The house walk is in three days, and Linnea and Alan’s grass is over two feet tall. That’s my focus Kate tells herself, not last night’s fight or that Doug hasn’t called. He’ll call, she thinks walking up Linnea’s shabby veranda steps, still damp from the morning rain. She isn’t the only neighbor to complain about Linnea, but she is the only one living next door to the miserable Queen Anne on the corner lot. A job offer, a sick relative, a lottery win, anything to take them away, she thinks. Normally Kate dodges her, knowing she’ll be trapped on the sidewalk listening to Linnea go on about her latest award from some civic group or summer sabbatical in Paris, but this can no longer be avoided. When Kate rings the bell, the door flies open, and Linnea falls into her arms, sobbing.

“My God,” Kate says, catching her.

“It’s shitty. Shitty. Shitty. Shitty.”

Bewildered, Kate pats the older woman’s back. “What’s wrong?”

Linnea gasps like she’s choking on smoke. “Harvard just named the top ten public health experts in the country. I’m not on the list.”

“Oh.” The nature of the emergency dawns on Kate. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the thigh-high weeds in the side yard. “You didn’t get an honor?”

“It’s more than that. It’s an oversight committee to congress. The contacts alone.” Linnea unwraps herself from Kate, wiping her nose on the back of her hand.  “I should’ve been in the top two, top three easily.”

Kate remembers not making the cheerleading squad once. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s just … I can’t tell you how disappointing it is. I thought for sure this was a lock. And on top of everything with Alan right now.”

Balding Alan in his gray bathrobe, coffee mug in hand, meek until he’s screaming profanities at Linnea. Take it inside like everybody else, Kate wants to yell during their fights.

“Oh my God,” Linnea turns and walks into the house, sobbing. Kate hesitates, but it’s clear she’s to follow. Covering her nose with her hand, Kate steps in. She’s being obvious about the reeking cat litter, but no longer cares after putting up with Linnea for the last three years. A national expert on public health policy and esteemed professor at Washington, Linnea doesn’t concern herself with things like mowing grass or fixing the broken front gate. The place is falling apart, but oh, the bones. Such great bones, Kate thinks following Linnea past an oak-carved staircase. In the living room, there are twin marble fireplaces, a pale blue crystal chandelier and water stains on the walls indicating nothing good. Old beach towels hang as curtains, and two worn-out sofas, their beige material, thick and knotted with grime, sit side by side. They remind Kate of college couches, the kind you donate to the Salvation Army as soon as you get your second real paycheck. From the outside, the house looks almost abandoned. The Tyvek covering the southern face for the past two years is now old and tattered. One window is completely boarded up in the back. Neighborhood kids call it the Spook House. Kate suspects Linnea likes it, being known as eccentric. When she told Linnea she’d seen a squirrel climb through their attic window last spring, Linnea explained that Franklin, her dark, lanky teenage son who never said hello, had chipped a golf ball through the window, somehow leaving a perfectly round hole. “Kids,” she shrugged. “Franklin’s good with them, though. If Izzy ever wants a pet squirrel, you know where to come ...”

The neighborhood, dating back to the 1830s, has gone through booms and busts like the rest of the country, its last sad slide in the seventies. There’d been a couple of modest resurgences, but it wasn’t until the late nineties and early two-thousands the neighborhood got hot again with young, cash-flush couples snapping up crumbling mansions and spit-shining them back to grandeur. That’s what Kate and Doug, or more precisely Kate, has done. Their 1841 Greek Revival, with its soaring columns and bi-level porches, has been renovated down to its last inch. Floors ripped out, wood stripped, staircases rebuilt. To the back, Kate’s added a family room, kitchen and master suite. All five fireplaces work now. The crumbling sidewalk in the front has been transformed into an elegant bluestone way. From the wildness in the backyard, Kate’s reclaimed a small, formal English garden. Every fix is a validation she’s done something beautiful, worthwhile. When Kate told Doug she wasn’t coming back to work to care for Izzy, she lied. She stayed for the house. The faucets, sinks, toilets, lights, windows, stain, paint: every day the house asks questions Kate can answer. Other questions she’s grown less certain of. Buying the same groceries week after week, changing diapers, washing clothes is a refuge. She answers to no one but a three-year-old. And yet, sometimes, Kate shocks herself thinking she could put Izzy down for a nap, walk out the door and never come back.

