The moving truck pulled up next door on a Tuesday morning in May, while I was standing in my bathroom counting gray hairs.
There were eleven. I’d counted them twice. I was forty-eight years old, and I’d just found out that week from my doctor that the hot flashes waking me up at three in the morning weren’t the flu. They were the beginning of something. Something that comes for every woman eventually. Something that made me feel, standing in front of that mirror in my old blue bathrobe, like the main part of my life was over and I’d missed the announcement.
I leaned close to the glass. I looked at the lines around my eyes. The little sag under my chin. The gray coming in at my temples like frost on a window.
You look tired, I told my reflection.
My reflection didn’t argue.
Downstairs, I heard my husband in the kitchen. Irvin. Clattering around with the coffee maker. Humming. He hums when he makes coffee. He’s done it every morning for seventeen years. Always the same song. “Moon River.” Badly.
I smiled a little. Then I heard the beeping outside. The loud, steady beep of a big truck backing up.
I went to the bathroom window and pulled back the curtain.
A huge white moving truck was backing into the driveway of the house next door. The Hendersons’ old house. They’d moved to Arizona in March to be near their grandkids. The house had been empty for two months. A real estate sign had been in the yard. Then, two weeks ago, a SOLD sticker.
A silver car pulled in behind the truck.
The door opened, and a woman got out.
She was tall. Slim. Long dark hair that fell in perfect waves past her shoulders. She was wearing white jeans and a pale pink blouse and big sunglasses. She stood in the driveway with her hands on her hips and looked up at the house like she was deciding whether it was good enough for her.
Then she took off her sunglasses, and she looked over at my house.
