Member-only story
The Witch Next Door
Fiction
It was not a good day for a summer storm. Penelope Reed watched through the blinds of her kitchen window as movers began to unload furniture from a beat-up truck parked in the driveway next door. An unfortunate pleather sofa followed a pair of lamps and a behemoth of a secretary desk. From a rusted station wagon came a black umbrella, masking the presence of the new homeowner of 1692 Cherrywood Lane.
“Mom?”
Penelope let the blinds snap back into shape as if she had been caught doing something wrong. She brushed a hand over her apron, still dusted with flour from the cake she had promised to make. “Charlie, you shouldn’t sneak up on me like that.”
Her son blinked at her, and she could see her husband in that gaze. It was bad enough she had one man looking at her owlishly all the time. Now she had two. And it became more and more apparent that Charlie took after his father far more than he took after his mother.
She reached out and ruffled his tawny hair. “Do you want to help with the cake?”
His nose wrinkled, and she knew straight away that he would beg off. Heaven forbid he even tried to help her when it came to domestic matters — another habit he had inherited from Dan Reed.
