurses in the OB department.  And the only thing quicker-moving than neighborhood gossip is hospital gossip.

That’s how I knew about the dark-skinned, brown-eyed baby boy who’d tumbled out of Roxanna Loewe’s uterus to a confused labor and delivery team – and a pair of shocked parents.  Little baby James.  A child whose mother – based on timing, her missed period, and use of a condom – would’ve sworn in court, sworn on the Bible, sworn on her daughter’s life, that she’d been carrying her husband’s progeny, not her lover’s.

But the Wylie twins?  They’d known.  The dumplings are brown!  Like the baby in your tummy. 

* * * * * *

The weirdest part of my day, though, was that Agatha and/or Aurora’s premonition about the parentage of Roxanna Loewe’s baby actually wasn’t the weirdest part of my day.

The weirdest part happened as we plodded home from the Loewe’s aborted potluck.  My daughters scampered ahead and walked with Luna Morris and one of the twins.  The other twin, the one who hadn’t made the comment about Roxanna’s brown baby, hung back and matched her pace with mine.

“Hi!” She said.

“Hey there.”  I gave her what I hoped was a sincere smile.

The twin’s grin widened.  Her adorable kid-face was all sunshine and innocence, but something in the corners of her mouth hit all the wrong nerves.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, keeping my tone light.

The twin kept on smiling.  “You won’t like it.”

“If you don’t tell me, how do you know I won’t like it?”  I heard a desperate undertone in my own voice.

“She slept with him,” the twin said.

I felt a trapdoor drop below me; my stomach lurched and my limbs felt too heavy.

“Who… who slept with… who?” I asked, trembling.

“Luna’s mom,” she said.

Stephanie Morris.  Stephanie, my friend.

“Who did Luna’s mom sleep with?” This time, I didn’t bother hiding my desperation.

The twin giggled.  “You know who.”

Then, she scampered off to join her sister and the others.

* * * * * *

That night, I dreamed about Barbara Lewis.

I stood at her kitchen table, folding the load of her laundry I’d just washed.  Barb lay in her lounge chair, watching Wheel of Fortune.  I looked up and caught her staring directly at me.  The left side of her face still drooped, giving her a lopsided expression.  Her body was fragile and bony; her eyes big and grey, sparkling with a liveliness that juxtaposed against her corpse-like form.

Her eyes radiated cruelty, mirth at my sad little assumption that it was I who pitied her; that my life was the desirable one.

“Shannon Pulchaski,” Barb croaked.  “Jenica Barnes.  Lucy Wong.”

My jaw ached.  My neurons short-circuited.

“The bitch who makes lattes at Three Pines Cafe,” Barb continued.  “The dental hygienist with expensive pink scrubs.”

And then, it wasn’t Barbara Lewis sitting in that chair.  It was a Wylie twin, blonde and dimpled.

“The little French tart who works behind the counter,” the twin chirped.

The numbness wore off.  Surging anger took its place.  The floor shook, propelled by my rage, until a fissure broke and Barbara fell down.  I heard her screams as she tumbled over and over, until she was silenced by a thud, and a snap.

* * * * * *

Lena Wylie answered the door on my third knock.

“Becca!” She announced, with overstated pleasantness.  “What can I do for you?”

She was dressed in a hippie tunic and yoga pants, grey-streaked hair tied back in a braid.  I gave her as genuine a smile as I could manage.

“I had something I wanted to talk to you about,” I said.

Lena couldn’t hide the suspicion in her eyes.  “I was just going to put some coffee on,” she said.  “If you’d like to come in.”

Whoever had been responsible for remodeling Barbara Lewis’s place, they’d done a good job.  But the set of spiral stairs, leading to the bedrooms on the second floor, remained unchanged.  As Lena Wylie got to work on the coffee in the kitchen, I sat tentatively at the edge of a La-z-Boy.  The image of the staircase curdled something in my stomach.

“My fellow American, right?” Lena asked from the kitchen.  “California?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Looking away from the staircase, my eyes rested on a wooden box in the middle of the kitchen table.  While Lena was busy assembling her French press, I moved to get a better look.

“I was born in Alaska,” Lena said.  “My dad was in the Army.”

Seeds.  That was what was in the box on the kitchen table.  Packets of seeds.  I thumbed through tomato, cucumber, sunflower, pumpkin… and the box was tugged, roughly, away.

I flinched.  Lena stood by the table, my cup of coffee in one hand, the seed box in the other.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Lena said, placing my coffee on the table.  “It’s just, the seeds are in a very specific order.”

I nodded and stirred the coffee.  Through a large window, I could see into the backyard.  Empty flower beds.  That moss-covered pile of rocks.

Lena sat across from me with her own coffee.  “So, what did you want to talk about, Becca?”

“Right.”  I took a sip.  “I wondered if we could get the girls together for a play date.  Are you free this Friday?”

Lena narrowed her eyes.  “You know, Becca, I was under the impression you didn’t like me very much.”

A flutter of nerves twitched in my stomach.  I hadn’t realized I’d been that obvious about my distaste for the Wylie family.

“I… like you,” I stuttered.  “I’m just a little slow to warm up to people.”

Lena’s expression softened.  “I suppose I understand.”

“Whenever my girls make a new friend, there’s always a bit of competition,” I said.  “They’re so close in age, they always fight over who’s the friend and who’s the friend’s sister.  But since you’ve got two as well…”

“It would even the odds,” Lena said.  Her suspicious undertone dissolved.  “Friday is great.  If you want, we can take all the girls down to the Marina.  Conrad’s family has an old boat, and we’ve been dying to take it out for a spin.”

“Actually, I was thinking I could watch the girls at my house.”  I pulled a slip of glossy paper out of my purse.  “And you could have a free facial and mani-pedi at PacifiSpa.  They were handing them out at work… consider it my ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ gift.”

* * * * * *

Five days later, I stirred boxed macaroni and cheese while my daughters supposedly strung beaded necklaces with the Wylie twins in their room.

