The House on Juniper Lane

Part One: Saturday Coffee

“We’re moving out next weekend. Mom and Dad are taking the house.”

I looked up from my coffee.

It was a Sunday morning in late April. Sunlight was coming through the kitchen window over the sink, the one I’d hung with yellow gingham curtains the week we moved in. The dishwasher was humming. Our neighbor’s dog was barking at a squirrel.

I waited for my husband, Trey, to laugh.

He didn’t.

He was standing by the refrigerator in his gym shorts and an old Oklahoma State T-shirt, scrolling on his phone. He didn’t look up.

“Very funny,” I said. “What’s the actual plan for Saturday? Are we still going to your cousin’s barbecue?”

“I’m serious,” Trey said.

He set his phone down on the counter.

“Mom wants the house,” he said. “She said you’d throw a fit. But I told her I’d handle you.”

I set my coffee mug down so hard it sloshed onto the table.

“Handle me?”

He shrugged.

“Trey,” I said. “That’s our house. You can’t just give it away!”

“I’ve already promised them,” he said.

He said it like he was telling me he’d already ordered pizza. Like it was done. Like there was nothing left to discuss.

My name is Lindsey Grant. I’m thirty-three years old.

I’m a dental hygienist at a family practice in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, just outside Tulsa. I clean teeth, take X-rays, and spend a lot of my day convincing six-year-olds that the little suction straw is called Mr. Thirsty and he’s very friendly.

I’ve been married to Trey for seven years.

We’d spent six of those years paying the mortgage on our house on Juniper Lane. A three-bedroom brick ranch with a big backyard, a pecan tree, and a kitchen I’d painted pale blue myself.

And now he expected me to move into his parents’ tiny one-bedroom apartment across town.