We're homebodies, my husband and me. We take life as it comes. We are social introverts. Politely shy. We'll decline your trivia night invitation and play kitchen table board games one on one. We are not members of any church or civic organization, not devotees at the temple of CrossFit. We do not rile up social media or attend political rallies. At restaurants, we never send food back. We nod Thank you at cashiers. We don't frequent pubs. We don't honk.

We're the sort who, even if you live across the street, or work alongside, you consider us rarely. You have to pause to let our faces match up with our names. We are society's farthest flung, destined to be forgotten when we die. Yes, we prefer it that way.

And we don't have kids. Conception wasn't in our cards. We would've liked kids, but we didn't want to consult doctors. We talked about it, but we never looked into IVF. Each time my period returned our hearts broke a little more, but we accepted it. Quiet people practice acceptance.

Quiet people, quiet life, right? Well.

It began the day Hubs' boss asked him to transfer. Same position, different office, requiring a cross-country move. We gabbed about it all that night. He pulled up YouTube, connected it to the house speakers, and blasted the song "Should I Stay Or Should I Go." We began moshing, a mosh pit of two, throwing ourselves at each other and thrashing. Our tube socks loosened against the living room carpet. We made love afterward, music blasting. Yes, quiet people enjoy a bit of loud when no one's around to hear.

But this was not a should I stay situation. Our decision had been made. Yes, we'd always lived there, but nothing in particular tied us to the place. My job, as a school secretary, wasn't special. Where we lived was simply the location where we existed. I don't believe we ever said let's do it. We simply accepted it. That was our way.

Fast forward a month. No luck scouring Zillow. Home prices, you know. It was a Sunday, three p.m. The quietest part of the week. I will never forget Hubs waving his phone. "Check out this link! It's only been posted for an hour."

Well. It was a mixed-use area, that was our only qualm. Busy road, mucho traffic, the main street in a small town. It was bounded by a generic coffee shop and a downtrodden florist. But it was a century-old Colonial with a picket fence. Landscaping. Dormer windows. Two bedrooms. A fireplace, a new roof. They'd added an attached garage. Cherry on top, it was partly furnished, saving us from consulting with movers.

Hubs' face was hopeful. "It's Main Street, but we won't become Main Street people."

That made sense. And the price was right. So we jumped.

The move went fine, if boring. America is basically one enormous field. The house was lovely. I personally have a soft spot for old homes. Especially wainscoting. Previously we'd lived in a 2008 Fairmont, a double wide prefab, which was fine, which suited us. But now we had wainscoting. Our kitchen walls were rimmed with it. I will never forget that first morning after Hubs left for work. Right away running my thumbnail along the crisp vertical green wooden slats, tat-tat-tat. Our old kitchen had pebbled drywall.

In sum, we were in love with our new home. We adored it.

So that was early August, and time to begin my job search. I put on my pantsuit, did my hair, and stuck a copy of my resume inside a manila folder. Hubs had our only car, so I walked out the front door and down the path through the yard. I opened the gate.

An old woman happened to be passing by. She turned and stopped dead in her tracks. She clapped her hand over her mouth and began to hurry off again. A couple, pushing a double stroller, gave me a quick shudder and fled.

Now, it's my nightmare that Hubs and I might stand out. But to see it! To see people actually stop and take me in. That rattled me. It made me embarrassed, confused and scared.

I wanted to go back in, fix a tea, gaze at the wainscoting until I calmed. But I had a resume to deliver. I consulted my phone camera to make sure I hadn't developed a nosebleed. I hadn't. So I closed the gate, told myself I was imagining it. Call it anxiety about my job search. No biggie.

Walking the blocks to the school district office made me feel better. Walking does. But when I handed over my resume, the receptionist glanced at the address and gasped. Not a real gasp. It was through her nostrils, very quiet. So quiet most people wouldn't hear.

She whispered something I didn't catch. It sounded like "The murder house."

"Excuse me?" Now I was whispering too. "The what?"

But she only shook her head, patted my resume, and said someone would be in touch.

I stiff-legged it home, thinking about the ways I might have misheard her. Maybe she'd said martyr? The house had been in foreclosure, so we'd never learned the previous owners' names. Maybe Marter had been their surname? And possibly the Marters were known around town. Or it could be she'd said murmur. But who ever heard of a murmur house? And why gasp?

I called Hubs as I walked. I wanted to ask him if his coworkers had commented about our home. He didn't pick up. No surprise there. Probably busy making inroads with the new boss.

Back in the kitchen, I dropped my purse on the table, fixed that cup of tea, and immediately set to Google-sleuthing. It had been all I could do not to start in on it as I walked.

