The Promise of Paradise - By Allie Boniface Page 0,1

his resume. Ash had been replaced just like that, one day there and the next day gone, as if she’d never even existed in Colin’s life.

Jen elbowed her. “Take a look at this.”

With effort, Ash raised her head. Emerging from the cornflower blue house across the street was a short, stocky woman. White hair sprang out from her head in every direction, and she wore bright yellow gardening gloves. Without slowing, she marched down her walk and across the street. Up their crooked pavement she came, until she stopped in front of them. Though barely five feet tall, she towered over Ash and Jen sitting on the step, and Ash felt suddenly as if she were back in second grade, with an angry Miss Howard staring at her across a cluttered room. A frown carved the woman’s wrinkled face into disapproving lines, and beady brown eyes examined them. Ash wasn’t sure whether to laugh or run and hide.

The woman propped both hands on her hips and said nothing. Jen stood, and Ash followed. “Hi there. I’m Asht-Ashley Kirtland.” She corrected herself, changing her name at the last minute. With the Kirk name splashed across every paper in the Northeast, she didn't need anyone connecting her to it.

The woman nodded. “Helen Parker.” She pointed across the street. “Lived there for thirty-two years, this spring. I take care of this place and the one next door. You have any problems, come see me.” She paused and massaged one temple with a gnarled hand. “Up the block there, in the white house near the end, live the MacGregors. Hiram drinks too much, but his wife Sadie’s a doll, so no one says too much about it. He’s harmless, anyway.”

Ash slid a glance toward Jen. No secrets here. That didn’t bode well.

“Two houses down from that is Lanie Johnson’s. Used to be a Rockette, or some such thing, ‘til she busted her hip and ended up back here in Paradise. Had a man at one point, a while back, but he ran off two or three years ago.”

Helen paused to draw a breath. White flecks of spittle marked the edges of her mouth. “The rest of these homes are rentals, mostly to college kids during the year.” She narrowed her eyes, and Ash read the woman’s message loud and clear.

“I just graduated,” she explained, leaving off the bit about Harvard and law school. “I’m subletting for the next three months.”

Helen’s mouth relaxed a fraction. “Well, the other places are empty now.” Her gaze moved from the girls to the door behind them. “You’re the only ones living here this summer, far as I know.”

“Really?” Loneliness dropped a curtain over Ash’s hopes of finding new friends. Well, solitude was probably better if she hoped to figure out what direction her life was supposed to take now.

Helen reached into her front pocket and pulled out a key ring. Dangling it from two fingers, as if it were a dirty tissue, she held it out. “Square one’s for the front door. Smaller one’s for your door upstairs. And the silver one opens your mailbox.” She glanced at the solitary car by the curb. “Where’s the other one?”

Ash looked up from the keys, confused at the question. “I’m sorry?”

Helen puffed out a long breath of air. “The other tenant.” She rubbed her forehead with one hand, as if trying to pull the name from memory. “Edward something. Your downstairs housemate.”

“I have a housemate?” Ash looked at Jen, who grinned.

Helen had already headed down the front walk, but at the question, she turned back. “Of course. I thought you’d be arriving together.” She eyed the porch for a moment, and Ash read the look in her watery blue eyes: You better behave.

She stifled a laugh. “Thank you, Helen. Nice meeting you.”

The woman turned without replying and shuffled across the street, where she vanished beyond the sunflowers cloaking her front door.

“Cool. A housemate,” Jen said. “A male housemate.”

“Just what I need,” Ash said as she tried the key in the door. “Come on. We’ve got stuff to unpack.”

Chapter Two

“I wonder what he looks like,” Jen said as they pulled sheets and pillowcases from a cardboard box.

“He’s probably seventy-five years old, newly widowed, and blind in one eye.” Ash stood on the bed and stretched to hang a curtain over the back window.

Jen collapsed onto paisley-patterned pillows. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Find the worst in everything. He could be young and single, you know. Why not?”

Ash sat too. “Because if