Lisa Gardner - The Neighbor

“Excuse me?”

“From the airport. Did you rent a car, or maybe use a car service?”

“I, uh, rented a car, of course. I figured I’d need to move about the city.”

“I’m gonna need the name of the rental agency. What time you picked the car up, when it’s due to be returned.”

“Fine, fine, fine. Why are you pestering me so? I’m not the suspect here. Jason Johnson is.”

“Jason Jones, aka Jason Johnson. Got it. So why haven’t you been out looking for your daughter?”

“I already told you: The only way we’ll ever find Sandy is to expose her husband.”

“Sad to lose your daughter and your wife, both so young.”

“I’m focusing on my granddaughter. I can’t pity myself for my own tragedies. My grandbaby’s all who matters now.”

“And obliterating Jason Jones.”

“He took my daughter from me.”

“Did it surprise you to find out that your daughter was doing well up here? Devoted mom, respected teacher, good neighbor. We certainly haven’t found any stories involving depression, alcohol abuse, or general self-destructiveness. Maybe, since the birth of her daughter, Sandra finally pulled it all together.”

Maxwell merely smiled. “Obviously, Detective, you don’t know my Sandy at all.”

Do you remember the moment you first fell in love? The way your body would tremble if you stood too close? Or how you would have to stare at a spot just beyond his shoulder, because if you actually looked him in the eyes, his beautiful, green-flecked hazel eyes, you would blush foolishly ?

Thursday became my favorite night of the week. The culmination of a slow build of e-mail messages Wayne and I would exchange during the days in between. Nothing torrid. Nothing flagrant. I would relate stories of Ree, how she’d just mastered using a butter knife and now would only eat food she could cut in half, whether that was chicken fingers or green grapes. He would tell me of his latest assignment, maybe the cell phone he was analyzing from a bank robber, or an ongoing initiative to help the public secure their open wireless networks. I’d describe a funny episode that happened during the sixth grade’s attempt to locate Bulgaria on a map. He’d tell me about dinner at his sister’s house, where Ethan hijacked his father’s BlackBerry and spent most of the meal hacking into a major bank’s website.

By Wednesday, I’d find myself humming under my breath in anticipation. Only one more night. Twenty-four hours. Ree and I would put on fancy dresses, blast Loreena McKennitt, and prance around the house as two fairies attending a party at the Home Tree. Then we’d eat dinner served on bright flowered plates, with our milk poured into small crystal juice glasses, which we would toast with our pinkies in the air

I felt younger, falling in love with Wayne Reynolds. I felt lighter, happier in my own skin. I wore more skirts and fewer pants. I painted my toenails bright pink. I bought all new underwear, including a leopard print WonderBra from Victoria’s Secret.

I became a better mother. More patient with the endless routine of feeding, bathing, and tending a small child. More willing to laugh at Ree’s precocious demands for exactly this fork positioned exactly this way on exactly this color plate.

Ironically enough, I even became a better wife. On the one hand, I managed to purchase a blank hard drive on which I was supposed to copy the contents of the family computer. On the other hand, I attempted the deed less and less, because once I had the “forensically sound” copy, I wouldn’t have a reason to meet with Wayne again.

So I made excuses for my husband. One random photo over a few months’ stretch of time did not a porn-addict make. Most likely, the image was downloaded to his computer by mistake. He’d stumbled upon the wrong website, copied the wrong file. My husband could not be a pedophile. Look at the way he smiled at his daughter or his endless patience for her attempts to braid his thick wavy hair or the way he spent the first snow day of the season pulling her around the neighborhood on her little purple sled. That photo was simply some odd, vaguely terrifying anomaly.

I fixed my husband’s favorite meals. I praised his articles in the newspaper. And I shooed him out the door to work, because the sooner he left, the sooner I could go online and talk to Wayne.

Jason didn’t question my new and improved mood. I knew he still remembered my middle-of-the-night request for a second child, and was grateful I’d let him off the hook.

I didn’t try to touch my husband anymore, and he was happy.

Ree and I developed a new routine for Thursdays. I would pick her up at home and we would go to the little bistro around the corner for an early ladies’ dinner. Afterward, it was back to the school for the basketball game, where Ree would take a seat next to Ethan, and, once the game got going, I would disappear with Wayne.

“We’re just going for a little walk,” I’d tell Ree, and she would nod placidly, already too engrossed in pestering Ethan to care.

We always started out talking about computers. Wayne would ask if I’d copied the hard drive yet I’d report on my various failed attempts. Jason’s schedule was highly unreliable, I’d explain. He would arrive home anytime after eleven P.M. , and first I had to put Ree to bed and then grade papers, and by the time that was all done, I was already nervous Jason would return home at any second. I tried, I aborted. I had a hard time concentrating…

“It’s all very nerve-wracking,” I’d say.

Wayne would squeeze my hand in support and I’d feel the contact of his fingers as a tingle all the way up my arm.

We didn’t hold hands. We didn’t find dark corners. We didn’t retreat to the back seat of his car and neck like teenagers. I was too aware that we were still in my place of work, where there were eyes and ears everywhere. And I was even more aware of my young daughter, never far away, who might need me at a moment’s notice.

So we walked the halls. We talked-innocently really. And the more Wayne didn’t touch me, the more his hands didn’t graze across my breasts and his lips didn’t brush along my collarbone, the more I wanted him. Crazily, insanely, until every time I looked at him I thought my body might spontaneously combust

He wanted me, too. I could tell by the way his palm lingered on the small of my back as he helped me climb onto the bleachers. Or the way he paused at the end of an empty hallway, never saying a word, but his eyes burning into mine, before finally, reluctantly, we both turned around and headed back to more populated areas.

“Do you love him?” he asked me one night. No reason to define “him.”

“He’s my daughter’s father,” I said.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I think it does.”

I didn’t tell him about my sex life, or the lack thereof. That felt too much like a violation of the family code. I could flirt with a stranger. I could tell him I suspected my husband was engaged in unlawful Internet activities. But I could not tell him my husband had never physically touched me. That would cross the line.

And I didn’t want to hurt Jason. I just… I wanted Wayne. I wanted to feel the way I felt when I was around him. Young. Pretty. Desirable.

Powerful.

Wayne wanted me, and yet, he couldn’t have me, and that made him want me more.

By the end of January, the e-mails were replaced by text messages. Only during school hours; Wayne was not stupid. He would send me a smiley face. Maybe a picture of a flower he’d taken with his cell phone at the grocery store. Then the questions began.