Charmed Particles Read Free Page A

again and again, instead trying to piece together the clues left out—family photos, a child’s drawing on the refrigerator. Trying to imagine the lives of the people who lived there, for now at least.
    In some houses—pristine bathroom counters, kitchen sinks that gleamed with polishing—she had the feeling no one really lived there. In others, it seemed the owners had dashed out only moments before, something of their movement suspended in the air.
    â€œAnd to your left we have Heritage Village,” the realtor announced, turning her head a little in acknowledgement of Sarala, who, alone in the back seat, had begun to feel a bit like a child. “It’s one of the most notable living history museums in the area,” the realtor continued.
    Sarala looked out the window as they passed. Women in long skirts and bonnets walked among rustic buildings. In front of a rough wooden shed, a man in a leather apron tended a blazing fire.

    What Sarala liked about Nicolet: Heritage Village. It had been what decided her as she weighed their options: school systems, property taxes, expanses of wide green lawns, and subdivisions where the streets turned in on themselves like mazes. Riding in the real estate agent’s car she had sometimes forgotten entirely which suburb of Chicago she was in.
    When she’d seen Heritage Village, though, she knew this was the place for them.
    Here was America. Here was where they would raise Meena, the baby she could already feel growing within her, though she was months from being conceived. The America she’d read about: a place of pastures, animals grazing, frontiers stretching ever westward. Here was Paul Revere Road circling around, branching off at Independence Drive. Here was a worried Martha Washington waiting for George to cross the Delaware, Betsy Ross on her porch sewing the first American flag, log cabins from which each morning these pilgrims might set out to discover, each day, a newer America.
    Back at the hotel that night, Abhijat sat at the desk beside the television making a list of pros and cons for each of the houses they had considered. On the other side of the kitchenette’s half wall, Sarala folded the dishtowel and draped it over the faucet.
    Eagle’s Crest subdivision. Sarala wanted a house there. She loved the sound of it, and the way Eagle’s Crest separated the two parts of the town—on one side, the Lab, where scientists crashed subatomic particles into each other hoping to reveal the tiniest building blocks of the universe; on the other, Heritage Village, where costumed reenactors bent low over kettles, settling day after day this new country—the neighborhood itself like a literal threshold in time, holding apart the past and the future.
    Abhijat took out a long legal pad, on which he began to draw an elaborate decision-making matrix. But Sarala had already decided. She held her tongue and waited for him to finish.

    They made an offer on the only house available in Eagle’s Crest. A gray two-story—four bedrooms, a study, three bathrooms, and a finished basement. When their offer was accepted, they celebrated with a modest dinner Sarala prepared in the kitchenette of the hotel room and which they ate on trays balanced on their knees while watching Let’s Make a Deal on the television. The woman who stood before the prizes, revealing them to the exuberant contestants, reminded Sarala of the realtor, all hairspray and makeup and hands gesturing.
    On the day of the closing, Sarala signed her name over and over again to pieces of paper she hadn’t even read. Each time, she looked to Abhijat, who had already read them over carefully, totaling the figures in his head, and he would nod, yes and yes and yes, it’s okay.

CHAPTER 2
    Unveiling the Wild: Being an Account of the Expeditions of Randolph Winchester, the Last Great Gentleman Explorer
    It is useless to tell me of civilization. Take the word of one