My name is Courtney Shaw. I was twenty-six and my husband Tom was about to turn thirty that summer in 2007 when we moved to Starling Falls, Idaho. Our hearts were full of hope and love. We couldn’t believe our good fortune in finding such a beautiful old mansion to call our own. We thought we’d grow old there in Starling Falls. I guess, in a way, we did.
Instead of creating a beautiful life, though, instead of having a family and growing even more deeply in love, we became entangled in a world of evil secrets. Contrary to the way time typically seems to slow down in boring or unpleasant situations, the years there went by so quickly that now when I look back on them they’re a hazy blur that take up no more space in my memory than my first real job or some long-lost week spent at a beach when I was in my twenties. Of course, if I try, I can bring back details. Plenty of details. My memory is true, even if the town and people and my chaste, pleasant diary entries from that time are false.
This isn’t so much the story of a town, as it’s the story of a street. An avenue, technically. Hawthorne Avenue, and the four old Victorian mansions that sit two by two, across from one another. It’s the story of the McGhees, the Sorensons, the Bradfords, and us, the Shaws. And even more so, it’s the story of everyone who came before us.
I sometimes wonder if we’d bought a different house on a different street if it might have changed everything. If we could have come to love Starling Falls, after all. If, perhaps, we wouldn’t still be there today, bland and gray, still together, possibly even still in love. Oblivious to all those secrets.