Well, the truth was easy to locate. All the area stations had covered it. Several true crime shows and a handful of those investigative longform Sunday specials as well. There were podcasts and web pages devoted to the story of our home. The only mystery was how Hubs and I hadn't stumbled across it before. It was all so… dark. Macabre. I actually had to turn off my phone, multiple times, to breathe.

That was a hellish day waiting for Hubs to return from work. Yes, it was.

I was scrolling YouTube and sipping my n-th cup of tea when he walked in. He saw my face and asked what was wrong. I gestured for him to sit, and he did.

"You won't believe this, but the people who used to live here…" I dunked my teabag. It was hard to form words. It felt safer, somehow, with the terribleness contained in my head. Hubs took my hand in both of his and squeezed it.

"The people who lived here before us, well, the wife shot the husband. Point blank. There were drugs involved. Vodka, beer, cocaine, pharmaceuticals." I ticked off on my fingers. "She claims the lights flickered, which she took as a burglar? So she pulled the trigger. Killed him. Then she ran down the street. Their poor daughter called 911. The police had a hell of a time getting the truth out. When they found her, she had the gun in her hand."

My husband was slack jawed, listening.

I went on. The child had been adopted by out-of-state relatives. The house sat vacant one year. After that, I was out of details, so the two of us sat in silence. Hubs stared at the table. I stared at the wainscoting. The murder (if it could even be called a murder? Was it accidental?) had happened right here, in the kitchen, where we sat. I'd discovered a little patch, plastered and painted, which looked a lot like a bullet hole. Neither of us had any idea what to say. What is there to say, really, about such an act?

Finally, Hubs cleared his throat. "I don't want to move."

"I didn't say we should."

"You were thinking it."

I took my hand back. He was right, of course. "We won't move."

Hubs mentioned dinner, as if there was nothing more to the matter, and went upstairs to change.

I opened the refrigerator. But my mind was all blood and violence. Really, I thought to myself, why move? We loved everything else about our home. We'd never believe in ghosts. A house is a house. The past is the past. No. We'd stay. Make a new life in the murder house. Yes, a tragedy had happened, but it was a dark factoid, not enough to scare us. We wouldn't let it.

That is what I told myself. Or tried to, anyway.

That first night was terrible. I didn't sleep a wink. Hubs flopped side to side too. The following days were bad. I hadn't heard back about the job, so I was home alone with nothing to do. I began to wish we hadn't left behind our furniture. It was off-putting to sit on the same couch where the killer and her victim used to sit. The bed was ours, that goes without saying, but not the nightstands, the dressers, the dinette set. Not the China hutch, or the coffee table. Their poor daughter's white wooden bunk bed in the spare bedroom really bothered me a lot.

I had been planning to rearrange the place, but now the thought of moving anything turned my stomach. Irrationally, I feared happening upon the bloodstain. The police had removed it, but all that breathless month of August I tiptoed around the house, never going upstairs when Hubs wasn't home, setting plates down with two hands to avoid the clatter, cringing at the merest floorboard creak. It got to the point I dreaded opening cabinets. Who knows why.

Instead, in the hours between Hubs' departure and arrival, I killed time perusing the killer wife's Facebook. She had been one of those who post twice daily. Inspirational quotes, complaints about drivers, lost and found dogs, Amazon products she'd tried. Stupid stuff. It was inconceivable that she'd continue posting right up until the murder. But why wouldn't she? Her last post had been about a camping trip, the weekend before she'd killed him. They'd gone fishing, drank around the fire. There were lots of happy photos, mostly selfies but also pictures of her ill-fated husband, fish he caught, the tent, the river, their child.

During this time, our own marriage was undergoing a shift. Whereas before we'd shared the details of our day, now when my husband got home, we struggled to find any words. He'd start in on some anecdote about his job, but trail off as I wasn't listening. I wasn't interested. Sometimes he'd say, "So what's new?" which irritated me, because there was nothing, which I felt like he ought to know without asking.

Except there was something new. I was obsessing over our home's previous owners. I couldn't stop thinking about the wife. Her mind so altered she'd gunned down the man she loved, the one she'd promised to have and to hold. I started to feel as though my marriage to Hubs was like clinging to a scrap of driftwood at sea. Despite occasional splinters, losing him would be catastrophic. It was frightening to think of.

But even though we'd always told each other everything, I didn't have it in me to say that aloud.

We'd turn on the TV. Sci-fi, or game shows, but now I found the noise grating. I'd sit down with him, but soon I'd have my fingers in my ears. So he'd turn it down, but it was never enough. I'd go upstairs to bed and cover my head with my pillow. I couldn't explain it. There was so much then which I couldn't explain.

