Page 36 of Challenge Me

You nodded back, turning my key and pressing your red boot against my gas pedal. “Tell me where to go.”

I thought back to the last time I drove this road, about a year ago. It was spring then, too, and the ground was still damp from the melted snow. It was warm enough, but the warmth felt like a promise between two young lovers, something that could be broken at any time in order to kill all the fresh flower buds that were foolish enough to believe the winter was truly over.

“Number 122,” I offered in a cracked voice as one mailbox after another flashed by. I knew what John’s looked like: blue with yellow numbers. It had looked like that for the thirty years we were together. Once or twice a decade, John sanded it down and gave it a fresh coat of paint. I didn’t doubt it would still be there.

I was wrong.

The old wooden box was gone, replaced by a polished metal one mounted on a clean new post. The numbers were silver, perfectly aligned and entirely without character.

My engine stumbled; you eased your foot from the accelerator as we rolled toward the short driveway. As we pulled up beside it, my engine shuddered once and died completely. Something felt very, very wrong here. A mailbox I might understand, but even the house looked different. I’d known every crack in the paint; I watched them spread over thirty years. The overgrown garden had pressed against the porch, and a pile of scrap metal grew larger each year as John planned more and more projects, ever the working man.

None of that remained now. The house had fresh siding, the driveway had been resurfaced, the grass was cut brutally short, every blade obedient and identical. The garden had been cleared and replaced by neat little shrubs planted in even rows.

And beneath the carport–my carport–sat a brand-new electric vehicle. Silent. Smooth. White. Soulless.

How dare it?

Something tightened in my throat; that thing sat where I had spent countless evenings cooling after a hard drive, where John had changed my oil, polished my chrome, and cursed at bolts that refused to turn, where rain once drummed against the roof while he sat inside me with the radio playing, hiding from arguments in the house.

My home, occupied by an appliance with tires.

“Ghost,” you whispered, placing one hand over mine. “Wait here.”

Chapter twelve

Lai

Either my car was showing his age and had forgotten where home was, or this was about to become a very unpleasant story.

My skin prickled with worry as I looked up into the carport. No one in their right mind would trade a 1970 Dodge Challenger for a Tesla; even I knew that, and my understanding of cars was limited to whether they started when I turned the key and whether the brakes worked when I needed them to avoid hitting pedestrians. The electric thing that sat beneath the carport looked like a polished toaster somebody had accidentally fitted with wheels, entirely devoid of menace.

It did not belong in Ghost’s place.

That John fellow was not here. I knew it before Ghost had finished pulling up outside. The place simply didn’t feel right. No– that wasn’t quite it. The house felt too right. It was clean, renovated, and gentrified within an inch of its life. Someone had taken an old rural property, scraped away every sign that people had once lived imperfectly inside it, then rebuilt it as a lifestyle block for people who liked the idea of the country but preferred their mud contained and their livestock several fences away. The lawn was clipped short, the garden beds were edged in fresh timber, and even the gravel had been raked into submission. The only rural thing that remained was the scent of cattle, but even that was aggressively fought off with a wall of climbing jasmine.

I adjusted my coat, attempting to cover as much of my bare chest as dignity demanded, then reached into the back seat for my cane. My coat was stained, my hair was a lost cause, and there was oil beneath my fingernails; it would come down to my charm, then.

Thankfully, I had plenty of that.

I slipped from Ghost and approached the door, pausing at the electric doorbell. My finger hovered over the button until my training took over, and I pressed it with my knuckle rather than leave a clean print.

Retirement had not cured me of everything.

A soft chime echoed through the house; a few seconds later, footsteps approached from the other side of the door. The lock turned, but the security chain remained in place as the door opened three cautious inches. An older Asian woman peered at me through the gap, her gray-streaked hair pulled into a loose bun. She wore a floral apron over a faded T-shirt.

Her gaze traveled from my bare chest to my face, then down to my cane, assessing me for danger.

“Yes?” She asked.

“Good evening.” I offered her my most harmless smile and inclined my head. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’m looking for someone- an older gentleman named John. I was told he lived here?”

Her expression changed; surprise first, then recognition. Then something close to pity. The door closed, and I heard the chain slide from its channel before her wary face greeted me again. “Come in,” she said.

Southern hospitality was still alive and well; if only she knew what she was inviting into her home.

“Thank you.” I wiped my boots against the mat before stepping inside. I was aware of the cultural need to remove my shoes, but I wasn’t going to stay long, and I was already wearing too little.

The living room was as tidy as the exterior; new furniture, family photographs on the walls. A child’s school portrait sat on the mantel beside a small ceramic elephant. There was no trace of whoever had lived here before, not even the faint discoloration left when old pictures were removed from the walls. “Is John home?” I asked, stepping into the room.