Chapter 1

Ginny hasn't slept well in nine months, since she was attacked in the alley. Matt says her insomnia must be a side effect of the Xanax she was put on for her overwhelming anxiety. It's also too hot tonight and there's still so much packing left to do. Her mind is busy, whirling. Ginny is sitting sideways on the new faux-leather sofa in the living room of their apartment. The lights are off. All she can see is an occasional twinkling out the patio doors down in the city. Her back is against the arm of the sofa, her legs are stretched out. The living room is in disarray, there are boxes everywhere. Some half open, some sealed shut. Ginny's legs are bare and her feet are sticky in the heat. The faux leather squeaks when she moves. The smell of cardboard and sofa chemicals permeate the room. Even with the patio doors open, Ginny can smell it, and also the dust from sealing up their life, from moving everything into the middle of the room, the curry smells from last night's dinner of takeout Indian food, the mouldy smell they never got out of the bathroom. She lies there on the sofa, sniffing. She takes it in, trying to snap a photo of this apartment in her mind, trying to take it with her when they move next week. And trying also to leave it behind. Ginny and Matt have loved living here, they have had some great memories, some great times, but, ever since the alley attack, they know it's time to leave. Ginny needs to leave.

Matt is asleep in the next room. Ginny's laptop is resting on her thighs. It leaves a red mark on her skin, recently sunburned from that last bike ride through the city. She keeps holding the laptop up to cool off her thin, naked legs. The light from the screen makes her squint. She takes off her reading glasses and rubs her eyes. There is a line of mosquito bites on the back of one thigh and she scratches at them ceaselessly. Ginny has been here, in this position, not really moving except to scratch, since 2:00 a.m. The laptop on her thighs, she's been checking on their new house in Parkville. They bought the house in July but it wasn't until tonight that Ginny thought to go on Google Maps. The thought woke her from a light, restless slumber and then her brain started moving and she thought, "Google Maps," and got up to power up her laptop. Matt rolled over, his arms jutting out over Ginny's pillow, his body splaying everywhere, and he snorted. The ceiling fan in the bedroom moved sluggishly and clicked with each rotation, doing little to help with the heat.

Ginny moves her fingers on her laptop down Google Street View. She turns left and right, spins in circles, heading through the town's streets, getting to know their new neighbourhood from above and side to side. A large old tree, maybe maple, here, a neighbour's tulip flag to the left of a red door with the words "Spring into Spring" just visible, a tiny dog walker wearing a bright blue coat, the dog ahead on the lead wearing little doggy shoes, head down sniffing the grass of the passing lawn. She notices that the street sign is missing from the post on the corner just up from their house. She can see a post but no sign. Ginny feels like waking Matt up to show him all of this, but she also knows she needs to let him sleep. The months of her anxiety after the attack, and then buying this house, packing up, and then the stress and uncertainty of Ginny quitting her teller job at the bank is wearing on him. She thinks he might even be getting a cold sore on his lip from the stress.

Ginny continues on. She's enjoying the view. It places her in a space, a direction, even a time. She slides the image timeline back and forth between recent and past - a fall day in 2019 to a grimy, low-resolution 2010 photo. It's spring here now, in this exact image. Even the flag says so.

Ginny stretches and sniffs under her arms. She almost drops the laptop on the floor. She's stinky. Rank. The humidity has been awful and the thought of living outside of the city where breezes can get through, where everything isn't cluttered and tight and close, excites her. She imagines living in the country, in wide open spaces and cut-grass air. A town with no alleys, no lurking strangers. No cackling laughter, or dangerous knives.

Matt tells her, "You're overreaching, Ginny. You're seeing moving to the country as an all-encompassing fix. The actual breeze won't be air-conditioned there. You'll be disappointed."

