Dread filled Valerie’s stomach as she drew near the community mailboxes. She carefully checked the rear-view mirror, peeked up the hill and then in all directions to make sure there was nobody around before stopping her car in front of them. Heart pounding and feeling slightly nauseous, she had to force herself to unclench her hands from the steering wheel and to open the door. She left the car running in case she needed a quick getaway before tentatively approaching her box. It looked just like the others from the outside, unmarked and innocent. But then again, even if there was a ticking bomb inside, it would be impossible to know until it was too late. With her hand trembling she unlocked the box and peered inside. There was a small pile of letters, and as Valerie reached out for them, she felt bile rise up in her throat. What if there was another one of those letters?
She swallowed the bile back down, determined not to vomit in public. Even though there was nobody on the street, Valerie imagined several sets of eyes on her, watching her from behind drawn curtains, waiting for a sign of weakness. Without looking at the mail in her hand, she slammed the box shut and hastily retreated to the relative safety of her car.
At home she kicked off her shoes, threw the mail on the kitchen counter, poured herself a large glass of wine from the box in the fridge, and emptied half of it in one gulp while still standing. She then refilled it to the brim, grabbed the mail, and plopped down on the couch in the living room. Tears were pricking her eyes, and when Smokey came purring into the room and jumped lightly on her lap, she let the tears fall freely, burying her face in her cat’s soft fur.
“Oh Smokey, I’m too scared to look at the letters,” she sobbed, hugging her cat so tightly that he gave an indignant meow.
“Sorry, baby. What if they’ve sent another threatening letter? I don’t think I can handle it. Why are they so awful? And why did Luke have to die? I can’t cope with them without him.”
Valerie was aware that having a full-blown conversation with her cat might be cause for concern, but she didn’t care. Ever since her husband Luke passed away a year ago, she felt that she was slowly losing her grip on sanity. Frankly, she was looking forward to the day when it would slip out of her fingers entirely and she could enter a state of certifiable madness. Being declared mentally incompetent and sent to a mental institution sounded like a nice break from the nightmare her life had become.
Luke had died suddenly of a heart attack. Valerie would never forget the awful day when she came home from work and found him dead on the floor in the living room, his body already cold, vacant eyes staring blindly into space. His dear, familiar face had looked like the mask of a stranger and haunted her in her nightmares ever since that day. It was the first image that popped into her head when she thought of him, a fact that made her want to despair. They had been together for twenty-four years, and all she saw in her mind’s eye was his dead face. It was so unfair.
Luke had been diagnosed with heart disease a few years before, but they thought he had the condition under control with medication. Valerie couldn’t help but wonder if the stress they had been under before Luke’s death had contributed to his heart attack. Whatever the reason, he was gone, and he had left her behind, all alone.
The aftermath of his death was a blur. There was the funeral she was heavily medicated for, a meeting with her boss to arrange time off work, and a brief phase where people kept offering help and awkward condolences, followed by the gaping void she’d found herself in ever since. Her life had lost all colour and purpose, the well-meaning people had disappeared, and all she was left with was a cat, a growing drinking problem, and a group of people who seemed determined to destroy her.
Valerie and Luke met when she was nineteen years old and he twenty-eight. She was a student, living in a dorm, eating ramen noodles, and stacking shelves in a grocery store on weekends. He drove a Mercedes, had a place overlooking the ocean, and wore designer clothes. He was charming, confident, and devastatingly handsome; she thought of herself as plain, awkward, and boring. Everything about her was average: she was of average height, average build, with an average face. Valerie was neither fat nor skinny, neither ugly nor pretty, with dishwater blonde hair that was neither long nor short, ending just below her shoulders.
She was surprised when he asked her out on a date, and even more surprised when he told her soon after that he had fallen in love with her. She wasn’t sure how she felt, but everybody told her that he was a catch and that she would be crazy to turn him down – so she didn’t.