Linnea’s sobs grow softer as she walks through the walnut-paneled dining room. Folding chairs surround a long card table littered with stacks of newspapers; an ugly yellow globe chandelier from the seventies hangs over it all. Tucked in the corner is a green marble fireplace. Original. Linnea pushes through a heavy swinging door to the kitchen. The old maple floorboards moan under her tread. Several full trash bags wait by the back door to go out; the stove is missing all of its knobs. Bowls of mushy cereal sit on the green and gold linoleum counter along side half-empty cups of cold, murky coffee. In here, the walls are yellowed with grease. I’d die before I’d let my house get to this, Kate thinks.

“Would you like some tea?” Linnea asks, filling a teakettle in the overflowing sink.

Kate stares in disbelief as Linnea uses pliers to turn the gas on. She’s a small woman with dark skin, dark features. A runner still in her early sixties. Doug’s said more than once she must’ve been beautiful when she was younger. “No thanks,” Kate says.

“I miss New York.” Linnea wipes a cup out with her sleeve. “Nobody here drinks tea. Well, hot tea, that is.” Linnea smiles, nods at the kitchen table for Kate to sit. It too is littered with papers and books. “I don’t know what to do. Alan won’t find a job. He certainly isn’t taking care of anything here.”

Kate tries to pry a piece of congealed something, cheese maybe, off a wobbly chair that has seen better days.

“I’m giving lectures at the most exclusive universities in the world, meeting people in private clubs, and I come home to this? I know he’s depressed, but this is nuts. Do you know what he’s been doing?” Linnea drops her voice. “Porn. All day. On-line. Thousands and thousands of dollars of porn.”

“Oh God,” Kate says, thinking of what they could’ve done to the house with thousands and thousands of dollars.

“That son-of-a-bitch stopped making house payments.”

“You’re not going to lose the house, are you?” Kate feels a little guilty for the question, but only a little.

“I’ve managed to smooth it over with the bank,” Linnea sighs and dunks a tea bag into her black coffee mug. “We’re going to sell the mantles, catch us back up.”

“But they’re original,” Kate says.

“Well, what else am I supposed to do?”

Leave, Kate implores silently.

“Alan’s mother would die, if she knew. She thought he was going to be a judge,” Linnea laughs, wiping a tear from her eye. “Doug’s such a go-getter. I envy you that.”

Kate brushes an imaginary crumb off her shorts. It was by chance she’d met Doug, a junior account executive, the first day she temped as a receptionist at Fleishman-Hillard. Two years later when she left with him to start their own agency, her boss said she was crazy. She’d worked her way up from receptionist to account executive. But Doug had been the reason she’d come in early every day and taken on extra assignments. She didn’t love PR, but being at work had meant seeing him. She’d liked his big face and light brown hair and the way he walked in each morning, already absorbed in his day, a faint smile on his lips. Kate clears her throat. “We have the normal ups and downs.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call this normal.”

Kate nods. She doesn’t want Linnea’s truth. She doesn’t want her own truth. That she and Doug fight about spending money on the house, or that he’s never around or that she hasn’t given him a date for coming back to work. Or that last night’s fight had been about Linnea herself. Clean with Love had been Kate’s baby. She’d launched it before having Izzy. Free washing machines in poor, rural communities. Brilliant in its simplicity. It had been a PR homerun for P&G and the agency, winning award after award. So when Doug told her he’d asked Linnea of all people to join the charity’s board, it pushed their tepid spat about emptying the dishwasher into open hostilities. Maybe he was trying to rile up her territorial instincts. Or maybe he really did think Linnea was better suited. Whatever his intention, he’d ended up sleeping in his office downtown last night.

“Doug reminds me so much of my first husband. In a good way,” Linnea adds.

Kate works to keep the surprise out of her voice. “You were married before?”

“Eight years. Happy years. Then Ed just walked in one day and said he was done.” Linnea puts her mug on the table. “That’s when I went back to school. To fill the nights. Next thing I knew I had a masters. Then a PhD.” She gives a half laugh. “If we’d stayed married, I’d probably still be a homemaker.”

You are insufferable, Kate thinks, smiling politely.

