Gwendy's Magic Feather

24

THERE ARE ONLY TWO ways up to Castle View in 1999: Route 117 and Pleasant Road. Gwendy steers the Subaru onto Pleasant, climbing past a winding half-mile stretch of single homes—ranchers, Cape Cods, and saltbox colonials; many of them decorated for Christmas—and takes a left after the new American Legion playground onto View Drive. She drives another couple hundred yards and then makes a right into the snow-covered parking lot of Castle View Condominiums. Several years ago, she and Ryan were among the first half-dozen folks to purchase a unit in the newly built complex. Despite their busy travel schedules, they’ve been happy there ever since.

Gwendy swings into a reserved spot in the front row and turns off the engine. Circling to the passenger side to pull out her suitcase, she glances down a series of gently sloping hills to a fenced-off precipice where she once ran a zigzagging metal staircase called the Suicide Stairs. Standing out like a dark scar on the snowy hillside is the wooden bench where she first met the stranger in the black hat.

Gwendy punches in a four-digit security code to gain entrance to her building and climbs the stairs to the second floor. Once inside Unit 19B, she shrugs off her jacket, leaving it on the foyer floor, unzips her suitcase and takes out the button box, carries it down the hallway to the bedroom, places it on her husband’s side of the bed, and curls up next to it. Thirty seconds later, she’s snoring.