Nolander

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I stamped my boots on the concrete stoop. Clumps of gray slush fell off, speckled with crystals of rapidly softening ice.

“Betty! How you doing, sweetie?”

Fixing a smile on my face, I turned and waved to Suzanne Dreisbach, my next-door neighbor. Looked like she was just getting home from the store. She always shopped on Saturday afternoon. You could set your clock by Suzanne, she was so organized.

She waved back and gave me a bright smile, shifting the paper bag she was carrying from one ample hip to the other. Suzanne was a good neighbor. She’d come to my rescue with my spare key about a dozen times. I was good at locking myself out.

That said, I really hated being called “Betty.”

“I’m fine, Suzanne. How’re you today?”

“Can’t complain, can’t complain.”

Actually, Suzanne could complain like a champ. Her complaining was one of my guilty pleasures: she was a big gossip and always seemed to know something new about everybody in town. But I just wasn’t up for it at the moment. My toes were cold, and my nose had a big drip forming. If she got going, I’d be standing out here for half an hour.

“Good, good. Hey, sorry, gotta get my camera inside pronto — think it got damp out there in all this muck.”

Suzanne nodded obligingly and said we should get coffee tomorrow after church. That was nice — sometimes my weekends got lonely. I told her I’d come find her after the service.

I hung my coat up on the porch and left my boots out there too. Northern winters are tough on carpets. Grit, salt — once that stuff gets inside, you never really get rid of it.

I dumped my camera bag on the floor and padded through my little-used living room to the kitchen, where I turned the flame on under the kettle. Not ten minutes later, I was warmly settled in the den, feet curled under me, with a hot cup of tea and a cheese sandwich. I turned on the TV and channel-surfed a little. A very little — I couldn’t afford cable, so I only got a few stations.

I think my mind drifted.

I can’t really remember what I thought about. Probably it was on the gloomy side, what with the Matt thing weighing on me. No doubt I was grumpy about the weather. I might have worried about seeing my bitchy sister-in-law at church the next day. Maybe I wondered if I’d be able to cover my credit card balance that month, or if I was going to end up paying interest.

It sort of bothers me that I can’t really remember what I thought about. Those were the last moments of my old life. Of the old me, actually. I can almost think of that young woman on the couch as someone else. So let me just pause for a moment and mark her there, thinking about something of no consequence, living her boring, lonely, frustrating life — a life that had perks she didn’t recognize until they were gone.

* * *

Dorf is in north-central Wisconsin. That part of the state is farm country, and it’s sprinkled with towns like mine — little places where farmers can shop, drink, worship, and get a haircut. I’d grown up there and never left. I worked as a receptionist in a doctor’s office.

Well, to be more accurate, I lived in the same house I grew up in, and the doctor I worked for was the one who’d been listening to my heart and tapping on my knees since my mother brought me home from the hospital.

If you’re from a bigger city, this probably sounds too cute to be true. But that’s what life is like in plenty of small places like Dorf: there are only so many people, only so many houses, only so many jobs. Spend a few decades there, and you’ll be able to call the whole place up in your mind — not just the landscape and streets and buildings, but all the people, for better or worse. You’ll see their connections to one another in your mind’s eye. You’ll know their histories, stretching back like long, knotted tails. And you’ll be able to see their futures stretching ahead of them with nearly as much certainty.