CLAUDIA PULLED UP THE LONG drive to their farmhouse. Twenty acres, most of them wooded, in a dot on the map called Lost Valley, New Jersey. Lost Valley? Raven had raged. Are you kidding? You’re moving us from Manhattan to a place with a name like that? It’s like something out of a horror movie. This land had been in her family for decades, bought with cash on one of her father’s real estate whims—one of many. He got it for a song—$15,000 for twenty acres in the seventies, the barn and old house falling to pieces. He’d never set foot on it in all the years he owned it, then left it to Claudia when he died.
Claudia never set foot on the farmhouse property either, until one day she got it in her head that she’d renovate the buildings and start a blog about it. Single city mom moves to the country and renovates two historic properties. She’d take pictures. Eventually it would become a book—poignant, moving, inspiring. It wasn’t just about the property. It was about rebuilding in the spiritual sense. Never mind that she wasn’t really a writer or a photographer, or that she didn’t have any experience with home renovation. And she liked the name of the town. It was romantic, wasn’t it? A secret place, a hidden gem, a place where magic was still possible.
Weirdly, it was all kind of working. Claudia was in fact a quite decent writer, according to Martha. And her photographs had a “certain special energy,” according to Ayers. She had blog “subscribers,” was “building a platform,” had a query yesterday from an advertiser. And she was—dare she say it?—happy-ish. Something she never would have believed possible once. Now, if she could just get Raven on track.
“You’re doing it again.”
Claudia had pulled the old pickup to a stop. How long had they been sitting there, with her just staring at the barn door—which, by the way, looked like it was going to fall off its hinges any minute?
“Jesus, Mom,” said Raven, climbing out of the truck and slamming the door as hard as she could. “Wake up!”
Claudia watched as Raven stormed up to the house and slammed through the front door. You were never so acutely aware of your own flaws as you were in the presence of your child. Why was that?
The sky overhead was a menacing gunmetal. She was staring up at it when a blue car, a Toyota Camry pulled into the drive. It came to a stop and a man, a stranger, climbed out. It had been more than fifteen years since her rape in the East Village. Her heart didn’t thump with alarm every time a strange man approached anymore. She didn’t think every unknown person was a potential assailant. What was different about the woman she was now versus the girl she was then, was that she was prepared if he was. She’d taken a self-defense class and spent nearly a year training every Tuesday and Thursday, when Raven was still a toddler, with a former Navy SEAL named Jet. Defense starts on approach, he used to say. Watch the body language, the eyes. Trust your instincts. If it feels like something’s not right, it probably isn’t.
What she noticed about the man who got out of the blue Camry first was a careful aura, a gentleness. He hung back a bit, lifted a hand, and offered a smile. That’s what good men did, they kept their distance. Selfish men, arrogant men, dangerous men, the first thing they usually did was violate the space bubble, or the respect bubble—moving in too close, or maybe making some inappropriate comment, calling you sweetie or babe. Maybe he squeezed your hand too hard when you shook for the first time, signaling his strength.
“Hey, there,” he said. “Mrs. Bishop?”
She wasn’t technically Mrs. Bishop. She never took Ayer’s last name. Bishop was her maiden name. If she’d at any point been a “Mrs.,” she would have been “Mrs. Martin,” which she didn’t like as much as Bishop. Raven had both their last names Bishop-Martin, which Claudia thought sounded very big and important, and had a nice rhythm: Raven Bishop-Martin. A girl could do anything, be anything, with a name like that.
“That’s right,” she said, not smiling, just standing her ground. It was so hard for her not to smile, not to be exuberantly friendly. It was a discipline, something she’d worked on. You don’t have to throw yourself into everybody’s arms, Claudia, Martha was fond of saying.
He fished for something in his pocket, withdrew a sheet of paper. “You had a flier in the coffee shop for a handyman.”
Oh, right. “Yes,” she said.
“I’m Josh Beckham.” He ran a big hand through sandy blond hair. “Did Madge tell you about me?”
“Oh,” she said. Madge, the lady who owned the bakery. Claudia, a talker all her life, had been mentioning that she needed some help with the house. And Madge suggested that she put up a flier. We have a lot of boomerang kids around here, looking for work. One or two of them can manage to hammer a nail into something. She had mentioned someone named Josh, living with his elderly mother, taking care of her. She hadn’t mentioned the sky-blue eyes or the muscles that pressed against the sleeves of his blue tee-shirt.
“Not a good time?” he said. She could see that he was eyeing the barn door.
Oh, no, she wanted to enthuse. Thank you so much for coming. It’s a perfect time. I have so much that needs doing!
“It’s fine,” she said. Why did it feel rude to be calm and measured, to hold herself back? “Madge mentioned you.”
He squinted at her, gave a nod.
“I’ve been doing handyman work around here for a few years.” He pulled another piece of folded paper out of his pocket. “I brought you a list of references. Folks you can call who’ll tell you I show up, on time, and charge a fair price.”
The sun had managed to peek out from the clouds, casting an orange-yellow glow against which he lifted a shading palm now.
“Thanks,” she said. “Can I give you a call tomorrow?”
“Sure thing.”
She always jumped into things too quickly and often regretted it. She had always thought that she was just following her instincts; that’s how she rationalized it. But her instincts sometimes failed her because—as Martha was quick to remind her—Claudia was just too nice, too trusting. You think everyone you meet is as pure of heart as you are. They’re not, kid. We both know that. She wanted to hire him on the spot. Instead, she was going to do as Martha would. She would call the references and then, if he still seemed okay, she’d ask him to come out and do one thing and see where it went from there. That was the opposite of what her instincts told her—which was to hand him her list and tell him he was hired.
He handed her a card, his list of references, and gave her a friendly nod. “Hope to hear from you.”
He moved toward his Toyota, then turned back. “That door—just saying? It doesn’t look safe. Doesn’t have to be me. There’s a company in town, Just Old Doors. They specialize in fixing them or replacing them up to the historic code. Not cheap, but they do good work. You might get it looked at before you open it again. Okay?”
She smiled at him. “I will. Thanks.”
She watched him drive away. His energy. It wasn’t just careful or gentle. It was sad, too. And was there something just a little bit off? When his car was gone, she released the tension she didn’t know she’d been holding in her shoulders.
What was that noise? Something faint and discordant on the air. She looked toward the house in time to see Raven open her window. Music poured out. The angry tones of Nine Inch Nails slicing through the darkening afternoon.
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