“Twist it!” A girl’s voice rang out.  “Twist it!  Twist it!”

I turned down the stove and dashed up the stairs, awash with neurosis over what the girls could possibly be twisting.  I found them gathered around the cabinet where I kept the fine china and stashed Christmas presents, Olivia trying to shove a key into the lock.

“What are you guys messing with?” I asked.

Olivia dropped her hand and stared, guiltily.  I recognized the key as one that had once opened a padlock around the side gate.

“We’re playing Fit the Key in the Lock,” said the twin in an orange t-shirt under her jumper.

“Well, lunch is ready,” I said.

While the girls ate their macaroni, I pulled my house and car keys off my thick keyring and double-checked the rest.  When I’d confirmed the keys on it didn’t open or start anything dangerous, I handed the whole lanyard to Hannah.

“You guys can play with these,” I told them.  “Just stay away from Daddy’s old toolshed in the backyard.  There’s too many dangerous things in there.”

“We will, Mom,” Olivia and Hannah crooned in unison.

The girls occupied trying to shove the key for my old bike lock into the media cabinet, I crept out the front door and to the Wylie’s house.  There were no cars in the driveway; I assumed Conrad was at work and Lena was being pampered at PacifiSpa.  They didn’t lock their side gate, so I easily slipped into their backyard.

I hadn’t invested in a gift certificate for a mani-pedi because I particularly wanted to welcome Lena Wylie to the neighborhood.  What I wanted was access to that strange pile of rocks in the corner of their backyard.  Access, without having to explain myself.  Without having to explain that I, a thirty-something mother and professional, suspected a rock collection could reveal people’s deepest, darkest secrets.

I sat down in front of the rock pile.  I picked up one of the smaller stones, turned it over and over in my hands.  It was coal-black and unnaturally smooth. The moss covering the pile of larger rocks was dark in color, glossy emerald, with tiny star-shaped leaves.

I found three progressively-larger black stones and stacked them like a snowman, like I’d watched the twins do through the window.  Like Barbara Lewis had done.  Then, I took apart my stack, piece by piece.  I lay the stones next to each other.

This is ridiculous.

I flipped the first stone over.

A word was scrawled across the stone, cursive, in bright red paint: Don’t.

A fist squeezed my heart.  I turned over the second rock, and the third.

Don’t like you.

Panic seized me.  I fell back onto my hands and crab-walked, putting distance between myself and the rocks and their magical red ink.

I risked another look.

Three flat, shiny black stones.  No red words.  Had I imagined it?

I crawled back to the rock pile.  I snatched up another three stones, turned them over to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, stacked them, then laid them out.  I took a deep breath.  I flipped the first.

We, in the same bright-red cursive.

Shaking, nerves fried, I turned the others.

We will tell.

From somewhere in the empty air, I heard childish giggles.  The hiss of secrets whispered into eager ears.

SLAM!

I twisted, whirled, flipped onto my knees.  The loud noise had been the Wileys’ side gate slamming shut.  The Wylie twins, Hannah, and Olivia stood on the grass.  The twins smiled angelically.  My girls had their hands in their pockets, sheepish, as though they’d been caught doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing.

“Mom?” Hannah chirped.  “What are you doing here?”

I stood awkwardly.  “Watering the grass,” I stammered.  “I told Agatha and Aurora’s mom I’d… I was looking for the sprinkler head.”

The twin in the pink shirt kicked the sprinkler head, plainly visible in the far corner of the lawn.

“It’s here,” she said condescendingly.

Little brat.  “What are you guys doing?”  I asked.

“We’re going to plant our seeds,” the twin in the orange shirt said.  She revealed she was holding the seed box her mother had wrenched from my grasp days before.

I crossed my arms, re-establishing myself as the adult.  “I don’t think your mom wants you touching the seeds when she’s not here.”

The pink twin grinned.  “Our mom said we’re allowed.  Do you want me to call her?”

“She can thank you for watering the grass,” the orange twin chimed in.

So much for adult authority.

“Fine,” I said.

I perched myself in a lawn chair under the back porch.  For the next hour, I watched, numb, as the girls tore open seed packets, dug little holes, and buried the contents, then sprinkled the fertile plots with a watering can.

I couldn’t think.  My brain glitched.

Their new garden planted, Hannah suggested to the rest that they go across the street to play with Luna Morris.  I followed the girls out of the backyard.  I didn’t want to be there anymore.  I didn’t want to think about the unnatural abomination that made red words appear on the black stones.

* * * * * *

Barb wet the bed again; her pee soaked through the chuck I’d laid, the sheets, and into the mattress.  I led her, painfully slowly, as she shuffled across stained carpet to her bathroom, the stench of ammonia and flatulence burning my nostrils.  I sat her in her shower chair, pulled the damp nightgown over her head, slid off her diaper.  I smelled shit, then saw the damp brown skidmark.  She’d pooped herself a little, too.

I turned on the water, put my arm under it to test the temperature.  When I looked up, Barb was eyeing me with a cruel insolence utterly inappropriate out of a person whose shit-covered ass I’d soon be wiping.

“I was right, wasn’t I?” She taunted.

I gave her a chilly smile.  She had been right.  I’d jimmied the lock to Michael’s toolshed, dug through every nook and cranny until I found his secret phone, paid an IT guy from work to hack into it, and discovered a treasure trove of naked pictures and lovey-dovey messages from so many women.

“This ain’t the first time, is it, Booboo?”

Barb’s cackling voice sent fireworks of anger exploding in my head.  Screw the water temperature.  I turned it up full-blast and aimed the harsh stream right at her face.

I gritted my teeth as I remembered Rachel, Michael’s pharmacy school classmate back in Glendale.  He’d traveled to Virginia to meet her parents and told them he intended to marry her at their hometown church.  And Gloria, a UCLA medical resident.  That weekend I thought he’d taken a trip to Vegas with the boys, he was actually lounging on Venice Beach with Gloria.