But Ginny tells Matt it's better to be overly confident about a move as big as this, it's better to think their lives will change for the best, right? They have made a huge decision, uprooting their lives completely. Making a conscious effort to kick-start normality, to stop being so anxious, scared of everything. Getting away from the city, from the anxiety, from the cost of it and jumping into the calm, peaceful, countryish unknown. Ginny would rather be positive about it before she moves and then be disappointed later.

After the attack, when they decided to buy a house, they couldn't find anything in the city that they could afford. There was nothing away from this neighbourhood. Or at least nothing without major problems - termites, asbestos, needing major renovations, crime-ridden locations. Price mostly. Ginny and Matt couldn't afford even the worst shacks. But then they widened their search criteria, extended the search more and more away from the city, more toward rural, they reshuffled their idea of work and thought about creating a family soon, and then they found this house.

Parkville was a place they were familiar with, visiting friends' cottages or just market-shopping when they wanted to get out of the city. They stayed in the bed and breakfast here after their wedding. It has a lake and walking trails - old train tracks converted into wonderful, long hiking and biking trails. And the house is large and has some potential. A few major renovations are needed but that will come with time.

Ginny has been too consumed with packing to think about why she liked the house - everything was happening so quickly - but there was something about its size, about the yard leading into the ravine, about the dining room with ornate, thick trim and a door into the kitchen that swung back and forth. She could see herself carrying dishes through that door to her family someday. She wanted to live away from the claustrophobic, hot, stress-inducing, criminal city, to get a new lease on life. This house felt right. Matt immediately agreed. Having lived in their one-bedroom, tenth-floor apartment with a galley kitchen for two years, Matt felt like this house was akin to winning the lottery. "Think of all the space," he kept saying, his arms spread wide.

"To think that only a year ago all we worried about was what font to use on our wedding invitations," Matt said.

Back then it was a life with relatively no fear. Not in the way fear has thrown a black sheet over them since October.

After Ginny inches her fingers around the laptop, edges around the streets in all different directions, after she studies all the houses around theirs and imagines the neighbours, creates a picture of them from the outside appearance of their houses, after she looks at the sidewalks and the corner store about three blocks away, she clicks on Satellite View and the screen moves quickly out and everything is dark with white lines. Ginny imagines the satellite that caught this shot from space. She has no idea what a satellite would look like, except from movies, but she sees something in her mind that seems right. Like a large drone, grey with black solar panels. She sees it floating there above the Earth taking photos. Ginny's not sure how often the images change, but time has stopped here. Everything is stuck. She uses the trackpad and slowly, slowly travels down to Earth. The mid-size lake at the edge of the town becomes large and Ginny can imagine swimming on hot days like today. Maybe dipping a baby's toes in the lake. She can see docks with small boats moored to them. Maybe she and Matt will have a boat someday? She can see a few small islands, one of which has a white cabin on it. As she zooms in she can see the streets of Parkville becoming clearer, the backyard pools and roofs are visible. Ginny imagines herself as a bird flying over the town. She swoops around a bit, her fingers flying.

Moving more toward their new house Ginny sees that one of their neighbour's houses has an addition she didn't notice from the ground. It almost doubles the size of their house. The street just over from their house is a dead end, a cul-de-sac, it loops into a U. The leaves are on all the spring trees, but not completely full. It must be early spring. The ravine behind the house looks blurry and empty and sad. A jumbled mess of limbs just waking up from winter. She can't see through the thick trees, the new leaf growth, to anyone on the trail. It's either early in the morning or maybe no one uses the ravine. The neighbours don't seem to use their garages as each driveway with a garage has a car on it. Maybe this is a weekend image, the neighbours tucked inside having breakfast, their cars waiting in the driveways to be used to run errands, the garages full of lawn equipment or boxes of stuff. Ginny scratches her bites again. She yawns. She can hear a car alarm through the patio door going off down in the streets ten storeys below. She definitely won't miss the ever-present sounds of the city. As she expects the air to be cool, like air conditioning, and fresh in the country, she also expects the new town to be quiet. She expects nothing scary or loud to happen when they move to the country.

Ginny's fingers move out...