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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Sarah Hogle
Read between
July 30 - August 3, 2025
He’s intelligent and charming and perfect, absolutely perfect for me.
My aesthetic is aggressively, unapologetically basic. Some of it stems from a lady at a MAC counter telling me I’m an autumn, because of my amber eyes and long, stick-straight hair the color of pecans, but I know in my leaf-ogling, beanie-loving, pumpkin-gorging soul that I’d be a basic bitch even if I had neutral undertones. It’s in my DNA.
I know Nicholas is suspicious and has been trying to catch me at it whenever my car needs work done. Conveniently, I am an expert mechanic only when he is at work, so he never sees me in action. I sneak into Morris Auto like a criminal and pay Dave in cash. Dave is good people. He’s promised never to rat me out and lets me take credit for his labor.
I’m a miserable cynic (a newer development) and a dreamy romantic (always have been), and it’s such a terrible combination that I don’t know how to tolerate myself.
Is my problem unfixable? I don’t know what my problem is. I’m the problem, probably.
I close my eyes and try to imagine growing up as that woman’s biological daughter, and the picture is so horrific that I have to bleach it with happy thoughts of another contender for my heart—Rupert Everett in character as Dr. Claw from the 1999 Inspector Gadget movie—bursting
“Fine, then, don’t help me,” Nicholas huffs, hurling an irritated look at me. I’ve ruined his evening. Stupendous. “I’ll be rushed for time and I’m already stressed out, but what else is new?” “Preach, sister,” I mutter under my breath. He grumbles and bangs more cabinets, which gives me an oddly satisfying feeling. Misery loves company, after all. If I’m going to be thinking vindictive thoughts all night, I might as well drag him down into the trenches with me.
Nicholas holds the umbrella for me and makes sure I don’t get wet. When it’s raining and we park, he sidles up so that my passenger door opens to the sidewalk and not the muddy, grassy part of the curb. He has my order at all our restaurants mentally bookmarked, so he can recite exactly what I want to the waiter while I’m in the bathroom. He has thick, beautifully rumpled chocolate-brown hair and he gets side-eyed by a lot of women whenever we go out. He says my eyes are the color of champagne, which became his favorite drink after we met for that very reason, and I had a wonderfully bubbly,
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He doesn’t sneakily watch our favorite shows without me. If a song comes on the car radio that he hates, he doesn’t automatically change the station but first asks if I like it. He still wears a pair of socks with a poodle print that I got for him when we were first dating, even though it was a joke gift.
I’m going to blame the Skittles for what happens next. I troop into the bathroom with a pair of scissors, pull down a hank of hair over my forehead, and snip it off before I can lose my nerve. The eyes in my reflection are wide and maniacal and I love it. I love the Naomi who can do things like this and not give a shit. Nicholas doesn’t like bangs? Fantastic. I don’t like Nicholas.
The hoodie is a middle finger by itself, but to add insult to injury I shimmy into leggings he finds embarrassing because they’re so old and worn that they’re see-through in places and there’s a quarter-sized hole on one butt cheek. These leggings and I have been through a lot together. Breakups. Bad dates. That time Tyra Banks yelled at Tiffany on America’s Next Top Model.
These leggings are like comfort food and I’m never giving them up.
I give myself a round of applause and send up a kiss of thanks to Magnolia Rose, my greatest hero for refusing to stop going by Mrs. Rose after the divorce even though her marriage to Harold only lasted a year and didn’t bear any fruit. She’s currently living in Key Largo with husband number five, who’s twenty years her junior and nephew of the guy who invented Marshmallow Peeps. She has fifteen parrots living in an aviary that’s the size of my bedroom and they’re all named after murderers on Law & Order. I know this because she added me as a Facebook friend, probably to needle Deborah, who
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Nicholas’s groom figure will be the knock-off Spider-Man from the dollar store, Tarantula-Boy. I’ll be represented by a half-melted pillar candle with googly eyes, and everyone Deborah knows and loves will have to see.
It’s Sunday and Nicholas cannot believe I still haven’t changed out of my best hoodie for dinner at his parents’ house. I give him a disapproving look when he mutters under his breath. I’m a loyal fan of the Steelers. They’re my favorite sportsball team and I would die for them.
