Chapter 3

I haven't set foot in this house in eight years. The gates still recognize my face, though. That's the first insult. The security camera swivels toward the driver's side window, lingers on my face like it's deciding whether I'm worth the trouble, then the wrought iron swings open with a whine that belongs in a horror film.

The driveway is a quarter mile of immaculate gravel, lined with hundred-year-old oaks my grandmother used to call "the Lund family's only honest feature." I take it at twelve miles per hour, letting the house grow in my windshield like a glacier.