Walking back from Linnea’s, Kate finds every stuffed animal Izzy owns lined up in the backyard, a procession in pink and purple fur. Kate sighs; Amy, the pale, neighbor girl who watches Izzy in the mornings, never picks up a toy or washes a plate. She’s too pre-occupied with leaving for Sarah Lawrence in the fall, talking about it incessantly. Kate understands, but still it would be nice not to have to scrape eggs out of the pan every day. She watches her daughter squeeze Amy’s neck and sloppily kiss her goodbye. To be so easy in love. “How long do you think you’ll be gone?” That had been Doug’s first question when Kate told him she was pregnant. The question hadn’t been a surprise; the plan had been to grow the agency first, then start a family. Still, he’d been the one to lock his door and push her up against it after the Blue Cross Blue Shield win, his hands on her hips. He’d pulled up her Chanel skirt, the lucky one she wore for big meetings, just as he had the first time they’d had sex back in his office at Fleishman. Afterward he’d sighed contently. “What?” she asked, but he shook his head. She poked him in the ribs. “I’m happy,” he’d said grabbing her hand, “just happy.” The agency was quiet; computers lit up the darkened offices. The impromptu party celebrating the win was long over. People had moved onto to bars or their homes for the rest of the night, but Kate and Doug had stayed, dozing until Kate woke him at midnight to go home.

Kate heads in to start lunch. What had been the surprise was Doug himself. His skipping of her ob/gyn appointments and mean-spirited jokes about women giving birth in fields. If the Vietnamese could do it … He’s just scared, she had told herself. She puts two soy corn dogs on the pan, then adds another. Not because she likes them, but because it’s easier than fixing something different for herself. Begrudgingly, Doug had met with the architect to redo the kitchen, but soon the renovation became Kate’s sole responsibility. As she swelled in pregnancy, the house swelled in men. The day Kate went into labor, there were six of them there, hammering, measuring, sanding. Linnea’s dog was digging holes in the front yard, and Doug was in Chicago. He did ninety down Interstate 55 and made it with half an hour to spare. She’d been wrong about him, fearing he’d be resentful of the baby as he had been of her during the pregnancy, but Doug held Izzy and cooed to her the first minutes of her life as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Now through a wall of windows, she watches their baby march around the backyard in princess high heels, talking on her Barbie cell, her dark blonde curls bobbing up and down with every step. The real phone startles Kate. It’s Doug, he’s taking Izzy out to dinner, he says; he’ll have her home by eight. Izzy’s bedtime is seven-thirty, but Kate doesn’t say a word. After they hang up, she thinks of something to say; she can’t bring herself to call him back. Instead, she calls the landscaping company. Her heart races making the arrangements. She pushes out of her mind what Doug would say.

“Noooooo,” Izzy says, not quite a scream, but defiant enough, never taking her eyes off Kate as she climbs off the kitchen stool. “Nooooo corn dogs.” How could Izzy hate something she loved last week? When had she had the time to grow such disdain? Kate watches her child pick up one of the black Asian stools, taller than she is, and awkwardly carry it over to the sink. It’s one of Izzy’s new favorites things. The sink. Kate takes another bite of corn dog. At least, it’s been a good day with Izzy. The fight with Doug has mellowed Kate. She hasn’t lost it over toys being all over the floor or yelled at Izzy for getting finger paint on her clothes. Would it have been so terrible if it had come naturally? Parenting? Marriage? The days were boring, but the ones after she’d been a monster, screaming at her three-year-old, were the loneliest. Those were the days she missed the agency, the physical separation of work and home.

Kate pushes the corn dog through a pool of ketchup on her plate. Izzy chatters to herself, pouring water from one big plastic tumbler into another over and over. Playing out some quotidian version of me, Kate thinks. Of course, she could’ve gone back to the agency. But things were different now. No matter how thoughtfully Doug asked for her opinion on a campaign or a client, he’d abandoned her when she’d needed him most. So it was easy when the head of the St. Louis Garden Club, Cotton Williams, called last year and asked if Kate might be interested in putting their house on the annual Fourth of July walk. Kate had said yes at once, thankful for the distraction.

That night, Kate sits on the English tithing bench by the stairs listening to Doug’s footsteps overhead. Back and forth they go as he tucks Izzy in for bed. After construction ended last fall, Kate had filled the house with plush sofas, graceful paintings of poppy fields, delicate nudes. She put a pre-war baby grand in the music room and hung framed covers of herself and Doug on The St. Louis Entrepreneur, then Doug alone on PR Midwest and St. Louis Business Journal. With the house, there was satisfaction, a progress Kate could check off a list. Doug would sometimes question her changes through email, protesting costs. The man who fought her two weeks over curtain rods now sings a song about roller-skating elephants, sending his daughter into giggles. “Moh, Daddy, moh,” Izzy shouts, and Doug launches into another round, deeper and louder than before. Is he so happy away from her, he can sing, Kate wonders? His heart is full of song? “You sleeping downtown again?” Kate asks when he comes down the stairs.

