Phin and I had been joking about eating our neighbors. But underneath that joke was a streak of worry that maybe we wouldn’t be able to buy enough food, and maybe we would have to defend ourselves from desperate people, and maybe the infrastructure would break down and we’d have to rely on extreme measures to stay healthy and safe and nourished.

  Because you can’t count on Big Business, or the Government, to take care of you. They’re too busy watching their own backs.

  I didn’t make friends easily. Maybe I was hard to get along with. Maybe I expected too much from others.

  Maybe something in me was irreparably broken, and incapable of being loved.

  But it couldn’t hurt to make an ally during the pandemic. And discussing firearms would help us bond as neighbors, as long as we were quick about it.

  I pulled my gun and held it in front of me, pointing the barrel down. “It’s a Smith & Wesson 986. L-frame, titanium cylinder, red ramp sights.”

  “It’s big. A .357?”

  “9mm.”

  “I thought 9mm ammo was for semi-automatics. Don’t the rounds fall out of the cylinder because they have no rim?”

  He knew guns. “I use moon clips.”

  “Is that like a speedloader? You drop in all six at a time?”

  My cylinder held seven, not six, but I just nodded rather than get into the I thought revolvers only held five or six bullets conversation that always happened when I mentioned this weapon.

  “What are you carrying? A Browning?”

  He smiled. “The young lady knows quality when she sees it. This is a Browning BBS Sidelock. I bought it new. Almost forty years old and still the gold standard for side-by-side shotguns.”

  “What’s the engraving on the sides?”

  Larry squinted at it. “That’s some custom work. A scene from the Book of Jeremiah. Do you read your Bible, Jack?”

  “I don’t discuss religion or politics, Larry.”

  “Understandable. This country has become divisive. It’s a shame that people can’t discuss their differences with civility and respect. Of course, that’s mostly because of the woke libtards and the racist alt-right.”

  Good thing there were centrists who didn’t pass judgment.

  “Thank you again for the cookies, Larry.”

  “My pleasure. Thank you for the toilet paper. What an unusual thing for people to hoard. Have you heard the parable of the long spoons?”

  This was what I’d been worried about, being trapped in uncomfortable, banal conversation.

  “Maybe some other time. I have to get back and help with supper.”

  “This is a quickie. In hell, there is a giant banquet table filled with every delicious food imaginable. But the only way to eat is with utensils that are several feet long, so everyone is miserable and goes hungry. In heaven, same setup. Everyone seated at a huge table stacked with food, everyone gets unwieldy utensils to eat with. But in heaven, all are happy, because they are feeding each other.”

  He smiled, getting a faraway look in his eyes.

  “Very nice,” I began walking away.

  “It’s all about what we make of our situations,” he explained.

  “I caught that. Have a good night, Larry.”

  “You too, Jacqueline.”

  When I got back to my house, Sam was in her pajamas and sitting on the sofa, eating a basket of chicken nuggets with her father as they watched anime.

  I plopped down next to them and picked up a nugget. “This is your amazing dinner?”

  “Sam, is dinner amaze-balls?”

  “It’s amaze-balls. You need to dip it in the applesauce, Mom.”

  I gave it a shot.

  It wasn’t amaze-balls.

  Mr. Friskers, aka He Who Hates Practically Everything, hopped onto the couch and curled up on Sam’s lap. Other than my elderly mother, the only person that cat deigned worthy enough to pet him was Sam. As my daughter stroked his fur, he quickly fell asleep.

  I liked snuggling on the couch with my family, but anime wasn’t my thing, and as I ate my attention wandered.

  Our house had a lot of windows. They had curtains, courtesy of the previous owners, but made of thin, opaque fabric that left a slit open in the middle.

  A slit that a Peeper could see through.

  “We need new window dressings,” I announced.

  “We can add it to the ever-growing remodel and repair list.”

  “When is my swing set coming, Dad?”

