Chapter 2: Natalie and Hank

Every day, I found myself peering through that tiny hole at the woman next door. I learned her name was Natalie Pierce from the junk mail in her mailbox—Natalie, in looping pink ink.

She looked like the kind of girl you’d see on a vintage postcard—big, soft eyes and a smile that made her seem both older and younger than she was. She moved around her living room with this quiet grace, wearing pink cartoon pajamas that caught the morning sun and made her seem almost unreal. She didn’t work; her days drifted by with soap operas, online shopping, and the gentle rituals of solitude. Sometimes she’d curl up with coffee, sometimes flip through magazines or scroll her phone, always a little out of reach.

Her husband, Hank, ran the diner downstairs—Hank’s Country Kitchen. Everyone called him Hank. He wore the same grease-stained Hank’s Country Kitchen T-shirt every day, and the place smelled like burnt coffee and fryer oil. He was over forty, square-faced, with a buzz cut and broad shoulders. His hands looked like they’d flipped a thousand burgers, and his eyes like they’d seen the bottom of too many coffee pots. He was always grinning, street-smart, and hard-working—everyone’s favorite guy on Old Market Avenue.

Every night at 11:30, like clockwork, Hank would come home, shower, crawl into bed, and start their married life on schedule. He adored Natalie—no, he was obsessed, intoxicated by her in a way only some men can be. To him, every night, Natalie was the most perfect woman alive.

I hid in the darkness, only ten or twelve feet away. To me, Natalie looked fragile next to Hank, like a porcelain figurine set beside a linebacker.

It was almost theatrical, the way they played out their ritual. Sometimes, after their lights went out, I’d listen to the faint murmurs through the wall, half-lulled, half-haunted by the knowledge that a life so near could still feel so far away.

When the lights finally went off, usually around one, I’d lie awake staring at the popcorn ceiling. The hum of the fridge was the only sound. Natalie’s image lingered behind my eyelids—so close, just a wall away, and yet impossibly far.