Pleasant View Drive

J.A. McGrady

My parents had just left for my third grade back-to-school night when the officer knocked on our front door. Outside, men unraveled yellow tape around my neighbors’ house like birthday streamers. Something happened next door, the officer told my grandparents. He asked us if we had seen anything, but all I could see was a swollen white bedsheet wheeled across the walkway. After he left, my grandparents and I huddled by the window until my parents came home.

I found the newspaper article the next day in the kitchen drawer where my mother had been hiding it. The black ink smeared my fingers as I read every last detail. 56-year-old female stabbed 12 times in the neck. I heard my parents whispering that her husband killed her, and I wondered if her French poodles saw it happen. I remembered learning to swim in her pool as her husband grilled hamburgers. I remembered sinking beneath the bitter water until she pulled me up.

A year later, the tragedy faded. My younger sister and I got rollerblades for Christmas from Santa. We guarded ourselves with pads and helmets and made rough circles around our backyard patio, falling down and laughing. But then my sister screamed. She had seen him, our neighbor, walking down our driveway. He grinned, holding a bottle of wine with a crimson bow tied around the neck. When he left, my parents opened the bottle and let the liquid flood the kitchen sink, drowning the dishes in a murky pool of red.