Their lair smells like a postapocalyptic Bath & Body Works that has been stagnating in dust for ten years, with base notes of Aqua Net. The dusty odor has always confounded me, since I’ve never managed to find any actual dust.
There’s one single television in the “salon”—a relic of the seventies that is never turned on and whose sole purpose is to reflect your shock that such a mammoth television set is still in someone’s house.
“Naomi! My dear! So very good to see you,” Deborah cries, swinging forward to air-kiss one cheek, then the other. She learned from her own mother-in-law (a truly terrifying individual I got to meet only once before Satan called her home) how to be frigid and passive-aggressive.
Honestly, this woman has no inkling where she is. We live in Morris, for crying out loud. Half our population has fur and nibbles on berries in the forest. Meeting Deborah in person for the first time was jarring.
Mrs. Rose wafts back into earshot, so I pick up a vase that used to belong to Harold’s mother and say, “I like this urn.” “That’s a vase, dear.” She pronounces it like vahz. There’s no way she doesn’t hate this vase, since legend has it that she and her mother-in-law once got into a physical brawl over where Harold would be buried—next to his wife or next to Mommie Dearest. Nicholas comes by his issues honestly.
They cover their bitchy grins with their hands in identical gestures. Nicholas notices and drops his hand. He looks a little shaken. I smile at him to confirm his worst fears. Yes, Nicky, you’re turning into your mother.
Veal makes me cringe and Mrs. Rose knows it; it’s why, up until now, she’s offered an alternative dish if veal was going to be on the menu. Not tonight. It’s a creative reprisal, I’ll give her that. She’s watching me closely, craving a reaction, so I look her right in the eye and take an enormous bite. I don’t care about my moral convictions tonight. I’ll eat a bloody half-formed cow fetus with my bare hands if it’ll get Nicholas to dump me in front of his mom like a total chump. What has my life come to, if that’s my goal now?
Deborah spoons more artichoke hearts onto his plate, much to his dismay. “They might not know.” She texted Nicholas three times this week about it, hinting that if he wanted to take her out for a celebratory lunch she’s upholding boycotts with Ruby Tuesday, Walk the Plank, and Applebee’s because of spats with the staff.
The idea of Harold making Nicholas or me do anything is ludicrous. He can’t make himself stay awake for the duration of a commercial. Harold only gets up from his chair if it means walking to another chair. He and his wife are presently wearing matching burgundy sweaters, fur from his back and shoulders creeping around a Peter Pan collar in a way that has me side-eyeing how Nicholas will age. He stopped having an opinion of his own in 1995 and lives for the moment he’s told he’s allowed to go to bed.
Trust this: you don’t want to know more about Harold. He’s like three-month-old lasagna left in the back of the fridge. With every layer it gets worse.
“We’re not having children,” I declare. “I’m barren. I lost my uterus in a Ponzi scheme.”
Whatever. He’s just giving me an excuse not to cook. “I don’t like your dumb How to Train Your Dragon tie.” He’s so proud of that tie, because it features Toothless the dragon. A clever pun when you’re in the teeth profession. Rage burns a red rash across his cheekbones. “You take that back.”
“Don’t let me stop you from getting a canoe,” I say, dead serious. “Nicholas, I’m here to support all your dreams. Please, go get a canoe. I’d love nothing more than to watch you paddle out into the middle of a lake.” “I need to feel alive!” “I think what you need is a granola bar and maybe a trial run with the Eagle Scouts.”
Actually, it’s a gangly, pimpled boy no older than twenty, and he’s pushing a cart of flowers. There are at least ten bouquets in plain glass vases, filmy red cling wrap protecting them from the rain. “Naomi Westfield?” he asks, consulting a clipboard. Brandy picks up my hand and holds it aloft. I can’t speak. I have a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach and don’t know why. “These are for you.”
We give our fingers a workout with frantic Googling. My ominous delivery sure does look like oleander to me, but it also looks like a million other types of flowers. They all look the same. We discover it would be really easy to kill someone with this kind of plant, and according to IMDb that very plot happened in a movie with Michelle Pfeiffer. Michelle’s character used them to kill her lover, a man named Barry. I’m being Barry’d.
