Threading the Needle by Marie Bostwick

shingles in place was a thick layer of blackish green moss.
    If this was what the exterior looked like, I could only imagine the condition of the interior. My plan to spruce up the old place and resell the house in short order crumbled—and my confidence with it. This was going to be a huge project. I stood on the sidewalk making a mental to-do list and growing more discouraged by the second.
    Next door, at a house that used to belong to the McKenzies but was now a dental office, a door opened. A woman walked out, glancing curiously at me as she got into her car. Oak Leaf Lane was busier than it had been when I was a child. Half the houses on the street had been turned into offices. Lying low was going to prove harder than I’d imagined. Of course, standing out on the sidewalk surrounded by a pile of Louis Vuitton luggage wasn’t exactly helping me fly in under the radar.
    I opened the creaky garden gate and carried my bags up the pathway to the porch, noting that many of the bricks were either missing or crumbling to dust and that a web of weeds was growing between the others. The steps were sound. A couple of the boards were unpainted, as if they’d been replaced recently. The porch was a different story. The wooden planks felt soft under my feet, squashy and waterlogged. I walked carefully, testing each board before I stepped, wondering if they would support my weight.
    The key stuck in the lock, but after I jiggled it a few times it gave way with a metallic click. I carried my bags over the threshold and dropped them on the floor, raising a cloud of dust.
    The foyer was exactly as I remembered: dark, gloomy, cheerless. The wallpaper, with its rows of hideous brownish pink cabbage roses, was as ugly as it had been when I was a child, except now it was peeling in spots. A moldy smell permeated the room and made me sneeze. I reached out to flip on the light switch. Once. Twice. Three times. Nothing happened.
    â€œGreat! That’s just great!” I kicked one of my suitcases as hard as I could. “Sterling Baron! It’s a good thing you’re locked up in a nice, safe jail cell! Because if you were here I’d kick you into next week, you stupid, worthless, selfish son of a—”
    Maybe I imagined it, but somewhere on the upper floor of the old house, I could have sworn I heard a door slam. In my mind I heard the echo of her voice, her shrieking, incongruously loud and piercing graveled voice, dripping disapproval, as it always had.
    â€œWatch your mouth! I will not put up with that kind of filthy talk, do you hear me? Come here. I’m going to slap you into next week. Don’t you dare back away when I tell you to come! If you can’t clean up your mouth, then I’ll just have to do it for you.”
    My cheek burned hot and angry from the memory of those slaps and an acrid taste filled my mouth, the flavor of humiliation, soap, and hatred.
    I spun around, grabbed an edge of peeling wallpaper, and pulled as hard as I could. A wide, jagged strip came away from the wall with a satisfying rip, exposing a patch of white amid the thorny stems and leaves of hideous brown.

4
    Tessa
    A fter breakfast, I walked Lee to his truck, a beat-up green and white heap named Mustang Sally he’d bought for eight hundred dollars and a she-goat.
    The tires were newish and there was only a little rust on the bed, which is why Lee thought it was a steal, even though it didn’t run. The man who sold it to him towed it to our place. After spending three weeks under the hood and three hundred and fifty dollars in replacement parts, the engine ran, loudly. Idling, Mustang Sally sounds like a snowblower on steroids. When she’s in gear it’s worse. I think Lee likes it that way.
    He also likes Spitz, our black-and-white border collie, who was sitting up in the back of the truck, tongue out, eyes bright, excited about taking a ride. Spitz is another of Lee’s quirky finds. He bought