Our move to Chemainus, his home town, was supposed to be a fresh start for us.  Solid ground on which to build our perfect suburban dream life.  He said he wanted to start over, and I’d believed him.  Dumb bitch.  Such a dumb bitch. 

“But you love him, right?” Barb croaked, coughing and sputtering.  “Bullshit.  You love that he chose you.  You love how special you get to feel, knowing you’re the one he’s going home to.”

* * * * * *

Dumb bitch, dumb bitch, dumb bitch. 

That’s what I’d repeated to myself, sobbing on the floor of that godforsaken tool shed.  What use did Michael even have for a tool shed?  He’d never used a hammer in his life.  I was the one who took care of home improvement projects.  I was the one who took care of everything.

A scream jolted me out of memory-land.

Hannah’s scream.

I dropped my vape pen and ran.  I barely registered Lena and Conrad Wylie running in the same direction, or Stephanie and Dan Morris pacing in their lawn, or the distant wail of sirens.

The Morris’s house, which Stephanie designed and Dan built, had an artsy, modernist style: asymmetrical, with three flat roofs of varying height – the middle roof accessible through a large window.  That window was wide open, and three girls leaned out of it.  Luna Morris, sobbing.  The Wylie twins, smiling oddly.

At the far edge of the middle roof, dangerously close to a steep drop onto the hard concrete driveway, Olivia cowered.  And at the center, half of Hannah desperately flailed while her unseen legs kicked below.

The roof had collapsed under my Hannah.  She’d fallen through and gotten stuck.

* * * * * *

“Are you two ready to have a very serious conversation about what you must never do, ever again?” I asked Olivia and Hannah.

Hannah curled up on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, cuddling her favorite stuffed elephant, left arm in a brace.  We’d been lucky, the ER doctor said.  It was only a sprain.

The Chemainus fire department had responded impressively quickly to Dan Morris’s call.  They propped the ladder against the Morris’ roof.  One young firefighter – the shortest and lightest of the assembled crew – climbed up. He threw a handle-barred contraption to Hannah and instructed her to hold on as his comrades pulled her in.  Once she’d been carried down and returned safely to my arms, the platoon of firemen repeated the routine to retrieve Olivia.

“What, on God’s green earth, possessed the two of you to climb out on Luna’s roof?” I demanded.

Hannah’s dazed, drooping eyes popped open.  She opened her mouth to say something, gaped, and closed it.  Olivia, who’d wrapped herself into a trembling ball at the other end of the couch, met her sister’s eyes.  A silent message passed between them.

“We were playing hide and seek,” Olivia said.  “Us versus Aggie, Rory and Luna.  And it was impossible!  Luna knows all the best hiding spots ‘cause she lives there.  So we thought… they’d never find us on the roof!”

I cut her off with a giggle.  Laughter bubbled out of me like a beer fart, uncontrollable and uncontainable.  Olivia stared, wide-eyed, as though I’d grown a second head.  Like my mechanical tittering scared her.  Like she’d have preferred yelling and scolding and grounding.

“Sweetie, pull that thing off your head,” I croaked at Hannah.  “I need you to hear this.”

Hannah’s forehead and eyes emerged from her blanket hideout.

“Do you girls know what would’ve happened if you were a little less lucky?” I asked, trying to control the ragged breathiness of my voice.  “Olivia, do you know what would’ve happened if you’d taken a wrong step and fell off the roof?  Hannah – if the whole roof collapsed and took you with it?”

Hannah burrowed into her blanket.  Olivia realized she was being asked a question, and shook her head.

“You would’ve gone splat and died!” I clarified.  “You’re both grounded for two weeks.”

I didn’t get the tears and pleas I was expecting.  Hannah didn’t try and lawyer her way into a lighter punishment.  Olivia nodded and, wordlessly, retreated to her bedroom.

That night, after the girls fell asleep, I sat up in the kitchen and vaped.  When the nicotine failed to calm my still-oscillating nerves, I opened a bottle of rose.  I poured a glass.  Then another glass.  Then another.

Then, I heard footsteps.  Olivia appeared in the doorway.

“Hey baby, what’s going on?”

Olivia pouted.  “My tummy hurts.”

Olivia and I had done this dance many times before.  When the girls at school were mean, or another holiday passed without a call from her father, or she’d stumbled upon an article about dying kids in Sudan or Palestine or Ukraine and it really messed her up, Olivia came down with a tummy ache.

Once I had Olivia curled up on the couch, glass of ginger ale in hand, wrapped in the blanket Hannah left behind, I sat beside her and waited.  As soon as she’d downed the last sip of ginger ale, she revealed the psychological source of her pain.

“Mommy, I lied to you.”

I felt a throb of parental frustration.  “What did you lie about, baby?”

“About why Hannah and me were on the roof at Luna’s house.”

The frustrated throb became a rush of residual anxiety.  The image of Hannah, stuck and flailing, popped into my mind like an intrusive thought.

“The twins were being mean to Luna,” Olivia continued.

Terror curdled into anger.  The twins.  Why was it always the twins?

“Luna was talking about how her dad built the house.  Aggie said that her friends said that Luna’s dad was a cheater.  Luna told her to shut up, and then Rory said their friends didn’t think the roof of Luna’s house would survive the winter.  It was Luna’s idea to go out on the roof – she was gonna prove it was strong enough, and that the twins were liars.  But Luna’s scared of heights, so I said I’d go out on the roof instead.  I just wanted them to stop fighting…”

Olivia must’ve registered my expression, because her voice trailed off.

“Why,’ I asked, in what I doubted was a reasonable tone, “are you telling me this now?”

I wasn’t as angry at Olivia as I sounded.  I was very, very scared.

Olivia stared at the ground.  “Because I didn’t want the twins to get in trouble.  But… you said we might’ve died.  And I don’t want Hannah to be in trouble, either.  She only went out on the roof because I was too scared to walk back to the window myself.”

I should’ve been able to bask in the glory of having raised the best two little girls in the world: Olivia, who climbed onto a roof to defend her friend’s honor; Hannah, who risked her life to save her little sister.  But my swelling pride was tempered with an underlying concern.

