Day four, and the cottage is beginning to feel more like home. It’s nice to have a place that’s more than a crash pad above a garage, but at least my place at the Becketts’ was completely mine. Here, it’s pretty clear that I’m staying in someone else’s house, just a temporary caretaker. But today I was inspired after a meeting with one of Evan’s new sellers. Evan told the client that houses sell fastest when a buyer can look at a property and imagine it as theirs, which is easiest when rooms are stripped bare. So long, family photos. Goodbye, tchotchkes. After taking thorough photos of every surface, I took the liberty of packing away every visible piece of evidence that Mrs. Gondelman is the actual owner of the cottage. Upon her eventual return, I’ll put every last knickknack back into place, but for now, it’s sufficiently generic for me to pretend that it’s truly mine. I’m trying to decide whether to be bold enough to install curtains over the front windows. Tonight while I was watching TV after dinner, I could have sworn that I saw movement inside a car that had been parked across the street for at least twenty minutes. I got so freaked out that I even pretended to be shutting things down for the night, turning off all the lights and going to the bedroom, only to crawl across the living room (yes, I realize how crazy this sounds) to peek out the window. The car didn’t budge, and the street was too dark to see whether anyone was actually inside, or if my eyes had been playing tricks on me. I hid in the bedroom for an hour before checking again. By then, the car was gone. It was a white (I think) pickup truck, but those are everywhere out here. Anyway, note to self: shop for opaque curtains that I can install and uninstall without Mrs. Gondelman being any the wiser upon her return.

Lindsay turned her head and looked through the bedroom door into the cottage living room. She remembered Hope telling her about the shopping trip to IKEA for the cheapest “good” curtains she’d been able to find in her online research. She boasted that she had managed to install the rods herself with nothing but a chair, a hammer, and a screwdriver, then hung the drapes “high and wide,” the way they tell you to do it on all the DIY shows. She had even texted before-and-after photographs to show off her handiwork. It was one of their lengthier communications since the move, and felt much more like their usual and frequent back-and-forths.

But she’d said nothing about a white pickup. Lindsay rose from the bed, walked to the front of the house, and drew the dark gray cotton curtains closed before reading on.

June 6