houses is a metaphor for the work he’s done on himself.
“Seriously, I’ve matured so much,” he says, “in the last six years especially.”
That was when he first witnessed the power of transforming something shabby into something where a person can make a life.
“Oh, check this out,” he says, and as he slows, I look out the window, ready to nod at the next house he shows me. But he’s gesturing ahead, pointing to a man walking on the side of the road, dressed in black pants, black boots, and a black raincoat, the hood pulled up even though it’s sun, not rain, that gushes. Looking at him makes a trickle of sweat run down my leg.
“Have you met our drifter?” Cooper asks. He’s driving so slowly a squirrel could outpace us.
“Drifter?” I echo. “No.”
He points again, his finger arrow-stiff. “This guy. He showed up a few weeks ago. No one knows who he is, but he walks around all day, dressed like that. And watch, if you try to talk to him…” Cooper leans his head out the window. “Hey!” he shouts. “Who are you? What the hell are you doing here?”
The man darts into the woods like a startled deer. By the time we pass him, I can’t even see him through the trees.
“Maybe he’s homeless and you should leave him alone,” I say, but my pulse feels like somebody’s plucking it.
“Nah,” Cooper says, “he’s not homeless. I asked Peg at The Diner—because she helps out at the soup kitchen, you know? And she said no one there’s ever seen him come in. So…” He takes a left onto Ted’s road. “He’s got to have a story. All he does is walk back and forth along the edge of the woods all day.” He glances at me out of the corner of his eye. “You better watch out, Brierley. Lord knows there’s plenty of woods on your street. Hey—in fact…”
He slams his foot on the gas and we whoosh by Ted’s driveway, zoom on down the road. My heart’s in my throat as I grab the door handle. I see a flash of Astrid, wonder if I’m about to share her fate. Was she taken like this the second time? Did someone offer her a ride home, only to speed her away?
“What are you doing?” I manage.
He doesn’t answer. Just drives another few hundred yards before turning the wheel sharply and barreling straight toward the woods. My hand leaps to the ceiling of his truck. My foot slams against the floor, instinctively searching for the brake. He’s not stopping. He isn’t going to stop. I clench my teeth and squeeze my eyes shut. Wait for the impact that will break my legs, my spine.
The pickup jerks over uneven ground, but it doesn’t hit anything. Branches scrape against the truck. I open one eye, then the other, and I see that we’re driving along a path. A narrow lane has been carved out between the trees, bumpy and overgrown, but a passageway nonetheless. I can’t speak yet; my lungs are still heaving too hard. I can only watch as we slice through the woods, nothing but green forest ahead of us until we crest over a tiny hill, pull around a bend, and suddenly there’s a house.
“Here we are,” Cooper says. He lurches to a stop and turns off the engine.
Did Astrid scratch and claw? Did she kick and punch and push and bite? Or did her body betray her? Did she forget how to scream? How to fight?
“What do you think?” Cooper asks. “It’s my dream flip.”
I look at him. He’s gazing at the house through the windshield, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips. He sighs as he shakes his head, his face full of awe.
I relax my shoulders. Let out my breath.
The house is a small, two-story cabin. Its front porch sags in the middle, its windows are boarded up and shutterless, and the roof is blanketed with moss. The wood siding is covered in mold spores—and I know, even without seeing them, that the floorboards inside are damp and rotted.
“It’s owned by the town,” Cooper says, soft and reverent. “Hardly anyone knows it’s back here. I bet you didn’t either, did you?”
I shake my head.
“Exactly,” he says, “and you lived right down the street.”
But I stayed away from the woods. Even when I walked down our driveway, which skirts along the trees, I kept as far away as I could manage, turning my back