“Olivia, baby,” I said, “the twins – Aggie and Rory – their friends told them Luna’s dad was a cheater?  Did they tell you who their friends are?  Friends from the last city they lived in?”

Olivia shook her head.  “The friends who live in Aggie and Rory’s backyard.”

* * * * * *

I had a right mind to march right over to the Wylie’s house, first thing in the morning, and tell Lena and Conrad exactly what I thought of their adorable blonde angels.  But, I realized, there was absolutely no way for me to do so and not end up sounding like a crazy person.  What, specifically, would I say?  “Your twins’ backyard rock friends made fun of Dan Morris’s contractor-ing skills, so my daughters crawled out on an unstable roof?”

Besides, the next morning, it became clear the twins would soon be out of our lives.  Hannah, freshly angry now that the pain pills had worn off, announced she didn’t want to be friends with Agatha and Aurora anymore. In her words, they were “dirty liars.”

The day after that, through the window, I watched all four Wylies load rolling suitcases into their car and drive off.  According to Katie Lim, they’d be spending the rest of the summer visiting Lena’s family in Hawaii.  I felt positively weightless with relief.

That relief was short-lived.  Because, as it turned out, the twins’ imaginary backyard friends weren’t liars.

The day after the Wylies left on their vacation, a swarm of official-looking people descended on the Morris house.  A week after that, Dan Morris was lead away in handcuffs.  I learned he’d fudged a few inspector’s reports, and the Morris house wasn’t anywhere near up to safety standards.  Which invited the question: if Dan Morris was willing to risk his own family’s lives to save a few bucks, what shenanigans would he be willing to pull with – say – the tract of six houses he and his company were putting up outside town.

Shenanigans enough to get him in serious trouble.  Unlike Ryan McKittrick, Dan Morris couldn’t dodge jail time for the kickback scheme he’d been running with some collaborators in the permit office.

While Dan prepared for his six-month, taxpayer-funded stay upriver, Stephanie and the kids packed up their ruined house.  They’d be staying with Stephanie’s family in Toronto.  Stephanie, one of the many sluts who slept with my ex-husband, gave me a little wave from her front yard as my girls hugged Luna goodbye.

I faked a sympathetic smile.  I’m 100% sure my feigned sympathy wasn’t convincing.

* * * * * *

For weeks, I’d waste hours in Michael’s office with my vape pen or a bottle of wine.  I’d stare at his old toolshed.  I really had to knock that thing down.  Then, my focus would shift to the Wylie’s yard.  Gardeners came by twice a week to weed and water.  Slowly but surely, their vegetable garden – the garden my girls had planted with the twins – came up in a carpet of bright green.

A week after the Morris family’s departure, a new young family moved into the McKittrick’s old house.  The Abduls.  They’d moved so the dad, Mo, could take a job as an engineer at the port.  The mom, Iman, was also a nurse.  They had two girls: Laila, ten; and Joey, eight.

Within weeks, my daughters and the Abdul girls were inseparable.  And Iman Abdul became the mom-friend I was missing in my life, ever since Stephanie Morris revealed herself to be a home-wrecking whore.

Iman was the type who liked volunteering.  In our little corner of Chemainus, prime volunteering real estate was the annual block party.  Katie Lim had been the chairwoman as long as she’d lived there.  Her ranks included Carissa Bauer and a number of other neighborhood moms and, with both Stephanie Morris and Kayla McKittrick permanently exiled, she was down two lieutenants.

Iman Abdul snatched up one spot on the Block Party Committee.  She cajoled me into taking the other.

Being from the sort of neighborhood that didn’t engage in block parties, I approached my committee duties like an anthropologist approaches an isolated Amazon tribe.  But, as much as I didn’t want to, I actually enjoyed myself.

I stopped staring into the Wylie’s yard.  I allowed myself to forget about the twins, about the odd rock formation, about the inexplicable red-ink words that appeared and disappeared.  I let myself believe they were gone for good.

I shouldn’t have.

* * * * * *

We held the block party the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend.  The weather was sunny and a perfect 79 degrees.  We’d rented a truly awesome bouncy-castle obstacle course, a dozen carnival games staffed by high-schoolers looking for volunteer hours, and an adorable merry-go-round.

Further north up the street, cooks from The Grey Chihuahua – a local Mexican restaurant, run by actual Mexican-Canadians, whose Mexican food impressed my California taste buds – set up their portable grill and deep-fryer.  They’d be providing dinner: fajitas, tacos, and burritos with homemade tortillas.  We’d decided to make dessert a potluck.  As I placed a plate of cream cheese brownies on the dessert table, I laid eyes on the sight that deflated my happiness like a three-day-old balloon.

The Wylies strode purposefully from their house toward the festivities.  The twins wore braided pigtails and matching prairie dresses – one blue, one green.  Lena carried a plastic bowl nearly as big as she was.

I pressed my eyes closed, willing their presence to be an optical illusion.

When I opened them, Lena Wylie stood across the table from me.

“Becca!” She chirped enthusiastically.  “How are you?  How has your summer been?”

The giant bowl she carried was filled with salad, covered in saran wrap.  My eyes darted over her shoulder; I’d lost sight of Conrad and the girls, and I wanted to be aware if the twins approached my daughters.

“How are the girls?”  Lena asked carefully, clearly understanding I wasn’t throwing her a welcome home parade.

“They’re good.”

There.  I saw Hannah and Olivia, flanked by Tiffany Lim and Laila Abdul, having what appeared to be a heated conversation with Aurora and Agatha in line for the ring toss.  Olivia stood with her feet apart, jaw set.  Hannah, arms crossed, jiggled her head as she spoke to one of the twins.

“I wanted to say,” Lena said, snatching my attention from the school-aged girl drama, “I’m mortified about business with the Morris’s roof.  Mark my words, my girls have been given consequences for encouraging that behavior.”

I nodded at her and faked a smile while scanning the crowd for my daughters, who’d vacated the ring toss booth with their posse.  I found them, minus the Wylie twins, at the crafts table.

