Elizabeth George - I, Richard

“I'm going to take her a batch of my drop-dead brownies,” Willow told her husband Scott one morning not long after the Veterans' Day Chili Cook-off (won by Ava Downey, by the way, for the third consecutive and maddening year). “I think she just doesn't know what to make of us all. She's a foreigner, after all,” which is what the neighbors had learned from the woman herself at the cook-off: born in Russia when it was still part of the USSR, a childhood in Moscow, an adulthood far in the north somewhere till the Soviet Union fell apart and she herself made her way to America.

Scott McKenna said, “Hmm,” without really registering what his wife was telling him. He'd just returned from the graveyard shift at TriOptics Incorporated where, as a support technician for TriOptics' complicated software package, he was forced to spend hours on the phone with Europeans, Asians, Australians, and New Zealanders who phoned the helpline nightly-or for them, daily-wanting an immediate solution for whatever mindless havoc they'd just wreaked upon their operating system.

“Scott, are you listening to me?” Willow asked, feeling the way she always felt when his response lacked the appropriate degree of commitment to their conversation: cut off and floating in outer space. “You know I hate it when you don't listen to me.” Her voice was sharper than she intended and her daughter Jasmine-at the present moment stirring her Cheerios to reduce them to the level of sogginess that she preferred-said, “Ouch, Mom. Chill.”

“Where'd she get that?” Scott McKenna looked up from his study of the financial pages of the daily newspaper while five-year-old Max-always his sister's echo if not her shadow-said, “Yeah, Mom. Chill,” and stuck his fingers into the yolk of his fried egg.

“From Sierra Gilbert, probably,” Willow said.

“Hmph,” Jasmine countered with a toss of her head. “Sierra Gilbert got it from me. ”

“Whoever got it from who,” Scott said, snapping his paper meaningfully, “I don't want to hear it said to your mother again, okay?”

“It only means-”

“Jasmine.”

“Poop.” She stuck out her tongue. She'd cut her bangs again, Willow saw, and she sighed. She felt defeated by her strong-willed daughter on the fast path to adolescence, and she hoped that little Blythe or Cooper-with whom she was finally and blessedly pregnant-might be more the sort of child she'd had in mind to bring into the world.

It was clear to Willow that she wasn't going to receive Scott's acknowledgment of-much less his benediction on-her plan for the drop-dead brownies unless and until she made it clear why she thought a neighborly gesture was called for at this point. She waited to do so until the kids were off to school, safely escorted to the bus stop at the end of the street and attended there-despite Jasmine's protests-until the yellow doors closed upon them. Then she returned to the house and found her husband preparing for the daily five hours of sleep he allotted himself prior to sitting down to work on the six consulting accounts that so far described what went for McKenna Computing Designs. Nine more accounts and he would be able to leave TriOptics and maybe then their lives would be a little more normal. No more regimented sex in the hours between the kids' going to bed and Scott's leaving for work. No more long nights alone listening to the creaking floorboards and trying to convince herself it was only the house settling.

Scott was in the bedroom, casting his clothes off. He left everything where it fell and fell himself onto the mattress, where he turned on his side and pulled the blankets over his shoulder. He was twenty-seven seconds away from snoring, when Willow spoke.

“I've been thinking, hon.”

No response.

“Scott?”

“Hmmm?”

“I've been thinking about Miss Telyegin.” Or Mrs. Telyegin, Willow supposed. She'd not yet learned if the woman next door was married, single, divorced, or widowed. Single seemed most likely to Willow for some reason that she couldn't quite explain. Maybe it had to do with the woman's habits, which were becoming more apparent-and patently stranger-as the days and weeks passed. Most notable were the hours she kept, which were almost entirely nocturnal. But beyond that, there was the oddity of things like the venetian blinds on 1420 being always closed against the light; of Miss Telyegin wearing rubber boots rain or shine whenever she did emerge from her house; of the fact that she not only never entertained visitors, but she never went anywhere besides to work and home again precisely at the same time each day.

“When does she buy her groceries?” Ava Downey asked.

“She has them delivered,” Willow replied.

“I've seen the truck,” Leslie Gilbert confirmed.

“So she never goes out in the daytime at all?”

“Never before dusk,” Willow said.

Thus was vampire added to witch, but only the children took that sobriquet seriously. Nonetheless, the other neighbors began to shy away from Anfisa Telyegin, which prompted Willow's additional sympathy and made Anfisa Telyegin's effort at the Veterans' Day Chili Cook-off even more worthy of admiration and reciprocation.

“Scott,” she said to her drowsy husband, “are you listening to me?”

“Can we talk later, Will?”

“This'll only take a minute. I've been thinking about Anfisa.”

He sighed and flipped onto his back, putting his arms behind his head and exposing what Willow least liked to see when she looked upon her spouse: armpits as hairy as Abraham's beard.

“Okay,” he said without a display of anything resembling marital patience. “What about Anfisa?”

Willow sat on the edge of the bed. She placed her hand on Scott's chest to feel his heart. Despite his present impatience, he had one. A very big one. She'd seen it first at the high school sock hop where he'd claimed her for a partner, rescuing her from life among the wallflowers, and she depended now upon its ability to open wide and embrace her idea.

“It's been tough with your parents so far away,” Willow said. “Don't you agree?”

Scott's eyes narrowed with the suspicion of a man who'd suffered comparisons to his older brother from childhood and who'd only too happily moved his family to a different state to put an end to them. “What d'you mean, tough?”

“Five hundred miles,” Willow said. “That's a long way.”

Not long enough, Scott thought, to still the echoes of “Your brother the cardiologist” which followed him everywhere.

“I know you want the distance,” Willow continued, “but the children could benefit from their grandparents, Scott.”

“Not from these grandparents,” Scott informed her.

Which was what she expected her husband to say. So it was no difficult feat to segue from there into her idea. It seemed to her, she told Scott, that Anfisa Telyegin had extended a hand of friendship to the neighborhood at the Chili Cook-off and she wanted to reciprocate. Indeed, wouldn't it be lovely to get to know the woman on the chance that she might become a foster grandparent to their children? She-Willow-had no parents whose wisdom and life experience she could offer to Jasmine, Max, and little Blythe-or-Cooper. And with Scott's family so far away…

“Family doesn't have to be defined as blood relations,”

Willow pointed out. “Leslie's like an aunt to the children. Anfisa could be like a grandmother. And anyway, I hate to see her alone the way she is. With the holidays coming… I don't know. It seems so sad.”

Scott's expression changed to show the relief he felt at not having Willow suggest they move back to be near his loathsome parents. She sympathized with-if she didn't understand-his unwillingness to expose himself to any more comparisons to his vastly more successful sibling. And that empathy of hers, which he'd always seen as her finest quality, was something he accepted as not being limited to an application only to himself. She cared about people, his wife Willow. It was one of the reasons he loved her. He said, “I don't think she wants to mix in with us, Will.”