“The oleander,” I whisper. “In the Junk Yard. By Dr. Rose. That’s what this is! It’s some kind of calling card, like all the big-league serial killers use. He’s the Clue Killer.” I inspect the blank message card again. No florist logo. It might as well bear Professor Plum’s demented smile.
He replies: You didn’t do anything with oleander, seeing as how I gave you jasmine. I squint at my screen, trying to decide whether I believe him. I didn’t know until recently that Nicholas is a talented actor, so it’s hard telling. After a break of two minutes, he adds: If it HAD been oleander, burning it would’ve been a really stupid idea. JSYK. Oleander’s toxic. He’s Googled it, too. There’s no way he knew that off the top of his head. Nicholas is fond of researching things and pretending that whatever obscure trivia he unearths is common knowledge.
I steel myself before answering. I love Mrs. Howard, but she has the voice of two bricks grating against each other from fifty years of chain-smoking Virginia Slims.
know what I would do if there were no Nicholas in this scenario: I’d start packing for Tenmouth and dedicate myself to a career of fake gore and screaming soundtracks, strobe lights in the darkness. Mopping up vomit and scrubbing graffiti. It’s a depressing prospect, but I can’t afford to be picky.
Uprooting to Tenmouth is plan B. Plan C is impossible with the noxious state of my relationship with Nicholas, so I don’t even consider it. I throw it out. Plan C is identity theft. I’ll enjoy a few relaxing weeks as Deborah Rose in my Malibu beach house before the feds track me down.
I turn away. He walks to the fridge and opens it, whistling. I think about shoving him inside.
His smile bends. Dries that way. I pick up a stack of junk mail and flip through Super Saver coupons, hmm-ing approvingly over discount items. My favorite soap is two for one this week. Frozen pizzas are five for ten dollars. Nicholas is going to strangle me with his Toothless tie.
Last night I found his keys and noticed that the Maserati fob was missing. I plugged an unfamiliar key into the Jeep experimentally and sure enough, it’s Nicholas’s. What a bizarre purchase for him. According to the Carfax in the glove compartment, the Jeep’s not even new—it’s like ten years old and has had two previous owners. Harold would be rolling in his tanning bed.
There are a couple things amiss about Nicholas today. For one, he’s wearing his old glasses instead of his contacts. I like the glasses because they fit his face well and they make him seem sophisticated and down-to-earth at the same time. Whenever I tell him this, he scrunches up his nose and shakes his head self-consciously.
I laugh at my own joke, but the noise lodges in my throat when the door opens and a version of Nicholas from the Upside Down strolls into the Junk Yard. He’s wearing hiking boots and a secondhand jacket the color of the woods. It’s so wrong on him that it takes me ten whole seconds to process that it’s camo. Nicholas Rose is wearing camo.
This is how I’ll die: slightly unwilling but ultimately lazy.
He buckles me up and starts the engine. The Jeep smells like his Maserati’s crazy uncle. It drinks too much and plows over mailboxes. It had Taco Bell for lunch. “What about my car?”
“It’s fine, I guess. Whose is it?” “Ours.” Ours. It echoes. Insensible gibberish. Undeniably false.
I unfreeze time and he smiles. “Welcome home.”
“What do you mean, ‘ours’?” “I bought it.” His eyes never leave mine. This— But— I— !!!
“But.” Speech is not coming easily. My brain is continuously rejecting messages coming in from my eyes and ears as impossible. “A whole house?” “I tried to buy half of one, but couldn’t find any that are gaping open on the side or missing a roof.”
“He knew this was the surprise and he let me think I was about to get murdered!” “You really need to stop telling your coworkers I’m out to murder you.” Irritation flits across his features. “Doesn’t give me a good rep.”
It. Is. Magical. I can envision all of it so vividly and I want it. I want it bad.
“A house like this is full of stories. It should have a name.” He gives me a delighted smile. “Name it.” Wind batters the roof like we’re in the eye of a tornado. We’re so far removed from everything we’ve experienced as a couple. I shouldn’t love it. We’re Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s ghosts, marooned in the wilds of Morris. I blurt out the one thing I can think of. “Disaster.” His smile slips. “I’m not living in a house called Disaster. That’s inviting bad luck.” “Buddy, we’ve got that already.”
“What is wrong with you?” “You. You’re what’s wrong with me.”