“Yep.” Doug’s voice is tight.

Kate wants to say it’s raining cats and dogs. She shakes her head.

“Get through the house walk; we’ll talk after that,” he says.

As the door closes behind him, Kate fumes. It isn’t her. It’s him. He’s the one who’s supposed to come running back.

The next morning Cotton Williams points out the marble fireplace to the St. Louis News and Observer reporter. She’d practically giggled when she’d called Kate about the feature the paper wanted to do on the tour, specifically Kate’s house. Cotton’s hair, dark and bobbed, falls about her face as she shows off the mantle’s floral carvings. She motions to the photographer. “How about a picture of Kate and I by the fireplace?”

Kate walks over smiling. Cotton, in a cream pencil skirt and sling-back heels, is a throwback to a more stylish era. Somewhere in her early fifties, she’s an attractive, pleasing woman. And yet, one gets the sense she’s not to be messed with, Kate thinks, looking at her as the doorbell rings. Kate’s heart flutters. Maybe Doug’s misplaced his keys. Leaving the room, she hears Cotton discussing the importance of preserving such houses.

“Do you know anything about these guys?” Linnea gestures to the four Hispanic men mowing her yard.

Not Doug. Linnea.

Kate lies. “It’s the garden club. They’re getting the yards ready for the house walk.”

“Oh, yeah, Doug mentioned something about that.”

“You talked to Doug?”

“Yesterday.”

Kate nods, taking it in. Doug had talked to her. “I’m sorry, Linnea, I have to go. There’s a reporter here doing a story on the house.”

“Do you realize,” Linnea says, sweeping past her into the foyer, “it’s been over a year since I’ve been in here?” In a dirty t-shirt and running shorts, Linnea looks like she’s been doing yard work. If only. It takes her about thirty seconds to find the library and the reporter. “Hasn’t Katie done an incredible job?” she says walking into the room. “I’m Linnea, the next-door neighbor. We’re doing a little bit of renovation too, but nothing like this.”

Linnea and Alan’s renovation. In her office, Kate has a file three-inches thick on the cleanup they had to do after Linnea and Alan’s workers used blowtorches and scrapers to take off paint. When Kate had removed paint, men in HVAC suits placed an enormous black tent over their house. It had cost close to $30,000, but the EPA-registered company had assured her not a speck of lead would escape. Kate has pictures of Linnea and Alan’s painters, Mexicans in overalls and bandanas, blowing the toxic blue chips into her yard with leaf blowers. She has a log of futile calls to city and state agencies, to Linnea and Alan, too. After a single afternoon on the front porch, Izzy’s stroller, a beautiful English perambulator Kate had ordered online, tested a thousand times over the government limit for lead. It was less than a month old when Kate took a sledgehammer to it so no one would reclaim it from the trash. Kate has another file about the asbestos tiles Linnea and Alan chucked the year before that.

“What are you doing to your home?” the reporter asks. She’s young, barely out of college, her auburn hair slicked back in a sharp ponytail.

“Oh, nothing like this. Mainly just the facade, but we are doing it green.”

“Really? Green?” Kate laughs and sees Cotton look at her askance.

“You know how I am about the environment.” Linnea looks at Kate hurt, as if they were the best of friends. “I teach public health at Washington for goodness sakes!”

“I’ve been trying to pitch a story about green architecture to my editor!” the reporter says.

“You should talk to my brother. He’s a rather famous architect in L.A. Really big in the green movement.”

Kate forces a smile. “I’ve never heard you mention a brother before.”

“Oh, he’s brilliant. I may have a PhD, but he’s considered the smart one in the family.” Linnea turns to the reporter. “I can give him a call if you like.”

Clearly excited, the girl grins. “There was an article about this in the Times last week.”

“Well I always say, don’t just read about it, see it,” Linnea says.

The reporter turns to the photographer, an older, bulky man who looks bored out of his mind. “We’re done here, don’t you think?”

Cotton’s pale hand sidles up to the pearls around her neck. “This is the marquee house on the tour.”

“We’ve got way more than we need,” the man says.

The girl turns back to Cotton. “It’ll be in tomorrow’s Lifestyle section.”

Linnea claps her hands. “All right then!” She turns and the reporter and photographer follow her out. As they leave, Kate overhears her say, “You know, I was in the Times myself last week. I was a speaker at the Earth conference in Rome.”

By 10:00 a.m. the morning of the house walk, the rain has stopped, and the clouds have cleared. The temperature is a sticky ninety-two. St. Louis in the summer. Kate worries what heat might do to turnout, but Cotton brushes it aside, the veteran of more than a dozen house walks. She’s seen it all. Rain is bad; heat not so much.

