Author’s Note: The prologue below is the starting point for a story that has been baking for some time now and is based on actual events that have and continue to take place in my town. I have the entire story outlined and know, for the most part, how the entire thing will play out. I now have 5 chapters written and I’m working on the 6th. My hope is to complete the entire first draft in early 2023. We’ll see how it goes! At any rate, hope this whets some appetites for the rest!

Prologue - June 2012

Timothy started down the stairs, his lanky frame on autopilot as he scrolled through the Instagram feed on his phone, oblivious to the chaos coming from the kitchen below.  Arriving at the bottom of the staircase, he looked up just in time to see his little sister, Abby, pony-tail flying, chasing after their Rottweiler, Lexie, who had a bagel in her mouth.  

Entering the kitchen, he saw his mother, wiping her hands on a dish towel as she called after both of them, “Don’t let her eat that, Abby! You know how it’ll stop her up!”

“SNAFU….,” Timothy said, heading for the island in the middle of the kitchen.

“What’s that?” his mom asked, somewhat absent-minded, as she tried to re-focus her attention.

“SNAFU,” he repeated, picking up the cinnamon raisin bagel set out for him. “Situation Normal. All Fu--,” 

“Can we hold off on the profanity this early in the morning,” his father said, sitting at the far end of the island and looking at his son over the top rim of his glasses.

“All funked up,” Timothy finished.  

“Thank you,” came the satisfied reply.  

His father, a founding partner at the only law firm in their town, Booth, Van Holland, & Cornwallis, was dressed in his ‘uniform’ as Timothy liked to call it.  A crisp white shirt, gray satin braces attached to his pressed blue suit pants, and a matching gray silk tie, with the perfect dimple at the knot, all hugging a solid frame. 

With his short-cropped salt and pepper hair and square jaw, he appeared to be every bit the buttoned-up, strict conservative.  Timothy knew it was all pretense.  His father would be swearing like a blue-collar union worker by the afternoon.

As Mr. Van Holland returned to sifting through the mail from the day before, Abby rounded the corner from the other side of the kitchen, triumphant with a mauled half-eaten bagel held aloft in her left hand.  

“Got it!” she cried out.  “Well, most of it,” she said lowering her hand, and wrinkling her nose at the soggy mess. 

Timothy admired how bold Abby was when it came to wrestling things out of the dog’s mouth.  Or foolhardy. He wasn’t sure which applied more although Lexie was definitely a gentle giant when it came how she behaved with Abby.  Few young girls could count on a more vigilant and fearless guardian.

“Mission accomplished, Abby,” their mother smiled, taking the remains of the bagel from her daughter, dropping them into the trash.  “Now can you see about feeding yourself as well,” she added.  

Timothy’s mother, was more or less indistinguishable in appearance from all of the other upper middle-class women in their small town who had enough free time to swim or play tennis with he r friends.  But she adored these rambunctious early mornings with her family.  She was well-aware of how perfect and all-American the scene in her kitchen was and found it all the more hilarious since she knew they were probably more like the Addams Family than something from a bland 1950s sitcom.  

Her focus shifted when her husband, Martin, or Marty as those close to him called him, took a sharp breath in.  Everyone paused what they were doing and turned to look at him.

He held in his hand a glossy 5X7 postcard.  He was flipping it front to back, over and over, as though he couldn’t quite understand what he was looking at.

“Well….?” Lucy, short for Lucretia, asked for everyone.

Marty’s face, usually generically attractive, was less so now in this pinched state. 

“The Britten House sold.  This is a postcard from Baird Realty announcing that they’ve sold it.”

“They must be very proud of themselves,” Lucy replied, loading the words ‘very proud’ with sarcasm. She turned back to the sink, without returning to her cleaning.  Staring out the window into the backyard and the woods beyond, she fidgeted with her shoulder length auburn hair, just starting to show a bit of gray.

“I’m quite sure.  Seems a little tasteless, if you ask me,” Marty answered. 

Marty set the postcard back down with the rest of the mail.  

Timothy looked at his father for a moment before asking in a low voice, “I wonder…I wonder if they know.”

His mother turned around and said, “Of course they know, dear. Everyone knows!”

“Love,” Marty said looking at his wife, “I think he means the buyers.”

Realizing her mistake, Lucy put a hand to her open mouth.

“Oh my God, yes. I’m sorry, Timmy.”

Although he chafed at hearing his name in the diminutive, he knew there was no point commenting on it as they all had names, or nicknames at least, ending in a long E sound.  

“Well, I’m not going to be the one to tell them,” he said as Lexie bumped her snout against his leg and whimpered.  “Ok girl,” he said looking down at her. “Time for walkies.”

He turned to head into the mud room, bagel in hand, to get Lexie’s collar and leash.  She was hot on his heels, ready to go, as always, for their morning walk.  

From the kitchen, his mother called out, “Be careful to check for ticks!”

“Always!” he replied.  ‘And the other creepy crawlies,’ he said to himself.  

After snapping her collar on, Timothy slung her leash around his neck.  He rarely needed to use it, as the woods they walked in felt more like a private land than public park.  Although he didn’t know the details, the bulk of the land they walked in had in fact been donated by his grandfather to the town with the provision that it could never be re-sold, subdivided, or developed.  

Lexie knew the woods as well as he did, as they had walked the same trails since she was a puppy and he was just ten years old.  Now six years later and 24 seasons, they both knew they could walk any of the trails blind-folded without so much as tripping over a tree root.

Walking out the back door, they rounded the side of the house and started toward the front.  Making their way down the slight slope of the front yard down to the road, Timothy slowed as he passed the giant white oak tree on his left which shaded much of the house from the late summer sun rising in front of it.  

He paused at the bottom and looked left toward the slate gray saltbox style Cornwallis House, in the distance across the road.  It sat at the corner of Van Holland Way and Cornwallis Street and was often referred to as ‘Four Oaks’ for the four massive red oak trees that guarded the house from the road like ancient sentries.  

On his right, just about a hundred yards away, was the dark red clapboard Britten House.  As much as he didn’t want to, he looked.  Its five top windows and four lower windows and a door face was vacant and quiet.  

His own home, with its Dutch colonial gambrel roof, light blue clapboards and dark blue shutters, Greek Revival portico, and floor to ceiling high first floor windows was the most unique of the three homes on this street.  Although modified and expanded over time, each was almost three hundred years old at their core, each sporting their original large central chimney.  

Lexie, standing next to him, whined again.  He looked down at her and given the way she was looking back up at him, he thought for a moment that she knew what he was thinking.  

Shaking it off, he said, “Ok, yeah. Let’s get going.”

They started across the road and as they approached the trailhead and the dark woods beyond, Timothy allowed himself one more glance toward the Britten House and thought again, “I wonder if they know?”