“It’s fine, Lena,” I said airily.  “My girls are fine.”

She grinned.  She extended her arms, offering up the large salad.

“Um, the twins and I made this with the vegetables we grew in our backyard.  The ones your girls planted.”

I took the salad from her.  With an indulgent smile, I placed it at the far end of the table.  The salad did look scrumptious.  It was comprised of crisp green lettuce, juicy tomatoes and sliced cucumbers, dusted with flecks of black pepper.

“I’m sure the moms will appreciate this,” I told her.

* * * * * *

We’d rented luxury port-a-potties for the event, which I hadn’t even realized were a a thing.  Portable bathrooms with three actual stalls and working sinks, and a combination of potpourri and ventilation that magically neutralizes the smell of stored human waste.

While the first of the bands we’d booked took the stage outside, I relieved myself in the luxury port-a-potty.  As I washed my hands, the doors of the two far stalls – the ones on either side of mine – opened in unison.  The Wylie twins stepped out.  In the mirror, their faces broke into synchronized smiles.

I recalled every creepy-kid horror movie I’d ever seen.  I’d always wished the protagonists would grow a pair, summon their survival instincts, and punt kick the little fuckers into traffic.

I didn’t punt kick the Wylie twins.  Instead, I froze and let my suburban mom instincts take over.

“Hi girls,” I said cheerfully.  “How was your summer?”

The smiles evaporated from the twins’ faces.  They glared.

“Our friends told us what you did, Becca,” the twin with the blue dress sneered.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said condescendingly.

“We weren’t going to tell,” the twin in green added, “because Hannah and Olivia were our friends, and we didn’t want them to be sad.”

“But they don’t want to be friends anymore,” Blue finished.

I remained calm, collected, and logical.  “Run along, girls,” I said icily.  “I don’t have time for games.”

I tossed my hair over my shoulder and crossed to the door.

“Was it a snap?” one of the twins called after me.  “What did it sound like when you broke Barbara Lewis’s neck?”

* * * * * *

I’d toweled Barb, dressed her in a fresh diaper and nightdress, slathered lotion all over her fragile skin, and blow-dried her hair, all without saying a word, my teeth gritted the entire time.  Barb was silent as well.  But when I was forced to look her in the eye, her chapped lips curled upwards into a haughty snarl.  She still knew something I didn’t know.

I got her up and to her walker, and we began the slow crawl from the bathroom, across the carpeted hallway, past the stairs, and back to her bedroom.

As Barb approached the stairwell, I tightened my grip on her shoulders, placing myself protectively between her and the potential for her to trip and tumble down.  Her doll-fragile limbs tensed to my touch.  And I couldn’t help myself.

“I am special,” I said.

Barb stopped shuffling.

“Michael’s a cheater,” I admitted.  “And I’m going to leave him for good this time.  But that doesn’t mean we never loved each other.  I’m the mother of his children – me, and only me.”

Barb leaned onto her walker with her right hand, turned, and faced me.  We stalled at the apex of the spiraling stairway.  I realized, then, how hideously ugly Barbara Lewis truly was.  She repulsed me.

“You poor, sweet little lamb,” she chided.  “You actually believe that.”

I let go of her.  I stepped back.  She laughed, a low continuous chuckle like the warbling of an idling machine.

“What?” I asked urgently.

She shook her head and took a couple unsteady steps towards her bedroom, still laughing.

Something broke in me.  I grasped her roughly by her bony shoulders and spun her around.  She yelped in pain as her shin collided with the corner of her walker, tipping it over.

“What?” I repeated, in a deadly breath.

Barb’s drooping mouth regained its tone.  Her eyes sparkled.

“The French tart, she quit her job at his pharmacy,” Barb said.  “She bought a one-way ticket back to Montreal.”

Giselle.  The pretty counter-girl with the sultry accent and musical giggle.

“But before she got on the plane,” Barb continued, her croaking voice dripping with contempt, “she stopped by the clinic.  To get a little problem taken care of.”

I let go of Barb.  She stumbled, tripped over her walker, and landed on her outstretched hands with a pained grunt.  I’m a psycho, I admitted to myself.  I shut down my prefrontal cortex and let my nurse’s training take over.  I carefully assisted Barb to her feet, keeping my arm tight around my waist, straightening her walker.

Barb clutched my wrist with a claw-like hand.  “Look in his desk, second drawer,” she jeered.  “You’ll find them there: divorce papers.  If his French sidepiece hadn’t made a run for it, if she didn’t have the common sense you’ve always lacked, he would’ve left you and married her!”

The next five seconds are a black spot in my memory.  Some days, I can convince myself Barb tripped.

Most of the time, though, I have to resign myself to the knowledge that I flung her fragile body down those twisted, precarious steps.  What is crystal-clear in my mind is the way Barb bounced down: her head flopping this way and that, legs and arms twisting awkwardly, the medley of thuds and cracks as her muscles and bones crumpled and rolled.

Six weeks later, the gardener found her rotting body.

* * * * * *

I stumbled out of the bathroom, away from the block party and the loud voices of my neighbors, through one of the thin alleyways that cut across the cul-de-sac, and down a rickety set of wooden stairs to the rocky, tree-circled inlet where a slender creek met the Pacific Ocean.

I don’t know how long I sat in the weeds and driftwood by the creek shore, my butt gathering moisture, but it must’ve been hours.  The sky changed color, from bright blue to periwinkle to grey.  Loud stadium rock music emanated from the block party, then cheers, then more music, rinse and repeat.

My thoughts spun and bounced off each other and broke apart and folded together like Hannah’s polymer clay.  I was going to jail.  The Wylie twins would expose me as Barbara Lewis’s murderer, ensuring me a long, uncomfortable vacation courtesy of the Canadian government.

My girls.  I wouldn’t be a mom anymore.

