A House With Good Bones

by T. Kingfisher

I didn’t want to deal with this. I didn’t want to be wondering if maybe Mom had a stalker or maybe she was depressed or maybe she was losing her marbles. I wanted to sit on the couch and classify bugs and watch vaguely rumpled British inspectors solve crimes based on the way that someone had parted their hair in a photo taken twenty years ago.

(Probably this was bravado and I wouldn’t actually do it. I’m a very peaceful person.) (Usually.) (Hypothetical fucker scared my mom.) (Anyway.)

Waffle House at four in the morning is a liminal space occupied by long-haul truckers, bleary-eyed shift workers, and teenagers so high they can smell God’s breath.

Real or not, monsters don’t bother you while you’re peeing. (This is one of the lesser-known laws.)

It was the sort of beige with pink accents that makes you think the word gingham, even if, like me, you have no real idea what gingham is.

I asked my phone if it was connected to the internet and it told me that it had a very close relationship with the internet. I attempted to pull up a web page and it informed me that it was not that kind of relationship.

But Lammergeier Lane wasn’t Stepford. It wasn’t neat enough. We didn’t have an HOA.

The carpet had been replaced with linoleum at some point, which was certainly a design choice that someone had made.