Page 16 of The Birchwood House

She smiled quietly to herself, thinking about how when she’d been searching for a new place to live, she’d wanted to feel a kind of click that would let her know she’d found the right spot. She’d felt that click the second she’d stepped out of the taxi onto the sidewalk of Coral Sands.

She finished dusting off the headboard and looked around the room again, deciding that she would tackle the windows next. She could see that they were a pattern of squares of regular clear glass bordered by small diamonds of colored glass. She felt eager to see what colors the stained glass was, since the window was covered so thickly in dust that the colors had been muted.

She sprayed a generous dollop of window cleaning foam onto a clean rag and began to scrub vigorously at the windows. Tendrils of wet dust began to fall off the glass like tiny snakes. Michelle wrinkled her nose at the sight, although the work was satisfying. It became even more satisfying when she saw how gorgeous the colors of the small diamond-shaped panes of glass were. Emerald green, ruby red, and sapphire blue gleamed and flashed in the sunlight. She sucked in her breath, stepping back from the window and taking in its majesty.

And to think this has been hiding away up here all this time,she thought. Time to bring you back into circulation, room. A window like this is meant to be seen every day.

Once she had the window perfectly cleaned off, she turned her attention to a big antique chest that was resting in the corner. She dutifully scrubbed it clean with a dry cloth, since she didn’t want any kind of cleaning product—even water—to potentially damage its gorgeous old wood.

Once it was clean, she gave in to her curiosity and opened it. The inside of the chest had been lined with a beautiful floralpaper. It had yellowed a great deal, but that didn’t take away from its charming elegance. She blinked down at the contents of the chest for a few moments before realizing that it was a hope chest.

Oh, this is fantastic!she thought eagerly.I wonder if Grandma has ever looked through this before. I’m honestly not sure—this room may not have been used for decades, considering how dusty it is.

She decided to stop looking through the chest by herself, since it seemed like the kind of experience that would be sweeter if shared. She couldn’t wait to look through the contents of the chest with her grandmother.

She was just shutting the lid of the chest when she felt her cellphone begin to ring in her pocket. She pulled it out and saw that the caller was her friend Ruby.

“Hey, girl!” she said eagerly, sitting down on the end of the bed, which had been covered many years ago by a white sheet. She realized a second later her pants were going to be covered in dust, but she grinned and decided not to worry about it. She was due for a shower anyway, after all the cleaning she’d been doing.

“Hey,” Ruby said, sounding a little breathless, and Michelle guessed that her childhood best friend was calling her from the middle of a run. “I saw on Instagram that you moved to a new town. On the East coast?”

“Yeah.” Michelle laughed. She lay back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling, knowing she would have to wash her hair too. She didn’t mind—the bed was comfortable despite how old it was, and she felt cheerful and excited to talk to the girl who had been her best pal during her earliest years. “I’m sorry I didn’t call and tell you about it before you saw it online, but it was a very last-minute decision. It’s not like I’ve been ignoring you, it’s just been a whirlwind.”

“Well, don’t worry about that,” Ruby said, and Michelle could hear her friend’s smile in her voice. “I understand better than anyone that it takes two minutes to post online and phone calls are never that quick unless somebody’s really mad and hangs up.”

Michelle laughed. “Are you mad at me?” she teased.

“Definitely not.” Ruby laughed. “But I am surprised. What made you decide to move all the way out there?”

“Hey, if I remember correctly, you and your family moved really far away first.”

“Um, yes, and we knew about it months beforehand and you and I cried about it like six times,” Ruby said, and Michelle wasn’t sure how much of her breathiness was due to laughter and how much was due to the fact that she was jogging. “You really just packed up your life in a couple of weeks?”

“Uh, more like a couple of days.”

“What?!”

Michelle closed her eyes, smiling. How could she convey to Ruby how thrilling it had been to let herself get whisked away, and to suddenly leave behind a life that no longer seemed good?

“I know it sounds crazy, but my mom—well, she and my dad are getting a divorce, and that was completely sudden and pretty awful. She lost the house and everything. So she decided to move out to Coral Sands, where she grew up.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ruby said, sounding sympathetic. “But you’re not your mom. Why did you move?”

“Well, partly to be with her,” Michelle said. “But I also just wanted to move away too. I’d just gotten fired from the travel agency for pushing back on the fact that they were misleading customers.”

“Ugh,” Ruby said. “That’s so unfair. I’m sorry Michelle.”

Michelle shrugged. “I felt really bad when it happened, but in the end, I don’t want to work for people like that, you know?”

“Fair. But still—losing a job doesn’t mean that you have to pack up your life out of nowhere and move somewhere totally new—and to some tiny little town? Please tell me you’re only going to live there for a little bit while your mom gets back on her feet.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Michelle said. “So far, I really like it here.”

“Okay,” Ruby said doubtfully.

“What?” Michelle prompted with a laugh. “I can tell you’re thinking something. What is it?”

“You’ve only been there a few days. I’m just worried you’re going to miss the city. Don’t you think it’ll get really boring there after a while? I bet you end up moving back to Scottsville before long.”