I’d have to leave them forever, just like their father.  They’d have no one.  Maybe the feds would ship them back to America, to live in Bakersfield with my mother and my diabetic, functioning-alcoholic Stepfather #4.  Or worse: Michael’s snooty parents and terminally-online sister would get custody.  And I’d never see them again.

Maybe I’d become a neighborhood legend.  When Tiffany Lim and the Ahmed girls grew up and went off to college, they’d tell their new dorm-mates about the Basic Bitch Murderer, who lived next door and made them macaroni and cheese.  I’d have my own podcast.  They’d interview the Chemainus cops about…

About… holy shit.

The twins – and their omniscient backyard snitch-spirits – could be as creepy as they wanted.  They had no proof.  No jury in the world would convict a cute, white suburban mom of murder based on red cursive words on the back of rocks.

I stood and brushed myself off.  Agatha and Aurora Wiley had screwed up.  Their other marks all freaked out and screwed themselves, because they’d been taken by surprise.  The twins, by confronting me in the bathroom, gave up their advantage.  I knew what they knew.  And I knew they’d never be able to prove it.

Just then, a scream cut through the cooling air.

* * * * * *

When I returned to the block party, I found a mass casualty situation in progress.

It’s funny how, when faced with trauma occurring on a macro level, your brain focuses on odd details.  I remember the smell of that night – salty beef, acid, sweat and diarrhea.  A man squatting over Lily Connor’s herb garden, jeans around his ankles, repeatedly groaning “that’s the ticket” as a thick black snake emerged from his backside.  Tiffany Lim, punching herself in the stomach to make herself throw up.  Another man, stripped to his boxers, lying on his back in the grass, howling.

“Hannah!” I cried.  “Olivia!”

“We’re here, Mommy!”

I found them crouched on a neighbor’s lawn, huddled together with Laila and Joey Abdul.  I pulled Hannah into my arms.  Terrorist attack, my lizard brain told me.  Anthrax.  Mustard gas.  Agent orange.

I pulled my keys out of my pocket and pressed them into Hannah’s hand.  “Take your sister, Laila and Joey.  Lock yourself in the house and don’t open the door for anyone except me.”

Hannah nodded, absorbing my seriousness.  She took Olivia by one hand and Laila by the other and, clinging to each other, the girls dashed off.

I heard another scream.  I crossed the street, passed the now-empty dance floor, and started towards the grill.  A woman groaned on her hands and knees.  I stepped carefully to avoid puddles of vomit, and puddles of not-vomit.  Katie Lim’s personality-devoid accountant husband held little Theo outstretched, as the boy leaked green bile between sobs.

Then, I found the source of the screams.  Katie Lim.  Except, Katie wasn’t screaming anymore.  She lay on her back on the concrete, muscles flaccid, seizing violently.  Chunks of vomit stuck to her hair; reddish-brown rivulets had run down her sundress, staining it.  Iman Ahmed knelt beside her.

“Becca, call 911!” Iman insisted.

Katie’s eyes rolled back into her head.  Foam seeped from her mouth and, for a moment, the awful image of Barb Lewis’s broken body imprinted on my thoughts.  I pulled out my phone.  Then I heard sirens, and realized someone had beaten me to the punch.

* * * * * *

Thirty people got sick at the block party.  Eighteen were hospitalized for vomiting and diarrhea, heart palpitations, syncope, and kidney failure.

Katie Lim was still seizing as the paramedics lifted her into the back of the ambulance.  She lingered another 24 hours, ventilated, on continuous saline and pressors and IV Ativan, as organ after organ shut down.  Her heart gave out.  They couldn’t revive her.

By morning, our neighborhood played host to a platoon of cops and a media encampment.  By the next afternoon, the cause of the mystery plague was revealed: ricin poisoning.  And by nightfall, the source of the ricin had been identified.

Castor beans.  Purple tinged leaves, thick stalks, and clusters of bright-red flowers, spiked like a sea anemone – growing, in a neat little row, in the Wylie’s backyard garden.

The pepper flakes in Lena’s salad hadn’t been pepper, but crushed-up castor beans.  Katie Lim – ever the Insta-perfect wife and mother – made a show of refusing fried food in exchange for a large serving of salad.  She’d also insisted her kids get their greens in.

The Wylies swore, by themselves and then through their lawyers, they had no idea a poisonous plant was growing in their garden.  They’d picked out the seed packets themselves: lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and pumpkins only.  Neither of them even knew what castor beans were.

They’d planned the garden as a project for their children.  It was Agatha and Aurora who’d peeled the red skin off the poisonous seeds.  The twins told their parents they’d tasted the seeds, and they tasted like pepper, and they hadn’t gotten sick.  So Conrad and Lena smashed up the castor beans and used them as garnish.

Some people empathized with the Wylies.  I didn’t.  I remembered how protective Lena had been of her seed box, how she’d snatched it from my hands like a mousetrap.

Shamed, ostracized, and facing multiple lawsuits, the Wylies sold the house and moved away.

* * * * * *

They flattened up the Wylie’s old backyard – Barbara Lewis’s backyard – on October the third.  The offending castor beans had been torn up by the roots, of course, along with the rest of the garden.  Construction guys came in with shovels and a backhoe.  They dug out the grass.  And they unceremoniously leveled the pile of rocks in the far back corner, tossed every stone into the dump truck, and carted the whole mess away.  Next, they poured concrete and turned the far half of the backyard into a deck, with a fire pit and an in-ground hot tub.

I watched it all happen from the window of Michael’s office.  It made me so happy, I nearly danced with glee.

A month after that, as I stirred macaroni and cheese on the stove, my thoughts drifted unconsciously towards the Wylies.

Since the family fled in disgrace, my life, and my daughters’ lives, had been sunny and placid.  The girls were back in school.  I found I actually missed the experience of planning the block party; the feeling of camaraderie with other women.  So I’d taken a position on the ladies’ charity board of my hospital.  There, I made some new friends of my own.  Older doctors’ wives who volunteered to babysit.  Other single moms.

