The Good Neighbor by William Kowalski

have my actual prescription slip somewhere. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen it in a while.”
    “Well in that case, he can sleep in the basement,” said Colt. “Or no, let’s put him in the barn. Your prescription is probably in one of your ten zillion boxes. How many pills do you have left?”
    “One,” she said. She put her purse down and leaned back, run
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    ning her hands distractedly through her hair. “And I have to take it tonight. So I have none for tomorrow.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” Colt said. “I’ll get you some more this weekend when I come back into the city. Plenty of time.”
    “I’m not supposed to miss a day. It throws me off.” “Francie?”
    “Yeah?”
    “You were the one who said you didn’t want anything to ruin your good mood. So don’t worry about it. Really. Missing a few days won’t hurt you. You’ve been on that stuff so long your body won’t even notice.”
    It’s not my body, it’s my brain, Francie thought; but she only smiled weakly.
    The bare trees of New Jersey stood like sentinels along the road, bare arms flexed as if they were supporting the weight of the sky. They sped around the Delaware Water Gap once more, its surface chilled thick and oily, abandoned now by all but the hardiest birds. Anyone could see that winter would be coming early this year, that it was nearly time to hunker down and burrow in.
    “Would you tell me something?” she asked Colt quietly. “Tell you what?”
    “You know what.”
    He knew what she wanted to hear; once upon a time he had been able to read her mind, nearly always, and he would guess what she was thinking. Feeling a sudden rush of—what? warmth? pity?—Colt reached over and took her hand in his, squeezing it.
    “Yes, I love you,” he said. Francie smiled.

    7 ‌

    Things As They Ought To Be

    I t seemed as if the Pennsylvania heavens had been burned black by the time they pulled into the driveway of the house in Pennsyl
    vania, early that afternoon. A mighty storm was creeping out of the northeast, turning the sky to the dull sheen of charcoal. Fran cie got out of the car and stood in the driveway, looking up, en tranced, as a raft of marbled clouds sailed westward, so low she could nearly touch them. It had been sunny in New York, though cold; but they’d entered the season of rogue weather, when no one could tell what was going to happen.
    She breathed deeply, and at that moment she smelled some thing for the first time in years: the coming of snow. It was a frag ile scent, easily destroyed by smog, but here there was none. Nor were there those endless city buildings bristling like forests of nee dles, threatening to rend the tender belly of the sky. And the sky itself was bigger, too. The horizon simply went on until it disap peared, like it was meant to, and the clouds flowed over the dis tant curve of the earth like water pouring downhill. She half heard the slamming of doors as Colt and the Indians disembarked and
    84 W ILLIAM K OWALSKI

    opened the sliding door at the back of the truck. In the distance she could hear the clicking metallic whine of Michael’s bus as he struggled up the road; he’d managed to keep pace, despite Colt’s subtle efforts to lose him on the highway.
    This was her first time seeing the house as someone who lived in it, rather than a visitor, and she paused long enough to let that sink in, too. She already knew that she was never going back to the city. She would welsh on her deal with Colt; that was no problem. She had no intention of staying in the country only “a few days.” When they’d emerged from under the river and she’d turned to see the city behind her—finally—she’d breathed freely for the first time in years. She’d never succeeded in becoming a New Yorker, she realized, as the skyline receded. Other people could move to the city and fit in within a week, so that it was al ready in their blood. But for her, it was always like a party