Chapter 5The cottage was exactly what I’d pictured in my head when I heard the word.
I looked over at Matt, who was staring out of the windshield at it, too.
A white picket fence surrounded a sky-blue, single-story house with a shingled roof and brick chimney. Sunlight shone down in a dappled pattern, and I could hear the accompanying trill of a brown-haired lass as she skipped around the property, watering flowers. The squirrels and birds should be gamboling around her, and Disney illustrators would be beaming in triumph.
“I don’t f*****g believe this,” Matt muttered.
I think it was the first time I’d heard him swear.
He turned to me with wide eyes.
“Have we entered some sort of weird California time warp?”
The white curtains of the house’s front window seemed to wink at us.
“Uh,