I hadn’t noticed how much tension I’d carried on my shoulders, the constant stress of the drama the Wylies provoked, but I immediately noticed its absence.  It was like a dark cloud had lifted from the neighborhood.  Every time I stared out the window and didn’t see that pile of rocks in the backyard, relief rushed over me anew.

So why were the Wylies still taking up space in my mind?

A peal of giggles pulled me back to the present.  The sound of a door hitting the wall.

“Careful, girls!” I called out.

“Sorry, Mom!”  Hannah cried.  “Laila figured out where the little gold key went!”

I set the kitchen timer.  It was a Saturday; Laila Ahmed and Tiffany Lim were over to play.  I considered that, maybe, I couldn’t get the Wylies out of my head because my daughters and their friends insisted on playing a game the twins had taught them: Fit the Key Into the Lock.

I didn’t understand the appeal.  But the girls couldn’t get enough of it.  So I’d handed over the giant ring of keys to various locks around the house, and they’d split off into teams: Laila and Hannah, Tiffany and Olivia.  From the sound of things, Tiffany and Olivia were losing.

As I thought about Tiffany, I heard her hushed voice from the parlor, through the wall.

“We can just try it!  We don’t need to go in.”

“Shhh,” Olivia admonished.  “My mom always says no.”

I left my boiling pot and went to confront the girls.  I found them huddled together on the sitting room couch.  At the sight of me, Tiffany shoved her hand into her pocket.

“What’ya girls got there?”  I asked airily, but with an edge that communicated I saw that.

“Nothing!”  Olivia said.

Tiffany, reading my stare, pulled her hand out of her pocket and revealed a shiny little object in her palm.  I moved closer.  It was a dull silver key with an oval head.

“Oh,” I said.  “Is that one of the ones I gave you?”

Tiffany shook her head.  “Agatha Wylie gave it to me.  She said she found it.  But I’ve been trying it on doors all over the neighborhood, and it doesn’t fit anywhere!”

I think I nodded.  I must’ve given some indication the girls could do what they wished with the mystery key, because Olivia grabbed Tiffany’s wrist, and the two of them sauntered off to continue the game.

No.  No way.  That would be impossible…

Whee!  Whee!  Whee!  My timer went off.

I ignored the repetitive, cloying whistle.  Guided by an instinct not under the control of my prefrontal cortex, I started walking towards the stairs.

No, I thought.  There are a million keys that look like that… I’m being paranoid.

* * * * * *

The previous Sunday, I’d worked a late shift.  One of my new neighborhood friends watched the kids until I got home at midnight.  Both girls sound asleep, I’d put on a pot of water to make chamomile tea.  I was mixing in oat milk when I heard Olivia’s little voice behind me.

“Mommy, I have a tummy ache.”

We curled up together on the couch – me, with my tea; Olivia, with a cup of ginger ale.  For a minute, I worried this might be less a conversion disorder and more an actual abdominal ailment – Olivia rolled into the fetal position and hugged a pillow, her ginger ale untouched on the coffee table.  It took me longer than it should’ve to notice the tears running down her rosy cheeks.

“Baby, what’s wrong?”  I reached for her.

She pulled away.

“Mommy,” she sobbed, “I think I planted the poisonous seeds.”

I felt my arms collapse to my sides.  It was as though all the air had been sucked out of my lungs by a carnivorous vacuum.

Olivia kept talking.  “We were playing Fit the Key in the Lock with Aggie and Rory, and Aggie tried a key in the closet door in Daddy’s office, and it worked!  And I don’t know why, but we decided to snoop through Daddy’s old stuff, and we found this little box stuck inside a bigger box of his old shoes.  And inside the box, there were three packets of seeds, and the picture on the packets was a pretty plant with red berries.  Aggie said we should plant the seeds in their backyard, with some other seeds her mom bought from the hardware store.  So we went over, and… and that’s what we did.”

She’d stopped crying.  She stared at me in the way kids do when they know they’re stepped in it: her mouth half-open, eyes vigilant as a rabbit in a field, braced for screaming and threatened punishments.

I breathed.  I finished the last gulp of tea.  I set the cup down next to Olivia’s full glass of ginger ale.

“Olivia, Baby,” I said, “where is that box, now?”

Olivia blinked, confused.  “In my room.”

“Let’s go and get it.”

I let her lead me to her room, where she procured the offending box from the little drawer in her nightstand and handed it over.  The box was square-shaped, blue with little red hearts, covered in a soft fabric.  It had come from a jewelry store.  It once contained a charm bracelet Michael bought me for my thirty-sixth birthday.

I snapped it open.  Inside, one last white seed packet rested innocuously, corners worn and wrinkled.  Sally’s Seeds.  Castor Beans.  The picture: a thrash of luxurious, five-fingered leaves, dark green with purple highlights.  Thick stalks, ending in luscious clusters of spiked red fruit.

I took the packet in my hand, walked to the bathroom, and flushed the whole thing down the toilet.  I smiled as it swirled and disappeared.  When I turned around, Olivia was at the bathroom door, crying in loud, hysterical gulps.  She ran for me.  I pulled her into my arms as she sobbed, her fragile body shaking against mine, my fingers tangled into her long auburn hair.

“I’m sorry, Mommy,” Olivia sobbed.  “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry, baby,” I cooed.  “It’s not your fault.  It was an accident.”

I disentangled Olivia from my body, knelt down, and held her at arms length.  I looked hard into her eyes.

“Olivia,” I said, “you can’t tell anyone what you just told me – not even you sister.  I need you to promise.”

Olivia pulled one arm free of my grasp.  She wiped her running nose.

“But Mommy,” she insisted, voice breaking, “you said we’ve gotta take responsibility for the things we do.  And I don’t want Aggie and Rory to get in trouble!”

Like I said, I raised the best little girls in the world.

I reached up and wiped the tears from her pretty blue eyes.  “Baby, Aggie and Rory aren’t in trouble!  They’re having fun in Toronto with their grandma.”

Olivia considered this.

