Souvenirs of Starling Falls by Holly Tierney-Bedord

Author:Holly Tierney-Bedord [Tierney-Bedord, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-10-21T22:00:00+00:00

Two months later

Chapter 6

Tom and I were settled in by the end of the summer. We hadn’t gotten to most of the projects we’d planned to tackle, but cleaning the house and filling it with furniture and our things had made it somewhat homey. Or lived-in, at least.

Despite my efforts, 313 Hawthorne Avenue wasn’t turning into the grand showplace I’d dreamed it would be. Nor was it the warm, welcoming, romantic sanctuary of love and security that I’d imagined.

Tom and I had been on each other’s nerves since we’d arrived. Even the dogs didn’t seem happy in our new home. When we all settled down together to watch a TV show or a movie, that old feeling of contentment we’d had back in Seattle never came.

I’d had no idea how much stress—fear, even—came in owning an old home of this size. During the day, in the middle of some should-be-pleasant Price is Right or Days of Our Lives break, just as we’d sat down to have some grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, some force that rode the edge of innocuous and destructive would sweep in, derailing our moment of peace and quiet. An unexpected leaky pipe, severe enough to cause a nightmarish stain of damage on our first-floor ceiling, that would then mysteriously fix itself by the time the plumber arrived. Or the almost weekly occurrences of lights that stopped working and toilets that stopped flushing. It all added up, both financially and emotionally.

And the woodpeckers. I’d never given woodpeckers a second thought before moving to Starling Falls. But now, if only for the effect they had on Tom, I hated them. They would tap at our window frames and Tom would jump to his feet, grab the sheet of aluminum foil he kept on the coffee table, and run to the window, waving it around, hoping the reflection would scare them away, screaming, “Quit ruining my fucking house, you little bastards!”

At night when the mice came out, he’d crawl around on his hands and knees with a hammer, destroying our wood floors, yelling for the dogs to catch the ones that were too quick to succumb to his blows.

Becoming homeowners had made my sweet husband into a crazy monster.

I could count on one hand the number of times we’d had sex since we’d moved in. Gone were the romantic cards and notes, Saturday night dates and Sundays in bed.

There were other things going on that I chose not to mention to him, since it only made things worse. Like the way the dumbwaiter creaked up and down on its own, like a tiny possessed elevator. What I’d thought I’d imagined on the day of Teddy’s birthday (Why did I think of the family that used to live here in the present tense?), had become a daily reality. I could see the dumbwaiter, possibly, finding its way to the basement, but how could it move up to the attic on its own? What about gravity?

Worst of all, Tom resented me for choosing Starling Falls.

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