In the weeks that followed, I won't say we argued, but he stopped reaching for my hand. I stopped resting my head on his chest on the couch. Often we spent time in separate rooms, quietly apart. Our life together had been easy, but now it felt forced. I snapped at him. He snapped at me. Days were uncertain, pointless, bleak.

---

Then it was Labor Day weekend. There was a knock on our door. It was dark out. Almost ten. My husband was dozing in bed while I squeezed Crest onto my toothbrush. The knock was medium-loud, nothing crazy. But I jumped. Toothpaste splurted. "Shit!" Hubs said. We don't usually curse, but you know.

I stalked to the bedroom and pointed at him with my toothbrush. "Get the door."

"I have my boxers on. You go. Find out what they want so they leave."

A second knock.

"So? Get your pants. Protect me."

Reluctantly, he complied. I set down my toothbrush and followed. A balding man stood there smiling. Red cheeks, poof of hair. "Hello. So sorry. My wife's in need of a restroom, and this town's dead after eight. Could we borrow your facilities?"

Other people would have shut the door in his face, but not Hubs. The man's wife peered from behind, looking desperate. I felt an odd kinship, a quiet-person trust.

"So sorry," he said again.

Hubs hesitated. But he swung open the door. "Thanks," the man said as he stepped in.

His wife followed. She winked at me. "The family came too."

Well. Following behind Grandma were a gaggle of children, elementary age or early teens. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Hubs staggered back. After the kids, I went to push the door closed but met resistance. Now a second couple was plowing in, then a group of rotund women with large pocketbooks, followed by college-aged boys, followed by more people, men and women of all ages, one after the other after the other. Soon our quiet house was crowded with noisy strangers. They were in the bathroom, the living room, the bedrooms, the hall.

But most of all, they were in the kitchen.

My husband and I huddled beside the doorway, ogling.

It was unlike anything we'd ever experienced. They wandered in and out of rooms, examined furniture, got down on their hands and knees to peer at our walls. It was clear they were not here for the toilet.

No, these were looky-loos, murder enthusiasts, with the gall to take a self-guided tour.

They grinned at us, slapped our backs like reunited friends. My husband and I cleared our throats, smiled nervously. There was a party atmosphere. We had never in our lives thrown a party.

We hoped they'd show themselves out. They didn't.

The balding man who'd entered first settled on the couch, arms outstretched, as if he'd sat there many times before. Others perched around him. The more sprightly among them sprawled on the floor. They pointed and gestured, talking incessantly, poking their phones, checking images and nodding. They took selfies. They scratched at the plaster on the patched-up bullet hole. They rifled through our cabinets. One pulled out a pack of cards. The four chairs at the kitchen table were fully occupied.

As for the children, they were playing in the spare bedroom. We heard them jumping on the bunk bed. The sound of bedsprings squealing and laughter.

Well, Hubs and I wandered from room to room as if attached at the hip. We were ceaselessly polite. In truth, we were scared.

After about one hour, Hubs cleared his throat. "It's late. You have kids to put down."

"Yes," I added. "You'll need to be getting on your way."

Hubs opened the front door. We waved goodbye.

But these people would not go. They pulled out nail files and candy bars. The balding man turned on the TV. A woman made herself tea. Somehow they knew we didn't have the guts to stop them.

Time ticked by. It was midnight. It was one a.m. My mind grew muddled. None of them appeared sleepy. Almost no one. The children yawned.

I whispered to Hubs. "We should call the police."

"Yeah right. Neither of us wants to talk to the police."

"So just kick them out."

"You kick them out."

He glared at me. Hubs never glares. A long moment passed. I wondered if we'd be forced out on the street. He turned to the crowd. "Please leave. This is our home. It's not the murder house anymore."

It could be he didn't say it loud enough. Nobody moved.

Then I took a shaky breath. "Out!" I clapped my hands. My voice did not feel like mine. It came from a place deep inside. "Now!" I clapped a second time.

A miracle happened. They stood up and stretched. Stuffed their cell phones back into pockets. Collected their kids. And they shuffled slowly toward the door.

They left.

Afterward, we stood behind the locked door, listening to their cars starting up. When the house was ours again, we were relieved.

But then, upstairs, as I reached for my nightgown, I spotted something. Curled up in our bedroom closet, sleeping soundlessly, was a small child. Two years old, maybe, at most.

I called for Hubs, and for a long moment we just stared. Eventually I bent down, gathered him up, carried him to our spare bedroom, and laid him on the bed. I tucked him in. He slept.

Hubs shut the door. He put his hands on my shoulders. We hugged.

And you know, we didn't have to talk about it. Life felt again as it had before. We knew this child would be ours. Because we're homebodies, my husband and me. We take life as it comes.