The first police car arrived before I had finished unloading the third box.
It was Sunday, a few minutes after noon, one of those flat white late-summer days when the heat seemed to press every color out of the sky. The asphalt shimmered.
Sprinklers clicked in perfect intervals. Every front lawn in Larkspur Commons looked as if someone had measured the grass with a ruler before cutting it.
I had owned the house at 14 Larks Lane for eleven days.
I had not slept in it yet.
That morning was supposed to be the beginning.
My truck was backed into the driveway with the tailgate down. I had a cardboard box of kitchen towels tucked beneath one arm and another box of pots sitting on the concrete behind me when the cruiser turned slowly into the cul-de-sac.
No siren.
Only lights.
Red.
Blue.
Red.
Blue.
The colors moved across the beige stucco of my new house, crossed the garage door, then reflected in the front windows of the homes around me.
I remember thinking how absurdly clean everything looked under emergency lights.
Across the street, a man riding a mower eased off the throttle. The engine dropped to an idle and he turned in his seat.
Two houses down, a woman watering hydrangeas stopped with the hose still running. Water spread across the sidewalk and into the gutter while she watched.
A curtain shifted in a house farther down.
Then another.
Nobody looked surprised.
That was the first thing that bothered me.
Not the police car.
The faces.
People were not asking themselves why a cruiser had stopped in front of the new neighbor's home.
They looked like people watching the next scene in a story they already knew.
Then I saw the woman on the porch beside mine.
She stood beneath two white colonial columns with her phone raised horizontally in both hands.
Filming.
Mid-fifties.
Blonde bob cut so precisely it seemed immune to wind.
Large sunglasses pushed onto the top of her head.
Khaki pants.
Pale blue blouse.
Around her neck hung a green lanyard with a laminated badge that caught the sunlight every time she moved.
She did not hide the phone when I looked at her.
She wanted me to know.
The deputy stepped from the cruiser.
He was maybe thirty-five, lean, short dark hair, expression tired rather than threatening. His hand stayed away from his weapon. His nameplate read SALAS.
He approached slowly.
"Afternoon, sir."
"Afternoon."
"We received a call about a suspicious male casing a vacant property."
I looked at the house.
Then at him.
Then back at the house.
"What property?"
He almost looked embarrassed.
"This one."
"I'm moving into it."
"You're the owner?"
"Yes."
"You have anything showing this address?"
"I do."
He nodded.
"If you don't mind."
I put the box down.
My closing packet was still in the glove compartment of my truck.
Normally I would have moved important documents into a filing cabinet immediately, but I had been carrying that packet around for eleven days because some part of me still did not quite believe a stack of signatures could make a house belong to me.
I retrieved it.
The deputy took the first document.
Warranty deed.
He read my name.
THOMAS HALE.
Then the property address.
14 LARKS LANE.
He checked my driver's license.
Same name.
He looked at the numbers on the mailbox.
Fourteen.
Back to the deed.
Back to me.
Something changed in his face.
Not shock.
Recognition.
The tired kind.
The kind that told me he had performed this exact arithmetic before.
"Mr. Hale, I apologize."
"No problem."
He handed everything back.
Then he did not leave.
Instead, Deputy Salas looked over my shoulder at the neighboring porch.
Patricia Voss was still recording.
The deputy exhaled through his nose.
"This is my third call to this address this year."
I looked at him.
"Third?"
"This year."
"But I closed eleven days ago."