Valerie hadn’t looked for a relationship. She had been excited about living on her own for the first time, away from her preacher-parents who had monitored her every move and constantly reminded her to behave herself in a way that wouldn’t reflect badly on them. “People are looking at you,” they repeatedly told her, and she was expected to be at church every Sunday, in youth group every Friday, to sing in the choir, and to help her mom at women’s circle. Her parents were kind but strict, and being the pastor’s daughter wasn’t exactly a ticket into the popular kids’ ranks. She felt shackled by her parents’ vocation, resentful of always having to behave but too obedient to rebel.
She had been looking forward to making new friends, sleeping in on Sundays, and trying to figure out who she was as a person. It felt to her like she had only been a preacher’s daughter thus far, and she wanted to add another description to the sadly lacking “about me” section she kept in her head.
Valerie had first realized that she had no idea who she was when she had been interviewed for her first summer job at sixteen. She sat nervously in front of the owner of the local grocery store, and when he prompted her to “tell me about yourself”, she hadn’t had any idea what to say. She went to school, to church, and she liked to read – what else was there?
Valerie couldn’t remember what she’d said, but ever since the interview she was obsessed with trying to find an answer to that question. She envied other girls who came with a ready-made list: daughter, sister, friend, ballet dancer, horseback rider, future astrophysicist. She had neither the ambition nor the confidence for such a lofty career goal, she had no siblings, didn’t feel like she fit in with her youth-group friends who all seemed to actually believe in God while she had serious doubts, and there had never been time or money for expensive hobbies.
One thing was certain: Valerie wanted to leave her small town behind and move to a big city where she could experience the freedom of living in a place where nobody knew her. She decided to go to nursing school and convinced her parents that Vancouver was the best place to learn how to become a nurse. She was excited to be eight hours away from the suffocating scrutiny of her overprotective parents and small-town life, and couldn’t wait to live the life of a college student.
However, college wasn’t how Valerie had imagined it. Instead of finding her tribe of like-minded friends as she had hoped, she once again felt like the odd one out. Groups formed, but somehow she didn’t manage to join any of them, either because of her shyness or, her greatest fear, because she was too awkward. After a week of getting lost, eating lunch alone, and fighting back tears more than once, a curly-haired girl marched up to her on a Friday afternoon as she was sitting underneath a tree after class, doing homework and wondering what to do on the weekend.
“Hey, you are in my set, aren’t you?” she asked in a business-like tone. Valerie looked up at a skinny girl with huge glasses, short brown hair, and the worst case of dandruff she had ever seen. White flakes flecked her dark hair, a fine layer of white dust had settled on the girl’s narrow shoulders, and Valerie watched in amazement as the girl brushed off her shoulders impatiently and a white cloud drifted lazily to the ground, pretty as snow. She must have been staring, because the girl said: “Would you like to take a picture? It lasts longer.”
Valerie blushed furiously and stammered: “I-I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to, I –”
The other girl smiled. “Relax, I’m just teasing you. I have psoriasis, it’s not contagious. It’s particularly bad right now, I got a flare-up because of the stress of starting college and everything. It doesn’t always look that extreme. I’m Hattie, by the way –” She stuck out her hand and Valerie automatically shook it. “I’ve seen you on your own all week, is that on purpose? Do you prefer to be alone? If you do I totally understand, just say the word and I’ll bugger off. If not, do you wanna hang out?”
She looked at Valerie expectantly. It took Valerie a moment to respond, having momentarily been rendered speechless, before asking the first question that popped into her mind: “Sorry, what?”
Hattie laughed and plopped herself down next to Valerie. “What’s your name?”
So began her friendship with Hattie. Fast-talking, smart, and bossy, Hattie took her on as if Valerie was a lost puppy, and from that moment on they did everything together. It wasn’t the group of friends Valerie had been dreaming of or the college experience she had hoped for, but she was grateful not to be alone anymore. Hattie also lived on campus, and it was wonderful to have someone to study with, hang out with on the weekends, and most importantly, walk in a pair instead of alone. Valerie always felt like a huge letter L was emblazoned on her chest whenever she did anything alone, thinking that everyone must think she was too unlikable to have friends.