“And sometimes, Baby, when a really painful thing happens, it’s best to just let it be.  If we keep on talking about the poisonous seeds, it’ll just remind everyone of how much it hurt when people got sick at the party.  When Tiffany’s mom died.”

At the mention of her friend’s mother, my words clicked.  Olivia nodded.  Then, she yawned.

After I’d tucked Olivia into bed, lay beside her until her eyes stayed shut and her breathing became slow and rhythmic, and quietly shut the door, I sat on the couch with a second cup of chamomile tea.  I held the little blue box with red hearts in one hand.  Absentmindedly, I flipped it open, then shut.  Open.  Shut.  Open.  Shut.

For over a year, I’d been looking everywhere for that box.

I’d scoured every inch of the house, the yard, and my car for that box, and then – when it failed to reappear – I’d decided I accidentally threw it away.  But no.  I hadn’t thrown it away.  I’d dropped it in Michael’s closet.  I’d buried it in a box of old shoes.  I’d spent hours upon hours next to that closet, vaping or watching the neighbors’ yard, and never once did I even consider my quarry was within grabbing distance.

Now that the box had been returned, I thought back to how it got there in the first place.

* * * * * *

It wouldn’t have happened if Michael lied to me.

That evening, as the blood from Barb Lewis’s head womb congealed around her still-fresh corpse, I sent my daughters to Ava McKittrick’s house for a sleep-over.  I confronted Michael as he sat on his nearly middle-aged ass watching cartoons.  I screamed each name of his slut harem, one by one.  I threw his secret phone at his chest.  I scattered the divorce papers – which I’d found in his desk drawer, exactly where Barb Lewis said they would be – at his feet.  I announced that I knew about Giselle the skank and her little sexual souvenir.

The entire time, Michael didn’t say a word.  He calmly turned off the TV.  He took my abuse without so much as a whimper.

I wanted him to lie to me.  I mean, what I really desired was for him to cry and blubber and beg, like he’d done the first time I caught him, while I was pregnant with Hannah.  In the absence of that, though, I’d have taken a lie.

But he didn’t so much as deny his affairs.  He waited until I wore myself out.  Then, as I stood in front of him, eyes swollen, spit in my hair, snot running down my face, he told me I was correct.  He’d been sleeping around.  He would’ve filed for divorce and rode off into the sunset with Giselle and their crotch dropping.

But, no need for worry: Giselle scheduled an abortion, dumped him, and fucked off to Quebec.  So he didn’t want to get divorced anymore.  He wanted to re-commit to us.  To our family.

And then, I realized what he actually desired.  He wanted me to scream and cry and throw things, for me to punish him.  Then, he wanted me to wake up in the morning, retrieve the girls from Ava’s house, and make Eggo waffles with a smile on my face.

I was supposed to forgive and forget.  Like I’d done, every other time.

Castor beans had been a calculated choice.  Hospitals don’t usually test for ricin poisoning, and the symptoms mimic a number of other abdominal and autoimmune conditions.  I bought twenty packets of the seeds from a farm store over the border.  I mixed twelve into his dinner.

I hadn’t expected the beans to work as fast as they did.  Within hours, Michael was doubled over in the bathroom, blasting like a fire hydrant from both ends.  Around midnight, I found him seizing in our bed.  And by morning, our girls asleep in the next room, he lay stiff and pulseless and cold.

I freaked out.  It all happened too quickly, and I was terrified Michael’s sudden death – the sudden death of a 39-year-old medical professional with no known conditions – would warrant a more thorough post-mortem than if he’d passed after getting progressively sicker over a number of days.

I didn’t want my daughters to see his body.  I didn’t want police officers crawling all over my house, seeing right through my performative shock and grief.  So I panicked.

I threw the remaining packets of seeds in the first box I found – the fuzzy jewelry box with the hearts – and hid it in Michael’s poorly-organized closet, where I promptly forgot about it.  I dragged Michael’s lifeless body into the backyard.  I decided on a temporary solution, a place I could store the corpse until I got the chance to wrap it in tarps, drive to the marina, and give my unfaithful spouse a burial at sea.

I hid the body.  I locked it away and stashed the key somewhere only I could find it.  And I told everyone Michael had run off to Quebec, chasing after his mistress.

* * * * * *

Whee!  Whee!  Whee!  My kitchen timer kept wailing.  The girls’ lunch was getting soggy.

I made my way up the stairs.  Into my room.  Into my closet.

It couldn’t be.  How could they have known?

I pushed aside clothes I hadn’t worn for years, winter blankets, and boxes of camping gear, revealing an old-fashioned, free-standing jewelry cabinet.  It had been Michael’s mother’s.  I never wore the jewelry I kept there: Secret Santa gifts from co-workers, tasteless junk Michael bought me for birthdays and Mother’s Day – ugly pendants and microscopic gemstones in his mistresses’ style, not mine.

I swung the wooden doors open, revealing hooks heavy with beaded necklaces and five dainty drawers.

How?  I thought.  My girls don’t even know this jewelry cabinet exists…

I opened the third drawer.  I found a tiny, round, red box in the far corner.  It had once contained a gaudy enamel ring Michael bought me for a Christmas.  Idiot.  I didn’t even wear rings.

I opened the little red box and shoved my fingers into the lining.  They came away empty.  The silver key I’d hidden there – the key I’d used to lock Michael’s body in the one place no one should’ve been able to find it – was gone.

Except, it wasn’t gone.  Because I’d just seen it in Tiffany Lim’s hands.

I shouldn’t even need to ask how. 

From the backyard, I heard the low-pitched squeak of a heavy door opening on rusting hinges.  The girls.  Outside.  Fitting Tiffany’s key into the door of Michael’s toolshed. 

Frantically I dug around, tossing boxes and bracelets onto the floor.  I tugged out the entire drawer, upturned and shook it, sending bits of fabric and dust bunnies raining down.

The key wasn’t there.  I turned the dislodged drawer back over in my hands.

There were words scrawled across the bottom in bright-red cursive.

Did you think this was over, Becca?

Then, I heard Olivia’s scream.