They stood for a moment, the four of them, and stared down Chatham Street. It wasn’t the long and elegant pathway they were used to, with freshly waxed cars parked at the curbs. There was a tattletale gray between pavement and sky. The homes were square and squat, rudimentary architecture with little demarcation. David thought the street had a haunted, solemn seriousness. This was real life, with all the veneers of gentility stripped away. There were beer bottles on the lawns, the steel bones of bicycles in driveways, blunt conversations floating through screen doors. The street felt faithless and hollow, and he decided it was the lack of trees that gave it that lonesome quality. The lack of something, anyways, and it made him feel afraid.

“Well, I suppose we’re home,” said his father, and that made it a little better.