  “Everything is delayed because of COVID, sweetheart. But it should be very soon.” Phin turned to me. “Morning jog tomorrow. You in?”

  “Out. Still too cold.”

  Plus, as much as I loved my husband, I liked the alone time in the morning. It was the only hour in the day I had totally to myself.

  “I’ll jog with you, Dad.”

  “You couldn’t keep up with me, pumpkin. I’m like the Flash. But when I get back, we can lift some weights in the basement.”

  “I hate the basement. Can’t you bring the weights upstairs?”

  “I can’t. Your mean old mother won’t let me.”

  “Mom?”

  “Weights stay downstairs. Is there any sort of vegetable to go with these amaze-balls chicken nuggets?”

  Without taking his eyes off the TV, Phin handed me a bag of chips.

  “Potatoes are a vegetable,” he said before I could complain.

  I ate some chips. We’d spent all day putting up shelves, which was as much fun as it sounds, and even though it was his turn to cook, I couldn’t blame him for taking the easy way out. I hadn’t been this tired in a while.

  But it was the good kind of tired. When I worked Homicide, exhaustion meant bone-weary futility and jaded depression. Though my muscles were sore and I remained daunted by our enormous to-do list, I was where I wanted to be, with the people I wanted to be with.

  Being happy was still a new feeling. But I was growing to enjoy it, rather than waiting for it to be violently taken from me.

  If I probed my dormant pessimistic streak, that sounded a lot like foreshadowing.

  LARRY

  After hanging the shotgun on the rack above the fireplace mantle, Larry went back to the kitchen and found a cotton cloth and a spray bottle of water. He sat in a chair next to his Ficus, and began to spray the leaves and wipe off the dust.

  “Our new neighbors are going to be a problem, Rita.”

  Rita didn’t respond. She’d been ignoring him lately.

  It didn’t bother Larry.

  Nothing bothered Larry. Not Rita’s silent treatment. Not his nosy new neighbors.

  Larry was very good at dealing with problems.

  The Sickness forced one to adapt, or die.

  Larry was a survivor. No matter the cost.

  He checked his watch, noting the date.

  “Soon, Rita. We’ll do it soon.”

  Blood would visit. That would be nice.

  Always good to have company.

  Larry sat at his kitchen table, opening the picnic basket, putting together a care package.

  A teddy bear. Girls love teddy bears.

  A jar of homemade raspberry preserves.

  A pound of pink Himalayan sea salt in a wax bag with a ribbon around it.

  A stack of photos that Larry got in the mail yesterday. Things had been so much easier years ago, when every pharmacy had a one hour photo service. Lately, Larry had been forced to get his pictures developed through the mail. He often considered switching to full digital, but was distrustful of modern telecommunications because people could spy on you through electronic devices.

  The photos featured some lovely shots of his new neighbors. Mostly of the little girl.

  A dozen homemade chocolate chip cookies on a paper plate wrapped with purple cellophane.

  A bar of homemade soap, peppermint.

  A dozen homemade candles, vanilla.

  And a gallon of enzymes.

  “Time to go fishing.”

  JACK

  April 8, 2020

  10:21 A.M.

  It was the longest scrotum I’ve ever seen, to make a long story even longer. Heh heh.”

  My mom was on speaker phone, while I once again donned my stained jeans and sweatshirt and tackled the eternal, never-ending task of painting.

  Our house, built in the late 1980s, was cursed with an overabundance of honey oak. The former owners must have had some sort of fetish for the out-of-date, golden glossy finish. It was everywhere. Every kitchen cabinet and drawer. All the window trims. All the door frames. All the wall moldings.

  I hated it.

  I liked wood, and its natural grain and color. But honey oak didn’t look natural. It looked cheap and plasticky and ugly.

  Or maybe it was a metaphor for my past. A past I didn’t like being reminded of. A past I needed gone.

  Or maybe I just didn’t dig the aesthetic.

