The Land Never Forgets
Author’s Note: The prologue below is part of a larger novel project. I hope you enjoy it and it piques your interest!
Prologue - Do They Know
June 2012
Timothy started down the stairs, his lanky frame on autopilot as he scrolled the Instagram feed on his phone, oblivious to the chaos coming from the kitchen. Arriving at the bottom of the staircase, he looked up just in time to see his little sister, Abigail, chestnut brown pony-tail flying, chasing after Lexie, their Rottweiler, who had a bagel in her mouth.
Entering the kitchen, he saw his mother, wiping her hands on a dish towel as she called after both of them, “Don’t let her eat that, Abby! You know how it’ll stop her up!”
“SNAFU….,” Timothy muttered, heading for the island in the middle of the kitchen.
“What’s that?” his mom asked, somewhat absent-minded, trying to re-focus her attention.
“SNAFU,” he repeated, picking up the cinnamon raisin bagel set out for him. “Situation Normal. All Fu--,”
His father, sitting at the far end of the island, cleared his throat as he lowered the paper he was reading, to look at his son over the top rim of his glasses. “Can we hold off on the profanity this early in the morning?”
“All funked up,” Timothy corrected.
“Thank you.”
His father, Martin Van Holland, a founding partner at the only law firm in Shallow River, was dressed in his ‘uniform’ as Timothy thought of it. A crisp white shirt, gray satin braces attached to his pressed blue suit pants, and a matching gray silk tie, with the perfect dimple at the knot, all hugging a solid frame. With his short-cropped salt and pepper hair and square jaw, he appeared to be every bit the buttoned-up, strict conservative at Booth, Van Holland, & Cornwallis.
Timothy knew it was all pretense. His father would be swearing like a blue-collar union worker by the afternoon.
As Mr. Van Holland returned to the newspaper in his hand, Abigail rounded the corner from the other side of the kitchen, triumphant with the mauled half-eaten bagel held aloft.
“Got it!” she cried out. “Well, most of it,” she said lowering her hand, and wrinkling her nose at the soggy mess.
Timothy admired how bold his little sister was when it came to wrestling things out of the dog’s mouth. Or foolhardy. He wasn’t sure which applied more although Lexie was definitely a gentle giant when it came how she behaved with the youngest Van Holland. Few young girls could count on a more vigilant and fearless guardian.
“Mission accomplished, Abby,” their mother smiled, taking the remains of the bagel and dropping them into the trash. “Now can you see about feeding yourself as well.”
Timothy’s mother, fit with casually maintained shoulder length dirty blond hair only just starting to show a few streaks of gray, was more or less indistinguishable in appearance from all her upper middle-class friends who had enough free time to swim or play pickleball. But she adored these rambunctious early mornings with her family. She was well-aware of how perfect and all-American the scene in her kitchen was, but they were probably more like the Addams Family than something from a bland 1950s sitcom.
Her focus shifted when her husband, Martin, or Marty as she and those close to him called him, took a sharp breath in. Everyone paused what they were doing and turned to look at him.
He had shifted his focus from the small village paper and started sifting through the mail. He held in his hand a glossy 5X7 postcard, flipping it front to back, over and over, as though he couldn’t quite understand what he was looking at.
“Well….?” Lucy, short for Lucretia, asked for everyone.
Marty’s face was now pinched. “The Britten House sold. This is a postcard from Baird Realty announcing that they’ve sold it.”
“They must be very proud of themselves,” Lucy replied, loading the words ‘very proud’ with sarcasm. She turned back to the sink, without returning to her cleaning. Staring out the window into the backyard and the woods beyond, she fidgeted with hair.
“Seems a little tasteless, if you ask me,” Marty set the postcard back down with the rest of the mail and leaned back, crossing his arms.
Timothy looked at his father, chewing on a thumbnail, before asking in a low voice, “I wonder…do they know?”
His mother spun around and said, “Of course they know, dear. Everyone knows!”
“Love,” Marty said looking at his wife, “I think he means the buyers.”
Realizing her mistake, Lucy put a hand to her open mouth. “Oh God, I’m sorry, Timmy.”
Although he chafed at hearing his name in the diminutive, he knew there was no point commenting on it as they all had nicknames ending in a long E sound. Lexie bumped her snout against his leg and whimpered. “Ok girl,” he said looking down at her. “Time for walkies.”
He turned to head into the mud room, bagel in hand, to get Lexie’s collar and leash. She was hot on his heels, ready to go.
From the kitchen, his mother called out, “Check for ticks!”
“Always!” he replied. After snapping her collar on, Timothy slung her leash around his neck. He rarely needed to use it, as the woods they walked in felt like a private park. Although he didn’t know the details, the bulk of the land had in fact been donated by his grandfather to the town with the provision that it could never be re-sold, subdivided, or developed.
Lexie knew the woods as well as he did; they had been out on these trails since she was a puppy and he was just 10 years old. Six years and 24 seasons later, they could both navigate any of them blind-folded without so much as tripping over a tree root.
Walking out the back door into the early morning cool air, they rounded the side of the house and started toward the front, making their way down the slight slope of the front yard down to the road. Timothy’s gait slowed as he passed the giant white oak tree that shaded much of the house from the summer sun rising in front of it. On his right, just about a hundred yards away, was the dark red clapboard Britten House. As much as he didn’t want to, he looked. The top row of five windows and lower four windows, split by the door, were vacant and quiet.
His own home, with its Dutch colonial gambrel roof, light blue clapboards and dark blue shutters, Greek Revival portico, and floor to ceiling high first floor windows was the most unique of the three homes on this street. Although modified and expanded over time, each was almost three hundred years old at their core, with the original large chimney in the middle.
Lexie, standing next to him, whined again. He looked down and given the way she was looking back up at him, he thought for a moment that she knew what he was thinking.
Shaking it off, he said, “Ok…yeah. Let’s get going.”
They started across the road and as they approached the trailhead and the dark woods beyond, Timothy allowed himself one more glance toward the Britten House and thought again, “I wonder if they know?”
