An excerpt

Aldo Nacoti sat on his walker on the sidewalk in front of number 10, a two-bedroom bungalow. Enid Rose lived there. But someone else was inside, for he had parked his car in front.

Aldo lived at number 9, on the south side, with his wife and two daughters. The eighty-year-old man believed he knew everyone’s business, but he was unknowingly about to spark something worse than violence.

He faithfully held the leash of that selfish little thing at the end of it.

Millie, who was at his feet, was like a mouse eating away at a block of cheese. She knelt on Enid Rose’s lawn, which had become snow-free in a flash, while she played with Aldo’s dog. For earlier when she had stepped out onto the porch at number 14, she saw the old man with the black Pomeranian. But she was now close to forbidden territory, and Aldo had already told her who was inside Enid’s house.

That information was about to make her work even harder on her nibbling skills.

The woman now stepped out onto the porch of the bungalow.

Fair Court was a cul-de-sac in Toronto with a bulbous dead end, six houses and its own little forest—its own urban experience. Beside it lay a tract of land where two more houses could have stood.

It was one o’clock on this Saturday, and the sunlight had appeared with a laser-focused warmth that made the overnight snowfall quickly disappear from the tree branches. Their buds popping, the trees had already begun to make chlorophyll again, a reminder that the forest would soon be as green as ever. Birds were now twittering amongst them. That light breeze rustled the bush that sprang up from cold soil.

Earlier, a curled-up dirty-brown thing—a Maple leaf from autumn 1996, the previous year—had skittered over a thin sheet of snow, flurries.

But there could be snowfall in May.

The leaf was now tumbling in the light breeze.

Enid Rose wanted to drag this whole neighbourhood further down with herself and her antics. For women had already fought each other out of their own clothes, and beatings of a certain person were common. A kick to that person’s stomach could be so violent that she choked on the violence she herself had created. Now, there were signs that the child, indifferent to the violence, might soon chew on fruit.

Enid had arranged her curtains with precision and subtle invitation. She had designed it to tempt even the least voyeuristic passerby not only to glance inside but to linger, to study. For during the time that her son was missing, she was engaged in things in which a woman or mother, grieving or not, had no business being engaged. Her selfishness—the very thing that led her to engage in unmotherly acts—was going to torpedo this whole neighbourhood. And unfortunately, when sunrise kissed her front door, it was an unwholesome sight. She had made her husband paint it blood-red. He died soon afterwards. The missing young man had rightfully questioned the colour choice.

Standing in front of that red door, she had now stepped into the space that the two occupied. She spoke five words. They were an attempt to bridge the liminal gap—in the grip of which she was still held—between life and death. Then she said not a single word more—in fact, she did not do anything other than return inside and slam that door.

It was those five words that confirmed for Millie what Aldo Nacoti had just told her: Rick Rose, Enid’s missing son, was inside the house. She thought then that that might also explain what Enid had said.

The evidence of the young man’s return, albeit anecdotal, sharpened the girl’s resolve, and her instincts were now on edge.