  “Nice,” I said, which was the opposite of what I meant. “I love hearing graphic stories about your bedroom escapades.”

  “I swear, Jacqueline, he needed to be careful he didn’t trip over his sack in the shower.”

  “Quite the image, Mom.”

  My vendetta against honey oak gave me three options:

  Tear it all out and remodel. Which we looked into until we discovered that it was impossible to get a contractor during lockdown. They were either avoiding house calls to stay safe, or were overbooked and overpriced because no one was going on vacation, everyone spending their extra money on home improvements instead.

  Sand all the lacquer off and stain it. But there wasn’t enough sandpaper in the state to take the gloss off of our metric tons of honey oak.

  Paint over it.

  “Like two walnuts in a leg of pantyhose,” my mother said.

  “Mom, I need you to do me a favor and stop treating me as a peer, and start treating me like your sheltered daughter who needs her innocence protected.”

  “I didn’t raise a prude child.”

  “I’m not prude. I just don’t need graphic ball descriptions of gravity-ravaged elderly men. Or any blow-by-blow descriptions of your sex life.”

  “Heh heh. You said blow-by-blow. Did I tell you about—”

  “Can we move on to another topic?”

  Of the three, painting seemed easiest. So I became a full-time painter, with mixed results. After discussing it with Phin, who told me he truly didn’t care because he had ten other projects on his plate, I decided to do sort of a barnwood aesthetic; a patchwork of maroon, grey, forest green, and mustard yellow.

  It kind of made my kitchen look like the Partridge Family bus. But I was okay with that.

  “So have you heard from your neighbor lately?” Mom asked.

  “Nope,” I answered. “The only people we’ve seen this past week are from UPS, FedEx, Grubhub, and DoorDash.”

  “You think he’s single?”

  “Jesus, Mom. I thought you were already getting all the sex you could handle.”

  “Variety. It’s why boxes of candy have different flavors.”

  “You’re after one flavor,” I said. “Salty.”

  “Now who’s being too graphic? I’m making up for a marriage where I was deprived.”

  My father was gay, and Mom still resented him for coming to that conclusion after they married, as opposed to before.

  “I just talked to Dad. He says hello.”

  “Tell him I’m fabulous and swimming in dick.”

  I chuckled, partly because my father told me the same thing, almost verbatim. Seemed like everyone was swimming in dick except for me.

  I used a gloved hand to open yet another pantry drawer, and once again cursed my intention to paint the insides of the cabinets as well as the outside. But after doing one, I was kind of committed to doing them all for the sake of consistency. I dabbed the brush into the can of green and got to it.

  “So, is he single?”

  “Larry? He’s creepy, Mom.”

  “All old men are creepy. It’s the bushy eyebrows and the ear hair. Does Larry have bushy eyebrows and ear hair? Or a wife?”

  “I think he lives alone. I didn’t notice a wedding ring.”

  “Cis hetero?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care.”

  “Neither do I. Did I tell you I had my first lesbian experience?”

  “Yes. Twice.”

  “Sexuality is a spectrum, Jack.”

  “I’m aware of that. So why are you still mad at Dad?”

  “I’m not mad at him for being queer. I’m mad at him for lying to me and hiding it.”

  “That was fifty years ago. And you’ve told your share of lies, too,” I reminded her.

  “Don’t yell at your bi-curious mother. How’s Phin?”

  I leaned back and surveyed my work. Not perfect, but it was the inside of a cabinet, so I chose to move on.

  “He’s outside with the munchkin, trying to put together her swing set.”

  “Phin never struck me as the handy type.”

  “It’s a learning curve. For both of us.”

  “Any side effects from your first shot?” Mom asked.

  “My arm hurt, that was it. Phin had a low-grade fever the next day.”

  “The second shot is worse. Knocked me on my ass.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Did your neighbor, Larry, get vaxxed?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “It didn’t come up during idle chit-chat over your fence?”

