Lisa Gardner - The Neighbor

“What happened to your face, Jason?”

“Did the police give you a black eye?”

“Have you been in a fight?”

He kept himself and Ree moving, slow and steady, across the yard, homing in on the Volvo. Then he had the keys out, the doors clicking open.

Police brutality, he thought idly, as more questions followed about his face and his ribs protested as he swung open the heavy car door.

Then Ree was inside, the back passenger door closed. And he was inside, the driver’s door closed. He started the engine, and immediately the reporters’ shrill questions disappeared.

“Good job,” he told Ree.

“I don’t like reporters,” she informed him.

“I know. Next time, I’m getting my own pair of fairy wings.”

He cracked at the grocery store. Couldn’t seem to find the parental fortitude to deny his traumatized daughter Oreos, Pop-Tarts, bags of bakery-fresh chocolate chip cookies. Ree figured out his weakness early on, and by the end of the trip they had a grocery cart half-filled with junk food. He thought he’d managed milk, bread, pasta, and fruit, but to tell the truth, his heart wasn’t in it.

He was killing time with his daughter, desperate to give them a slice of normalcy in a world that had tilted crazily. Sandy was gone. Max was back. The police would continue asking questions, he’d been an idiot to have ever used the family computer…

Jason didn’t want this life. He wanted to turn the clock back sixty hours, maybe seventy hours, and say whatever it was he should’ve said, do whatever it was he should’ve done, so this never would have happened. Hell, he’d even take back the February vacation.

The woman manning the cash register smiled down at Ree’s glamorous getup. Then her gaze went to him and she did a double-take. He shrugged self-consciously, following the cashier’s line of sight to the newsstand, where he saw his own black-and-white picture staring out from the front page of the Boston Daily. “Mild-mannered reporter may have hidden dark side,” the banner headline declared.

They had used the photo from his official press pass, a closely cropped image that was barely one step above a mug shot. He looked flat, even vaguely menacing, staring out above the fold.

“Daddy, that’s you!” Ree declared loudly. She pranced over to the newspaper, staring at it more closely. Other shoppers had noticed now, were watching this cute little girl gaze upon a disturbing photo of a grown man. “Why are you in the paper?”

“That’s the paper I work for,” he said lightly, wishing they didn’t have so many groceries, wishing they could just bolt out of the store.

“What does it say?”

“It says I’m mild-mannered.”

The cashier lady went bug-eyed. He shot her a look, no longer caring if he appeared menacing or not. For God’s sake, this was his daughter.

“We should take it home,” Ree declared. “Mommy will want to see it.” She fished the newspaper out of the rack, tossed it onto the conveyor belt. He noted the byline read “Greg Barr,” his boss and the head news editor. He had no doubt now which quotes had been included in the story, basically anything Jason had said by phone yesterday.

He reached into his back pocket, working on his wallet before he grew so angry he could no longer function. Buy the food, get in the car. Buy the food, get in the car.

Drive to your house, where you can be harassed all over again.

He got out his credit card, handed it to the cashier. Her fingers were trembling so hard it took her three tries to take the plastic. Was she that afraid of him? Certain she was completing a transaction with a psycho killer who’d most likely strangled his wife, then dismembered her body and tossed it into the harbor?

He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it, but the sound would come out all wrong. Too chilling, too disaffected. His life had gone cockeyed, and he didn’t know how to get it back.

“Can I have Pop-Tarts in the car?” Ree was saying. “Can I, can I, can I?”

The woman finally had the card back to him, as well as his receipt. “Yes, yes, yes,” he murmured, signing the slip, pocketing his credit card, desperate to make his getaway.

“I love you, Daddy!” Ree sang out in triumph.

He hoped the whole damn store heard that.

By the time Jason and Ree made it home and he’d run the major news gauntlet half a dozen times to bring in the groceries, Jason was beat. He stuck in a movie for Ree, ignoring the guilty twinge that so much TV couldn’t be good for her, that he should be making more of an effort to engage his daughter during this challenging time, yada, yada, yada.

They had food to eat. The cat was back. He hadn’t been arrested yet.

It was the most he could manage at the moment.

Jason was unloading the eggs when the phone rang. He picked it up absently, without checking caller ID.

“What happened to your face, son?” Maxwell Black’s Southern drawl stretched out the sentence and sent Jason back to a place he didn’t want to go.

“Think you’re the boss, boy? I own you, boy. Lock, stock, and barrel. You belong to me.”

“I fell down the stairs,” Jason replied lightly, forcing the images back into a small box in the corner of his mind. He pictured himself shutting the lid, inserting the key in the lock, turning it just so.

Max laughed. It was a low, warm chuckle, the kind he probably used when making jokes from the bench, or holding court at neighborhood cocktail parties. Maybe he’d even used it the first time a schoolteacher had hesitantly approached him about Sandy. You know, sir, I’ve been worried about how… accident prone… your daughter Sandy seems to be. And Max had laughed that charming little laugh. Oh, no need to worry about my little girl. Don’t even bother your pretty self. My girl is just fine.

Jason disliked Sandra’s father all over again.

“Well, son, we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot yesterday afternoon,” Max drawled.

Jason didn’t answer. The silence dragged on. After another moment, Max moved to fill the gap, adding lightly, “So I called to make amends.”

“No need,” Jason assured him. “Returning to Georgia is good enough for me.”

“Now, Jason, seems to me if anyone should be bearing a grudge, I would have the right. You swept my only daughter off her feet, spirited her away to the God-awful North, then didn’t even invite me to the wedding, let alone the birth of my grandbaby That’s no way to treat family, son.”

“You’re right. If I were you, I’d never speak to us again.”

That warm molasses chuckle again. “Fortunately for you, son,” Max continued expansively, “I have determined to take the high ground. This is my only daughter and grandchild we’re talking about here. It would be foolish to let the past stand in the way of our future.”

“I’ll tell you what: When Sandra returns, I’ll give her the message.”

“When?” Max’s voice sharpened. “Don’t you mean if?”

“I mean when,” Jason said firmly.

“Your wife run off with another man, son?”

“That seems to be a popular theory.”

“You couldn’t keep her happy? I’m not pointing fingers, mind you. I raised the girl, single-handedly, after her dear mama passed away. I know how demanding she can be.”

“Sandra is a wonderful wife and devoted mother.”

“I have to say, I was surprised to hear that my daughter had become a teacher. But I was talking to that nice principal just this morning. What is his name… Phil, Phil Stewart? He raved about how wonderful Sandy is with her pupils. When all is said and done, it sounds as if you’ve done right by my daughter. I appreciate that, son, I truly do.”