As Kate and a curious, but shy Izzy leave, garden club ladies fussily position cherry tomatoes and Brussels sprouts on a chessboard in the library. Two elderly women Kate’s never seen before, both well into their seventies, talk about how cute Izzy is while arranging hydrangea and viburnum in a stockpot on her range. Another, younger team lays fresh sod on a plastic liner in the foyer. Kate bribes Izzy with Oreos to keep her off the grass “rug.” The tiny, round green Kermit mums covering the piano bench and lining the black piano keys of the baby grand are Kate’s favorite. The dozen or so women buzzing about are like elves come to life Kate thinks, transforming her house into the pied-á-terre of better, bolder version of herself. Everything is familiar, yet fantastical at the same time. Kate’s exhausted, but satisfied. She’s been up since four herself, spot cleaning what Lupe had already done the day before. On her way out, Cotton hugs her, her onyx and gold bracelets clinking on her bony wrist. “Guess whom I got a call from last night?” she asks, then answers before Kate can. “House Beautiful. The features editor saw the Observer. She’s interested in doing a piece on your home!”

“You’re kidding.”

Cotton winks. “I never kid on House Walk day.”

Leaving, Kate looks at Linnea’s yard one last time. She probably shouldn’t have called the landscaping company—completely out of character for her—but it was nice not to have worry about it. All day, Cotton sends texts. “FABULOUS!!!” “BIG HIT!!!” “HUGE CROWDS!!!” With each, Kate drops her head to hide her grin. She reads books to Izzy in the library, takes her to lunch, pushes her on a park swing. Izzy starts the day singing in her baby doll’s voice, “I love Mommy! I love Mommy,” but by mid-afternoon she’s had it. Kicking her thick little legs and screaming at the top of her lungs, she’s mad at the sun, her mother, her missing nap. Kate has promised to stay out of the house until 5:00, but she simply has no choice, she thinks forcing Izzy into the stroller. She figures she can slip around the back to the basement door. It’s not on the tour, and she can lay Izzy out on the sectional in the playroom. Maybe she can close her eyes, too.

As they get closer, Kate’s pace slows. There are about twenty people standing on her lawn in clusters of twos and threes, some looking at brochure maps, others at the house. It’s a good crowd. By the front door, a docent in a folding chair hands out thin, cotton footies for visitors. This pleases Kate, her work being protected. Two women in breezy skirts walk down the porch steps. They stop and look back at the wrap-around porch, pointing at the giant Boston ferns Kate has grown herself. Doug had wanted to have parties, big parties; that had been their plan when they’d sat fully clothed in their claw-foot tub, drinking champagne the afternoon of their closing. And now, there never would be. Had she just been getting the house ready to sell this whole time? Kate squeezes her eyes shut. Cotton had warned her about the reactions homeowners could have to seeing strangers in their home. She should’ve gotten a hotel room. Or driven around until Izzy fell asleep and parked around the block. Suddenly anxious for anonymity, Kate tries blending in with the crowd. Thankfully, Izzy’s started to doze. She can carry her inside in the stroller, let her sleep in that. She’s almost to the side path when she sees a group of older women looking over the hedge at Linnea’s, and Kate will swear later, laughing. She stops dead, her heart pounding. Slowly, as if in a dream, she turns Izzy’s stroller back toward Linnea’s. Between the two old massive oaks on the front lawn, hangs a white plastic line. Thin cotton t-shirts, jeans and bras are pinned to it alongside a familiar pair of men’s grey briefs. In a cold rage, Kate parks Izzy in the yard and pulls the underwear down. They’re nearly dry, which means the clothes have been out all day. Izzy wakes whimpering, irritated at the stop in motion, but Kate continues tearing down clothes and towels until everything is off the line, either in her arms or on the neatly trimmed lawn. More people gather on the sidewalk between the houses. Kate can hear everything, the crowd’s murmurs, Izzy’s cries, her own breathing as she storms up Linnea’s steps. When Linnea opens the door, Kate thrusts the clothes at her. “Of all the days.”

“Hi?” Linnea says.

Kate ignores the confusion in Linnea’s voice. “Why do you have my husband’s underwear?”

“They’re Franklin’s,” Linnea almost laughs, then sees the gathering crowd on the sidewalk. “Why don’t you come inside, Kate? Tell me what’s wrong,” she says quietly.