Still, even though she was glad for Hattie’s company, she couldn’t help but feel like she was missing out. Hattie was a passionate crafter, scrapbooker, and movie aficionado, and Valerie went along with it even though none of these activities were her jam. But because she still didn’t know what she’d rather do and Hattie’s force of will was much stronger than hers, it was easiest to go along with what her friend wanted.
Valerie yearned to realize her fantasy of living like they did in Friends with a group to hang out with every day, going in and out of each other’s places, and knowing you could always find them at the same coffee shop if you wanted company. She also wanted to go out and party but didn’t know how to make that happen. Hattie had no interest, and Valerie was too shy to ask others to tag along. As for going alone? Unthinkable. She’d die of shame and embarrassment.
And then the end of the first semester came and with it the invite she’d been waiting for.
“Hey Valerie, we’re all going out on Friday after we’re done with our last exam, you and Hattie should come!” Trish called over to her as they were waiting in front of a classroom to write their second-to-last exam. Some students were doing last-minute revisions, others sat with their eyes closed in an effort to calm their nerves, and the group of popular kids stood around, discussing where to go on Friday. Trish was one of the popular kids, but she was nice to everyone.
Valerie blushed with pleasure and surprise. “Sounds good!” she managed to say without stuttering. “Where are you going?”
“The Roxy,” Trish replied. “We’re getting a party bus from campus; it leaves at eight. Let me know if you’re coming and I’ll put your names down!”
Hattie was going straight home after the exams and politely declined the invite. But Valerie had planned to stay the weekend before driving the 700 kilometres to her parents’ house, knowing she needed to get a proper night’s sleep before that long drive. Without a moment’s hesitation she beamed at Trish and said: “Yes, I’m in.”
Valerie floated into the exam as if on clouds.
That Friday night changed her life. A few people had smuggled bottles of cheap champagne into school, and as soon as Valerie walked out of the exam room, a guy whose name she didn’t know pressed a red plastic cup into her hand. “We’re done!” he sang, grabbing her other hand and giving her a twirl. “Let’s party!”
They drank on school grounds until they were chased off, moving to someone’s common room where the party really kicked off. They drank, danced, sang, and laughed, and then Trish pulled Valerie into her room to get ready together with a bunch of other girls.
“You know, you’re actually really fun!” Trish said at one point and gave Valerie a hug. Buoyed by the alcohol and being in the midst of the realization of her dream, Valerie hugged her back tightly.
“So are you,” she said, and then added, “thank you for including me.”
“Aww, you are welcome,” Trish said. “Let me do your make-up, okay?”
When she walked into the club two hours later as part of a large group, Valerie felt on top of the world. This was the college experience she had been waiting for. Trish had done her hair and make-up expertly, and talked her into borrowing one of her dresses, a fitted little number with a short, flared skirt. Valerie felt like she was wearing a costume, playing someone she was not, and this new person was all the things she wasn’t: pretty, popular, and uncharacteristically daring.
As she was dancing with people that weren’t her friends, wearing clothes that weren’t hers, made-up in a way she usually never made herself up, and brazen in a way only alcohol and pretending to be someone you are not could make you – that’s when she met her future husband.
Luke was tall, dark-haired, and incredibly charming. He would later always claim that it was love at first sight for him, that he knew as soon as he laid eyes on her that she was the woman for him. All Valerie could honestly say was that she had been flattered by the attention. This person that wasn’t her had flirted outrageously with him, but it hadn’t seemed real, just like everything else that night wasn’t real. Underneath the buzz and the high of the night, Valerie knew that she was playing out a fantasy, and she hadn’t expected to see him ever again after that night.
But he surprised her. She had given him her number, and the very next day he called. Hungover and too stunned to overthink it, she had agreed to meet with him for dinner the following night, and then spent the next thirty hours panicking about what to wear, what to do with her hair, and what they would talk about. When she returned Trish’s dress she told her about the date, and Trish offered her another outfit to wear and to do her hair again. She suspected that Trish saw her as a project, something to do now that the exams were over and they didn’t need to study anymore, but she didn’t care. She needed all the help she could get, because if she remembered correctly, Luke was hot. What he saw in her she had no idea; she hoped it wasn’t beer goggles that made him want to take her out. What if he took one good look at her in the sober light of day, turned on his heel and left?
