Джеймс Паттерсон - The House Next Door

“What a wonderful imagination you have,” I say.

“No, really. Think about it,” she says, as she taps a few packets against her cup and tears them open. “And then, when they need a favor, do they ask the person who gave them her number and asked them to call? No!” she continues, pouring the Splenda into her tea. “This Vince guy goes out of his way to pick someone who didn’t even know he was there.”

Hell. I am soooo sorry I ever mentioned this to her.

“So, what do you think?” she asks.

“I think…you’ve been watching too many X-Files, ” I say.

Darcy smiles her beautiful Irish smile.

“Maybe so,” she says, waving half an almond Danish for emphasis. “But I don’t think you’ve been watching enough of them.”

Chapter 11

It’s 6:00 p.m. Ben walks in the door as I’m making the salad dressing.

He has a big smile on his face.

“Hi, honey. How’d the presentation go?” I ask.

“Great. Everybody loved the bandage. They thought the blood looked cool.”

“Good for you,” I say. “Any mention of Mr. van Gogh’s other achievements? His still lifes? His water lilies?”

“Oh. You mean his paintings . Yeah, I talked about them, too. But everybody liked the ear story best. Except—Mom, you’re gonna kill me.”

“Why?”

He rummages through his backpack and pulls out Ned’s scarf. In the middle of it is a bright-red food-coloring stain, the size of an orange.

“Oh, no. Your father’s going to kill both of us. I purposely gave you a plastic bag to put that in.”

“I forgot,” he says.

“Well, let’s not tell Dad, okay?”

Just as I hear Ned’s key in the door, the oven timer goes off.

“I’m home,” Ned calls out. I grab some potholders and take the chicken out of the oven. A minute later, Ned walks into the kitchen.

“My car is due for an emissions inspection,” he says, holding a letter from the state. “You can bring it in Monday, and I’ll take yours to work.”

“How will I pick up the kids without a car?”

“Wait there while it’s being inspected,” he says. He wanders over to the liquor cabinet and pours himself a bourbon. “What’s new here? What’s for dinner?”

“Chicken. Baked potatoes. String beans. And Caroline lost that ring we gave her for her birthday.”

“Damnit, Laura,” he says. “You let her wear it to school?”

I knew it was going to be my fault. I just didn’t know how.

“I didn’t ‘let’ her. She wanted to show it to her friends. Is that so terrible?”

“She lost it. So I’d have to say yes .”

“And Joey got a sixty-two on his geometry midterm,” I continue. I start to set the table.

“Not true,” Joey says, suddenly appearing in the kitchen. “It was a sixty-three.”

Ned looks at him and shakes his head.

“That’s just great,” Ned says. “Well, you can kiss any kind of tennis scholarship good-bye.”

“It wasn’t my fault! It’s because the teacher hates me.”

“That makes no difference in geometry,” Ned says. “Your answers are either right or wrong.”

“Should we get him a tutor?” I ask. Both of them stare at me. Wrong thing to say. I’m about to be blamed again.

“I got a better idea,” Ned says. “Why limit ourselves to one. Let’s hire a bunch of people. We’ll build a little apartment over the garage. And they can all live here with us.”

“He says the teacher picks on him,” I say.

“And my boss picks on me. That’s life. Get used to it,” Ned says to him. “Y’know, if your mother didn’t mollycoddle you so much…”

I put down the silverware.

This is starting to be a very unpleasant evening. And just when I think it can’t get any worse…it does. Ned goes to pour himself another bourbon. That’s when he sees the empty dry-cleaning bag hanging on the kitchen doorknob.

“Did Harry do that tie already?” he asks. Ben and I look at each other. I don’t want to lie. But I know what will happen when I tell the truth.

“Not exactly,” I say. “We had a little…accident.”

That’s when it all hits the fan.

“You used my antique silk scarf ?”

(Memo to self: Remember what your therapist said. You have control, as long as you stay calm…)

“Well, it was last-minute, and…”

“Damnit, Laura,” he says, slamming the bourbon bottle on the counter. “I ask so little of you! Of all of you!”

(Stay cool, I tell myself. He’s been under a lot of pressure at work this week. This month. This year…)

“I bust my ass all day,” he continues, yelling. “And when I come home, it’s always chaos!”

“Well, I didn’t think…”

“No, you didn’t!” he says. “What else do you have to do all day, besides be on top of all this crap?”

What else? That’s when I lose it.

“You mean, besides making lunches and dinners and dealing with teachers and waiting all day for the cable guy, like I did last week, who—by the way—never showed up?”

“Hah. You want to know what kind of week I had?” he says.

“No. I don’t,” I say. “Because whatever it was—it wasn’t as annoying as wasting hours on hold with tech support, or picking out a birthday card for your mother—a woman you can’t stand!”

“And that took you—what? All of five minutes?”

Okay. Now I’m really getting angry.

“Who do you think makes out the checks around here! And calls the insurance company! And does all the garbage that you’re just too busy or important to do!”

I punctuate each of these by slamming a plate or a glass down on the table. The table shakes every time.

“Sure, I’ll wait for your car on Monday. You pick up the kids. See how it feels to spend half your life in a crappy Volvo wagon that, by the way, is due for its eighty-thousand-mile checkup!”

At some point, Ben and Caroline have heard us arguing and wandered into the kitchen to see what’s going on.

“See what you’ve done?” he asks, gesturing to the kids, who cower in a corner. “Are you finished?”

“I’m never finished!” I say. “It’s called keeping life together .” I am yelling at this point. “Their life, and your life…and mine … if you can call what I have here a life! ”

I pause. And then I do something I’ve never done before.

I scrape the chicken off the serving platter and dump it into the garbage.

All five of us stand there, stunned. Me included.

The kids go upstairs quietly. Ned wanders around with a hangdog look. Later, as I walk past him in the den, I see he’s sprawled out on the sofa, watching a bunch of talking heads on TV and eating a bowl of Rice Krispies.

I head upstairs and read for a while. As I get ready for bed, I hear a ping . I check my cell phone. It’s a text from Vince.

Linoleum buckling. Ants taking over the kitchen, he writes. He adds a frowning emoticon. Crappy night here. You?

Same, I write.

Need to run a few errands on Monday, he texts back. I could use some company. Interested? I smile. At least one person thinks I’m worth spending time with.

I do a couple of quick calculations in my head. I can drop the kids off, then bring Ned’s car in and leave it there. Vince can pick me up at the Emissions Center. Two birds. One stone.

Sure, I write back.

I smile. Things have a way of working out.

Chapter 12

By Saturday morning, I have cooled down. The kids are busy with friends, sports, TV, computer games, and their iPhones. Even Ned seems a bit contrite when I tell him I am going to take his scarf in. He offers to drive me to Harry’s.