Page 1 of The Sound Of Us

Chapter 1

Axel

When the cold weeks following Christmas and New Year make promises of turning our small town of River Valley in Eastern Kentucky into a (poverty-stricken) winter wonderland, you know it’s time to start chopping the wood. You don’t want to get caught without proper heating during this year’s winter in these parts.

I’m outside, axe to wood, when I see the big piano. Not all of it, since the wet winds have uncovered only a portion of the magnificent instrument as the moving truck upon which it stood eases its way past our house on the corner of Alice and Third Road.

There isn’t much of the piano to see, but it’s enough to know that the beautiful instrument isn’t from this age. A vintage masterpiece.

My curiosity has me straightening my back, watching the truck until it disappears around the bend. There’s only one house at the bottom of the bend. It belonged to Mrs. Johnson, who’d left River Valley about a year ago. She’d been sick for a long time and we heard she went to stay in one of those fancy retirement homes in Louisville. A maintenance company takes care of the house here.

Sadly, Mrs. Johnson died soon after she left River Valley and our local radio station dedicated a ten-minute segment to her each week, calling for information about any extended family.

Of course, the station was broadcast only to the two-thousand-three-hundred and sixty-four people who made up the population of River Valley, and we all already didn’t know anything.

We’re a town starved for any kind of entertainment and would turn anything and everything into town news, and usually, we made things bigger than they actually are.

We all knew Mrs. Johnson had gone to Louisville to be closer to her family, but we had to go and sensationalize it by acting like we had no idea what had happened and what was going to happen to her property.

David Shapiro, River Valley’s only lawyer, was quick to burst our bubble, assuring us that there was no need for an investigation into Mrs. Johnson’s mysterious extended family.

It’s a simple story, he’d said, to the dismay of the townsfolk.

According to David Shapiro, someone from Mrs. Johnson’s very affluent family was going to upgrade the old house down around the bend and turn it into some sort of guest house.

Not that many people would willingly pass through these parts, let alone sleep here voluntarily, but we admired their optimism and who were we to turn down something as exciting as the grand opening of our first guest house since the last one got destroyed in a fire about seven years ago?

I already knew all of this before it became public knowledge, because my best friend, Benson Turner, works at the town’s only bookstore, named Till Books Do Us Part, which is next door to David Shapiro’s office, and he always got the juiciest news first, straight from the horse’s mouth.

I already knew the new resident was arriving today, but no one ever said anything about him owning the most exquisite thing I’d ever seen. Imagine owning a baby grand like that.

I sneak a look over my shoulder, where my golden retriever, named Pepper, is busy sulking.

She’s a therapy dog, and I got her as a gift from Mrs. Dalton six months after I got married and moved in with Frank next door to her. It’s to help with the cancer, she’d said, but I was sure it was also because of the other thing that had started happening soon after I got married. Pepper wasn’t a guard dog, but she still protected me as best as she could.

Sometimes I feel sorry for Pepper. Her purpose in life is to watch her owners die. It sounds a little dramatic because she’s actually meant to provide comfort and love to terminally ill patients and I guess we should look at the glass as half full and all that, but ultimately, those people need her comfort and love as they approach end of life.

She’s been through it twice already. Her soft, gentle temperament is meant to ease the pain of her companion and then she’s shipped off to another terminally ill patient who was approaching end of life. I’m her third owner and well, I’m still here. I decided that I’d be the last person Pepper would have to watch die. I already stated in my will that I want her to go to a perfectly healthy child somewhere in the suburbs, who’d love her and who’d live to eighty at least.

I definitely don’t want Pepper to stay with my husband, Frank. And he wouldn't want her too, anyway.

“It’s five o’clock, so no, Pepper. You’ll stay right there. You’re a dog. Not a race car, so you stay inside until the evening traffic subsides,” I tell her now.

And by traffic, I mean the two or three cars that need to get down to the front of Mrs. Dalton’s house, to drop off perishable items like milk and cheese, or, as of the last few weeks, to drop off renovation supplies to Mrs. Johnson's house.

Pepper whines, telling me exactly what brand of asshole she thinks I am (the stick-in-the-mud-no-fun kind). Especially since I destroyed her deepest, darkest fantasy of chasing a giant moving truck down the road toward the woods by keeping her locked behind the old picket fence.

Another low rumble carries through the evening air and Pepper spins in circles, whining like a wolf calling to the moon.

“No fuckin’ way, Pepper.” I chuckle at her dramatics and go back to my chopping. We need this wood out of the wet weather immediately.

I hear the soft click of the gate latch about the same time another rumble of a car engine grinds through the air. And then—

“Pepperrrr!”

Fuck. Her golden hair flying behind her, Pepper bolts out of the gate, racing for the sleek, black SUV as it glides up the road.

Most times, you’d let dogs chase after cars, right? I’m just some crazy, overprotective dog-mom, right?

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