Decked out in a slip dress and unfamiliar high heels, and with Trish’s advice – “If you’re worried about what to say just ask him questions and let him talk, guys love to talk about themselves” – fresh in her mind, she nervously awaited Luke’s arrival.
He came in a silver Mercedes, dressed in a suit jacket, crisp white shirt, designer jeans, and expensive-looking shoes. He held a bunch of flowers in his hands, and to her immense relief he didn’t run away screaming upon seeing her but said, “You are even more beautiful than the other night, which I didn’t think was possible”. It should have sounded cheesy, but she was thoroughly charmed by him. He opened the car door for her, courteously held open the restaurant door, pulled out her chair for her, and asked her questions about herself. Luke seemed genuinely fascinated by her small-town upbringing as the pastor’s kid, and laughed at her anecdotes. He made her feel witty and interesting, because he had a way of concentrating all of his attention on her alone, as if she was the only person in the room.
She learnt that he was the youngest of three brothers, worked in finance, liked golfing, skiing, and travelling, and that he was looking for a serious relationship. “I don’t want to scare you away,” he said gently, taking her hand in his and looking deep into her eyes. “I know that you are young and still in school. But I want to be upfront about what I’m looking for, so we are not wasting each other’s time. I want to be married by thirty and start a family. If you’re not ready for a relationship just say the word, and you’ll never see me again after tonight.”
Valerie was startled by his ultimatum but decided that she liked his decisiveness. At twenty-eight he was pretty old, so it made sense that he didn’t want to wait around. If it was up to her she would have preferred to take it slow, date for a while and see where things were going. But since that option didn’t seem to exist for him, she took the only other one that allowed her to keep seeing him and said: “I’m all in if you are.”
She was going home the next day because she had a job lined up, and for the next few weeks they were talking on the phone every day, getting to know each other. Luke knew who he was and what he wanted, and Valerie, who didn’t know either, was deeply impressed by it. She wondered what it would be like to be so confident, to know one’s place in the world. Would she ever find hers? Maybe with him by her side, she could?
He met her parents a month later, visiting her in her hometown, and they were charmed by him. Without their prompting he asked to sleep in the spare room, earnestly telling them that he knew how young she was, that he respected her, and that he would never do anything she didn’t want him to. He expressed his desire to get married, casually mentioning that he was financially secure and that he regarded it as his responsibility to take care of a woman.
“Your dad and I really like your young man,” Valerie’s mom said to her later in the kitchen as they were doing the dishes.
“He’s great, isn’t he?” Valerie asked, needing the reassurance. Then she voiced the concern she’d had since the beginning: “You don’t think he’s moving too fast, coming here after knowing me for only a month?”
“Not at all,” her mom said dismissively. “If you know, you know. Besides, we appreciate him making the effort. Your father and I like that it’s important to him to meet us. We want to know who you’re going out with. We are very impressed by him.”
“You don’t mind the nine-year age gap?”
“Not at all, honey. Men mature so much later than women, having an older man is much better, trust me. Dad and I are five years apart, and let me tell you, I’ve sometimes wished it was more.”
Her mother kissed her on the forehead. “Trust me, he’s a catch. You couldn’t do any better.”
Nine months later he proposed, after having asked her father for her hand, and a year after that they got married. She graduated three months later, and they settled into their lives together. Valerie got a job at a hospital and Luke left for his office in a suit and tie every morning. After a year of marriage they tried to get pregnant, but when it didn’t happen they went to the doctor and found out that Luke was infertile, probably due to an injury he’d had as a child. She brought up adoption, but Luke was vehemently against it.
“I don’t want somebody else’s kid,” was his attitude, and he wouldn’t budge.
Instead they travelled extensively, went on skiing holidays every winter, and entertained regularly. Luke was an outgoing guy with a large group of friends, and even though they were all very nice to her and seemed to have accepted her, Valerie couldn’t help but feel that she didn’t belong. She was the youngest of them, not a mother, and she always felt left out somehow, as if there was a secret password you needed to enter the inner sanctum that she had never been given. When she tried to explain to Luke how she felt, he laughed it off, telling her that it was all in her head and to stop overthinking. “They love you!” he assured her. “Stop worrying so much!”
