Page 4 of Made for You

But California is expensive and crowded, and Texas feels like another world, and at least for now, our family needs space, and lots of it. Escape from outside pressures, so that we can focus on us again.

Away from the people creeping around in our bushes. The hate mail. The vandalism. The menacing presence of the house I’m caged in, like the hatred of its previous owner has infected the very beams that hold it up. And the eyesore of a billboard erected down the road and reminding me every morning that BOTS CAN’T GO TO HEAVEN, BUT YOU CAN! REPENT AND BELIEVE! I actually laughed in the innocence of disbelief when I first saw it poking above the tree line. That feels like a lifetime ago.

Annaleigh is done eating, so I change her into a fresh onesie, then lean her on my shoulder for a burping. She nestles into the crook of my neck with a soulful baby sigh as I tease aside the curtain to look out the nursery window.

The sun is just rising. The tall trees that line both sides of the road seem to be stretching up in anticipation of the new day. The billboard is a blight, but my eyes skit past it, to the scattering of houses that share the road with us: weary farmhouse-style structures with dirt driveways, sagging porches, and wild lawns. Not where Josh and I ever planned on ending up, that’s for sure.

Bob Campini’s house next door is the ugliest of the bunch. He moved in about a month after us. The property was unoccupied before him, for years. The fact that anyone would choose to live here still astounds me, especially considering the land’s violent history: ninety years ago, the plots we all live on were a single farm owned by a serial killer—Royce Sullivan, the town of Eauverte’s single claim to fame. I’ve read the Wikipedia page. The black-and-white picture of Royce shows a handsome man with a winning smile, posing with his axe, his foot resting on a stump. The stump where he hacked his lovers up before burying their bodies in pieces, all over the property. There’s a rhyme all the locals know, that Josh repeated to me laughing. Roses are red, violets are blue, he killed not one, but twenty-two. At the time it struck me as morbid, but removed enough from us to be amusing. Now I can’t help imagining the limbs that might live under us. They never did recover all twenty-two of those girls.

Bob’s front yard is littered with various heaps of metal that maybe used to be engines. A big hand-painted sign at the mouth of his driveway reads BOB’S MEAT PROCESSING. Next to the lettering, a smiling pasty-pink cartoon man in overalls is clicking his heels in midjump, wielding a big cleaver, which, considering the history of the property, is especially chilling. The meat processing takes place in the barn out back. You’d think that with our generous three-acre lots, our house and Bob’s would have been built farther apart, but we’re separated only by a ditch and some straggly growth.

“Welcome to what I like to call the rural sprawl,” Josh said with grim humor when we first arrived, after I blurted out a bewildered “Where are we?”

“It’s an old farm lot that got chopped up into house lots,” he explained. “The houses are built close to the road, but each property is multiple acres extending into the woods.”

The worst of both worlds, I thought. Isolated from the world but bunched together. Too far and too damn close. I suppose the builders had to decide what people would be more frightened of—the yawning loneliness of the woods? Or each other?

Annaleigh wiggles restlessly, so I turn her forward-facing, toward the window. I squint at Bob’s house, where it seems like the curtains may have twitched?

“Ba,” she proclaims, smacking a palm forward and hitting the glass.

“Did you just say Bob?” I say with some surprise, even though she’s probably just vocalizing.

She turns her head, eyes bright at my approval. “Ba! Ba!”

I have to laugh. “At least he’s made an effort, huh? Finally.”

Two efforts, actually. Both equally surprising. Bob Campini’s yard used to have an entire garden of political signs for anti-Bot candidates. But three days ago, when I did my morning neighborhood lookout, the signs were gone.

What really made my jaw drop, though, was when Bob showed up at our door. After so many months of watching him silently spy on us, I’d given up hope of any kind of normal neighborliness. But he even brought a gift. The visit was awkward. I was probably too enthusiastic. He was stiff and gruff. But it was also kind of sweet, and I promised to have him over for dinner when Josh got back from his trip.

“People can change, baby girl,” I whisper to Annaleigh as her moist palm whacks the glass over and over, her legs kicking in tandem. A hopeful wish, not just for Bob, but for Josh. For me.

I used to imagine myself as Josh’s perfect puzzle piece. And maybe on day one of my existence, that was true. Maybe we’ve become less perfect every day since. But Bob Campini’s one-eighty tells me it doesn’t have to be too late. Maybe my marriage can still become what everyone thinks it is. A marriage worth admiring. Filming. Living.

The doorbell rings.

Josh! It has to be, keyless, contrite like he always is after we fight. Firmly holding Annaleigh, I race downstairs, across the chilly tile foyer with its slanting sunlight.

I’m going to say I love you, and I’m going to tell him how hopeful I am for us. I’m going to say, things have been hard, but better days are ahead, and if we just keep trying, we can become what we want to be—what we’re meant to be. As I set my hand on the doorknob, I believe this. That I’m welcoming in not only Josh, but a season of change.

I fling open the door to the mid-May morning sun, a big smile on my face, the I love you on my lips.

Whoosh, goes my breath. Pfffft, out through my teeth.

Two men.

One, Sheriff Hank Mitchell. Right-wing, gun-toting, Bot-hating, over six feet tall with shoulders as wide as a snowplow. The other is a younger fellow I filed the missing person report with: blond, blue-eyed, round-shouldered, his cheeks stained with rosacea.

The sheriff is no stranger to me. He was in our house last fall. He said, “I’ve instructed my department to stop responding to calls from this residence.” He was addressing Josh and Josh alone even though I was sitting right there. “You and your—wife—are putting an untenable burden on my little department.” He cushioned wife in a little cough.

Josh and I exchanged looks of shock.

“But this is your job,” Josh finally said. “Listen, Sheriff—I think this is more serious than you realize. Julia’s been saving all our mail. There are death threats.”

“People are scared. Can’t blame ’em,” the sheriff drawled, leaning back in the chair we’d offered him, his eyes sweeping up and down my body as if trying to see where the cogs and screws might be hiding.

Josh reached over to hold my hand, his grip as cold and tight as his voice. “This is private property. People are describing how they want to kill my wife in writing. Isn’t it your job to serve and protect?”

---