Turn 21 of 44

Finish making the casserole and wrap it up. You soon leave the house and arrive at the blue house. Knock on Carol's door with the casserole. A woman in a suit with pants and a tight bun answers. Her tone nasty as you talk in your housewife voice about welcoming her to the neighborhood and you say you thought casserole for an intro meal. She invites you in as you put the casserole on the table.

The carrier's handle is warm through the dish towel, and Mulberry Lane in the afternoon sun looks like a postcard you're delivering yourself. The blue house on the corner has a new mailbox — black, unweathered, letters still shiny — and your red heels click up its walk like punctuation. You knock twice, dainty, and the door opens on a woman in a charcoal pantsuit, blouse ironed sharp, hair yanked back into a bun so tight it could hold a door open. A phone glows in her hand, mid-email. Her eyes do one pass over you — petticoats, pearls, casserole — and come back flat. "Can I help you?" "Well, hi there!" Your voice comes out bright and pitched just so, the smile fixed and warm. "I'm Margaret Austin, from up the lane — I just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood proper. And I thought, well, a casserole's the friendliest way to do an intro meal, don't you think? Tuna noodle. It's just a *dream*." She looks at the dish like it might be a subpoena. "That's... a lot of steps up the driveway for a casserole," she says, and there's an edge under it, tired and sharp. "I'm on a call in ten minutes." But she steps back anyway — manners are manners even in a pantsuit — and holds the door. Inside, the house is bare boxes and a laptop on the dining table, and you set the dish down on the table beside it, square in the middle, right where a centerpiece would go. "It's Casey, by the way," she says, arms crossed. "Not Carol. Whoever told you Carol—" "Oh, *Casey*!" you sing, and the giggle escapes, sweet as pie, because gals just get mixed up sometimes and it's nothing a casserole can't fix. "Casey, you're going to love it here. It's just the friendliest street. Everybody knows everybody." Marge looks at the casserole, then at you — the bob, the smile, the seams — and her brow creases like she's doing arithmetic she doesn't like the answer to.