  I didn’t idle chit-chat with regular people who didn’t carry a gun everywhere because they had no idea how many predators roamed the world looking to do harm. Those folks lived their lives in blissful ignorance, and I found most of them to be banal and uninteresting, and they probably found me to be dour and high-strung.

  “I’m not good at being a friendly acquaintance.”

  “You’ve always had a problem making friends, Jacqueline. Ever since you were little.”

  “I’m a realist. Most people aren’t worth getting to know.”

  “You’re a cynic.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Trade recipes and gossip and garden vegetables and shit like that?”

  Everyday, mundane pleasantries didn’t just bore me, they scared me. I had a hard enough time accepting myself. I didn’t want to make the effort to be accepted by new people.

  “Just ask questions and listen.”

  “I’m not like you, Mom. I don’t give likes and thumbs up on social media posts from folks I knew in high school. I don’t strike up a casual conversation with someone in the checkout line, or ask my waiter’s opinions about anything other than items on the menu, or make small talk about the weather with my mechanic while she changes my oil.”

  “People need people. You need to make friends, Jacqueline.”

  “I have friends.”

  “You pull away from everyone. When was the last time you talked to Herb? Or Harry?”

  “I just talked to Harry.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “I didn’t ask. We both needed favors.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. Friendship is more than trading favors. It’s spending time. Talking. Listening. Everyone needs to have friends.”

  Maybe. But I doubted creepy Larry Wintergarten and I would become besties.

  “Hey, speaking of friends, did you remember to ask your friends if any of them heard about the Peeper?”

  “I did! I can’t believe I forgot to tell you that. I got the tea from Mr. Granby.”

  “The tea?”

  “You know, the gossip. It’s how people talk these days. Mr. Granby says the Peeper has been around Destiny since the 80s. Maybe even the 70s. The town also has a higher rate of B&E and burglary than its neighbors, also attributed to him because of the weird things that have been stolen.”

  I bit. “What’s been stolen?”

  “Not what you’d think. No valuables. No electronics.”

  “Underwear?”

  “No.” Mom paused for dramatic effect. “He steals pictures.”

  “You mean photos?”

  “Exactly. Framed photos from walls or desks. Also whole photo albums.”

  My eyes drifted to a photo of me, Phin, and Sam, magneted to the refrigerator. “That’s disturbing.”

  “Isn’t it? And we aren’t talking about isolated incidents. We’re talking thousands of sightings and reported thefts over the years.”

  “Thousands?”

  “And then there are the disappearances.”

  Larry had mentioned something about that. I’d done a bit of Internet sleuthing, and found about thirty since 2010, but I was curious about my Mom’s tea.

  “How many?”

  “Over four hundred. Going back five decades.”

  I frowned. “That can’t be right. How big is Destiny? Fifty thousand people?”

  “A little less.”

  I knew from my old job that upwards of 600,000 people are reported missing every year, but less than three thousand stayed missing. With the US population, that meant one out of every 110,000 people are never found.

  Math and I aren’t good buddies, but according to the numbers Destiny should only lose one person every two years.

  Instead, this quaint little town had closer to ten disappearances every year. Over twenty times the national average.

  That raised all sorts of cop alarm bells in me. When I was researching places to live, I checked local crime rates, and this town was comparably safe. But I didn’t think to include missing persons.

  I immediately thought of Sam. “Did you hear how many of the missing are children?”

  “I didn’t. And from one mother to another, I’m sensing your worry. But Sam isn’t even in school, right? Does she have any playdates?”

  “No.”

  Sam hadn’t been at her new school long enough to make any good friends, and even if she had, no parents were anxious to invite SARS-CoV-2 into their homes.

  “We all moved here to get away from all the running, Jacqueline. It isn’t a fresh new start if the paranoia is following you. And believe me; Sam picks up on your paranoia.”

  “I don’t deny being paranoid, Mom. But I’ve had enough trauma for several lifetimes. It’s like I’m some sort of magnet for violent crime.”