She loved her husband, but he just didn’t get it. Luke didn’t know what being insecure felt like – he never doubted himself or his judgment. He was utterly confident and truly didn’t seem to care what others thought of him. “I can’t change it anyway, so why even try? I only worry about things I can change, everything else is a waste of time.”
Try as she might, Valerie couldn’t stop worrying. She worried about global warming, getting fat, about people not liking her, about dying before she found her purpose. She still carried her “about me” list in her head, and was dissatisfied with what was on it thus far: daughter, wife, nurse, traveller – what else? She hesitated to put friend on it because even though Hattie and her had stayed friends and she and Luke technically had a large friend group, she felt inadequate. She worried about not investing enough time into friendships but didn’t have the energy to do more. Having a job dealing with people, plus looking after her husband was more than enough human interaction for her most days. She had to force herself to schedule get-togethers with her friends, to check in regularly, and to remember to send birthday and Christmas cards. It was all so much work.
Valerie knew how lucky she was and felt guilty for being dissatisfied. Why did everything feel like too much? And why did it also feel like something was missing in her life?
Three years ago they decided to move. Valerie had been working through the first wave of the pandemic and she was exhausted. Case numbers of active COVID-19 cases were rising, and in August of 2020 they were higher than they had been in March before the lockdown. Living in a big city and working in a big hospital didn’t feel safe anymore.
They’d lived in Vancouver their entire marriage, but Luke had made enough smart investments that he could retire at fifty, and with the sale of their house they would be able to afford something amazing in a smaller town away from the chaos, traffic, danger, and the grey weather in the winter.
“Honey, look at this,” he said one evening as they were sitting beside each other on the sofa, scrolling on their phones. He handed her his and she looked at the screen: it showed an image of a picturesque town studded with trees, snow-capped mountains in the distance, and a bridge crossing a sparkling river. Superimposed on it in large, looping font were the words:
Summerfield
Where Dreams Turn into Reality
“What is this?” she asked.
“Our future!” he said excitedly. “It’s a small town a few hours away from here, and it has everything we want: lakes, rivers, mountains, snow in the winter, warm weather in the summer, tons of hiking trails, a bookstore, boutiques, coffee shops, a handful of decent-looking restaurants and very affordable houses. If we sell our place and move we’ll never have to work again!”
Valerie clicked through the photos on the town’s website. She saw pictures of live concerts in a park, a farmer’s market, a beautiful town centre decorated for what looked like a fall festival, fit-looking seniors cross-country skiing under an azure-blue sky, and lots of photos of fall foliage, rivers, people fishing or water skiing, and gorgeous sunsets.
“This looks amazing,” she breathed, smiling widely. “When can we go and check it out?”
They did the very next weekend, and both of them fell in love with Summerfield. They stayed in an old-fashioned B&B with a grandmotherly hostess who cooked them a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, French toast, homemade muffins, and strong coffee, and happily told them stories of the town and people. She also gave them the number of a real-estate-agent friend of hers who agreed to show them a few houses for sale that same afternoon.
“This is Pleasant Hill, one of the most desirable areas in Summerfield,” the real-estate-agent informed them as they were driving through a pretty neighbourhood of well-maintained houses with neatly manicured lawns, tidy front yards, and tree-lined streets. “The people here are house-proud and really care about their community,” she continued as they pulled up in front of a gorgeous two-story house, painted green with brown shutters and a large front porch.
The house was beautiful: polished hardwood floors, state-of-the-art appliances, a lavish kitchen, and spa-like bathrooms. It was airy and filled with light, and the big windows showed incredible views of the valley. The large backyard was expertly landscaped and came with a hot tub, fireplace, and gazebo. Valerie closed her eyes and pictured Luke and herself in this yard, hosting a barbecue for the new friends they would make here. A fresh start, she thought to herself. Maybe a new town would help her find whatever it was that was missing in her life.
