Lisa Gardner - The Neighbor

“She’s never forgiven him?”

He shrugged. “Again, you’d have to ask her.”

“Why do you have jams in your windows, Jason?”

He looked at her. “Because the world is filled with monsters, and we don’t want them getting our daughter.”

“Seems extreme.”

“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

She smiled a little. It added crinkles to the corners of her eyes, revealing her age, but also making her seem suddenly softer. More approachable. She was a skilled interrogator, he realized. And he was tired, making it seem like a better and better idea to tell her everything. Lay all his problems at the feet of smart, beautiful Sergeant Warren. Let her sort out the mess.

“When was the last time Sandy talked to her father?” D.D. asked.

“Day she left town with me.”

“She never called him? Not once since moving to Boston?”

“Nope.”

“Not your wedding, not the birth of your daughter.”

“Nope.”

D.D. narrowed her eyes. “So why is he here now?”

“Claims he saw word of Sandy’s disappearance on the news and skedaddled for the airport.”

“I see. His estranged daughter has gone missing, so now he pays a visit?”

“You’d have to ask him.”

D.D. cocked her head to the side. “You’re lying to me, Jason. And you know how I know?”

He refused to answer.

“You look down and to the left. When people are trying to remember something, they look up and to the left. When they’re avoiding the truth, however, they look down and to the left. Interesting bit of trivia they teach us in detective school.”

“And it took you how many weeks to graduate?”

Her lips curved in that little half-smile again. “The way Officer Hawkes understood it,” the sergeant continued, “Maxwell Black has some opinions regarding his granddaughter. Including that you’re not her real father.”

Jason didn’t answer. He wanted to. He wanted to scream that of course Ree was his daughter, would always be his daughter, could never be anything but his daughter, but the good sergeant had not asked a question, and the first rule of interrogation was never answer questions you didn’t have to.

“When was Ree born?” D.D. pressed.

“On the date listed on her birth certificate,” he said crisply. “Which I’m sure you’ve already read.”

She smiled at him again. “June twentieth, two thousand and four, I believe.”

He said nothing.

“And the day you first met Sandy?”

“Spring two thousand and three.” He made sure he looked her in the eye and absolutely, positively didn’t look down.

D.D. arched that skeptical brow again. “Sandy would’ve been only seventeen.”

“Never said the old man didn’t have reason to hate me.”

“So why does Maxwell believe you’re not Ree’s father?”

“You’d have to ask him.”

“Humor me. Obviously you know him better than I do.”

“Can’t say that I know him at all. Sandy and I didn’t exactly have a meet-the-parents courtship.”

“You never met Sandy’s father before today?”

“Only in passing.”

She studied him. “What about your family?”

“Don’t have any.”

“You’re the product of immaculate conception?”

“Miracles happen every day.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “All right, Sandy’s father, then. Grandpa Black. You took his daughter from him,” she stated. “Moved to a godforsaken Yankee state and then never notified him when his granddaughter was born.”

Jason shrugged.

“I think Judge Black has good reason to be angry with both you and Sandy. Maybe that’s why he returned now. His daughter’s gone, and his son-in-law is the prime suspect. One family’s tragedy is another man’s opportunity.”

“I will not grant him access to Ree.”

“Got a restraining order?”

“I will not grant him access to Ree.”

“What if he demands a paternity test?”

“Can’t. You read the birth certificate.”

“You’re listed as the father, ergo he has no probable cause. The Howard K. Stern defense.”

Another shrug.

D.D. smiled at him. “As I recall, the other guy won that argument.”

“Ask me who put the jams in the windows.”

“What?”

“Ask me who put the jams in the windows. You keep circling around to it. You keep digging at it like it tells you something about me.”

“All right. Who put the jams in your windows?”

“Sandy did. Day after we moved in. She was nine months pregnant, we had an entire house to set up, and first thing she did was secure all the windows.”

D.D. thought about it. “All these years later, she’s still locking Daddy out?”

“You said it, not me.”

D.D. finally rose from the chair. “Well, it didn’t work, because Daddy’s back and he has more clout than you think.”

“How so?”

“Turns out he went to law school with one of our district court judges.” She flashed her paper. “Who do you think signed our warrant?”

Jason managed not to say a word, but it probably didn’t matter, as the color draining from his face gave him away.

“Still don’t know where your wife is?” D.D. asked from the doorway.

He shook his head.

“Too bad. Really would be best for everyone if we found her. Particularly considering her condition and all.”

“Her condition?”

D.D. arched a brow yet again. This time, there was no mistaking the flash of triumph in her eyes. “It’s another thing they teach you in detective school. How to seize a person’s trash and how to read a pregnancy test strip.”

“What? You mean…”

“That’s right, Jason. Sandy’s pregnant.”

Fucking strangers isn’t an easy proposition for a woman. Men have it easier They pull out, wipe off, move along. For women, the entire process is different By nature, we are receptacles, meant to take a man inside of us, to receive him, to accept him, to keep him. It’s harder to wipe off It’s more difficult to move along.

I think this often on my spa nights, generally when I’m checking out of the hotel, making my way home, trying to transition from wanton floozy to respectable mom.

Have I given too much of myself away? Is that why I feel so transparent, as if a gust of wind will blow me away? I shower I lather, scrub rinse, repeat. I try to wipe the fingerprints of too many men from my body, just as I try to purge the imprint of their lust-filled faces from my mind.

I’m not bad at it. Honestly, the two kids from the first night… couldn’t even pick them out of a lineup. And the episode after that and the episode after that. I can forget them easily enough. But I can’t forgive them, and that doesn’t even make sense.

I’ve started a new tradition on spa nights. After I return to my hotel room, I curl up in a ball and sob hysterically. I don’t know who I’m crying for. Myself and the dreams of the future I once had? For my husband, and the hopes he probably had for us? For my child, who looks up at me so sweetly, without any idea what Mommy really does when she goes away ?

Maybe I’m crying for my childhood, for the moments of tenderness and security I never had, so that some depraved part of me must continuously punish myself, as if picking up where my mother left off

One day, standing in front of the hotel mirror, looking at the huge bruises slowly darkening my ribs, it occurs to me that I don’t want to do this anymore. That somehow I have fallen in love with my husband. That by virtue of never touching me, he has in fact become the most special man in my life.