Faintly at first, then growing in volume until it pierces the side of her head like an ax, Kate hears Izzy scream. Exhausted, she looks at Linnea. “Why can’t you just go away?” she finally says. Her head ringing, Kate walks down the steps to Izzy, kisses her hot, wet cheeks, and pushes her screaming child back onto the sidewalk, away from Linnea, away from home, and away from everybody she does and does not know.

“Eventually it’ll die down,” Cotton says again the next night.  “These things always do.”

Kate stands in Cotton’s festooned doorway with Izzy on her hip. Even though it’s Fourth of July, it’s really the house-walk party. The fireworks haven’t started yet, but Kate’s leaving. She’d come; she’d shown her face. Now she was going home to take an Ambien. She laughs nervously, “I still don’t know what came over me.”

“I’m sure.” Cotton smiles.

Kate can tell she’s crossed a line somewhere never to be crossed back over. There will be no story in House Beautiful, no invitation to join the Garden Club or co-chair the walk some year. Cotton’s relief at Kate’s departure is palpable.

“Have you spoken to your neighbor?” Cotton asks.

“No, they left for vacation this morning. At least, that’s what she told Doug last week.”

“Oh.” Cotton purses her lips together.

“Well,” Kate says filling the humid pause, “great party.”

Cotton, the consummate hostess, hands her a red Solo cup. “One for the road.”

Kate smiles and takes the drink.

“Happy fourth of July,” Cotton says, discharging Kate smoothly. She turns back to her party before Kate has a chance to say good-bye.

Sipping the margarita slowly, Kate walks the tenebrous streets home. Occasionally, a bottle rocket pierces the symphony of crickets, but it’s generally still. Most people are already down at the Arch. Izzy twists and turns, fighting sleep. Poor child isn’t used to peace and quiet, Kate thinks. A group of high-school kids pass, headed somewhere for some party. She’d been like that once. Certain of everything. The unmistakable warmth of tequila enters her bloodstream, multiplying the drink she’d had earlier. Cotton’s caterer poured them strong. In the distance, an amateur starts his own fireworks show. Her hands and lips tingle. When had she become this person? This wishy-washy, middle-aged woman? She feels drunk, pathetic. Whoever put cup holders on strollers is a genius, she thinks. If Doug does leave, if she has to move, at least there’ll be no more Linnea next door. The woman was oblivious, obnoxious in her ambition, and yet, the very things Kate hated about her, Doug loved. The thought stills her mind. She’d said it on a whim. That they should start their own agency. She’d pretended to be somebody else, somebody bold to impress him, and that’s whom he’d fallen in love with. Somebody fearless. Hell, maybe she really had been fearless. In the breezeless night, the old oaks stand motionless. Kate crosses the street. There’s just one house left to pass. In the dark and at this angle, it looks almost normal, grand even. She can’t see the side that’s wrapped in Tyvek, nor the shudders lying in the bushes. She’d been fearless before the ordinariness of life had taken her over. But isn’t that what was supposed to happen? Weren’t you supposed to settle? No, she auto corrects. Settle down is what she meant. She breathes deep and exhales looking at Linnea’s. For her marriage’s sake, Izzy’s sake, she’ll let it go. She let it all go. Turning to leave, she hears a loud POP! POP! POP! of fireworks coming from somewhere high inside the house.

“Good God, what now,” Kate mutters, but freezes when she hears the familiar screech of Linnea’s front door. A group of six or so boys runs out, illuminated by the porch light. The illogicalness of it befuddles her; Linnea and Alan are supposed to be in Cape Cod. She jerks Izzy’s stroller behind the prickly hedge between the two houses and crouches down, spilling her margarita. The child stirs but doesn’t wake as the boys, like pool balls in a hard opening break, disperse in opposite directions. She can tell from the streetlamp they’re just kids, no more than twelve or thirteen, and they’re not coming back. More scared of me than I am of them, she tells herself. She should do something. Call somebody, but she remains still. Her thighs burn; she listens for anything. Crickets and the hum of air conditioners fill her ears. Random fireworks pierce the windless sky. Slowly Kate stands and scans the street. The boys are gone. It’s only when she turns back, she sees the vaporous coil pushing its way through the hole in the attic window. It’s like a snake, thick and black, twisting up and out into the night air. She watches it and calculates the windless night, the spate of recent rain, the forty feet of harbor between her home and Linnea’s. Understandably, a thrill courses through her body. It’s been so long since she’s known exactly what she’s going to do. Just a few more seconds, she tells herself. Just a few more seconds until the first good flame.