Даниэла Стил - Neighbors

Meredith refrained from talking about Silvana with Debbie. She was a dignified, discreet, respectful woman, although Debbie guessed that Meredith must have hated the young Italian starlet, and Scott was hell-bent on a divorce. Their previously, seemingly happy marriage had evaporated into thin air. Meredith put her massive career on pause, to spend all her time with her son. Although Debbie didn’t know her well at the time, she admired her for it.

Jack and Debbie had no children of their own. They had worked in Palm Springs for an elderly couple, both of whom had died within months of each other. Jack and Debbie had met in rehab in San Diego two years before getting that job. They had both grown up in Southern California, but never met. He had had a number of arrests for petty crimes, mostly credit card fraud to support his drug habit. Debbie had been prosecuted for shoplifting, petty theft, stolen credit cards, and possession of marijuana with intent to sell. The courts had sent them to the same rehab program. They were both twenty-two at the time and spent six months there. While in rehab, they formulated a plan to work together, which ultimately turned into love, or harnessing their ambitions to the same wagon. They got married because they could get better jobs that way, as property manager and housekeeper, as a couple. Jack had suggested that working for rich people in their homes could be lucrative, and a rare opportunity for grander schemes in future. Debbie was adamant that she didn’t want to be a maid, scrub toilets, or wear a uniform, and he explained that as property managers, they would have the run of people’s fancy homes. They could do whatever they wanted, hire other people to clean toilets, the house, do the gardening, and skim a nice living off the top. They could even pocket a few valuables while their employers were away, blame someone else, and steal some cash, and at the same time earn a handsome salary for living well in someone else’s home. He made it sound so appealing that they tried it when they got out of rehab. They went to a reputable employment agency in L.A. with fake references Jack had written for them, on stationery he had made, allegedly written by a couple who had died, leaving no heirs to check their story with. The agency was cavalier about checking references and did no criminal check, unless the client requested it.

They got fired from their first job, for general incompetence and not knowing what they were doing. They rapidly learned what was expected of them, and moved on to the job in Palm Springs, for the couple who really did die. They were so old that they paid little attention to what Jack and Debbie were doing. Their children were grateful to have friendly, caring, responsible people with their parents, and the couple even left them a small bequest when they died. This time, their references were genuine when they applied for the job with Scott and Meredith in San Francisco, who were looking through an L.A. agency they trusted and knew well. Jack and Debbie were in no hurry since they were living on the money they’d been left by the elderly couple. When they were offered the job with Scott and Meredith, neither of them could resist it. It was a major step up for them, and they knew what was expected of them by then. They understood how obsequious they had to be to ingratiate themselves into the lives of their employers. Scott hadn’t liked them when they started. He told Meredith he thought they were slimy, but it didn’t matter in the end, since less than a year later, Scott left for Bangkok, on location, and after that he was gone for good. Meredith bought their act more readily than he did.

They’d been in the job for fifteen years now, and Meredith had become completely dependent on them to shield her from the outside world, and attend to whatever needs she had, which were minimal. She was not a demanding person, and spent most of her time reading in a study just off her bedroom, or sitting in the garden. She never entertained anymore. The world had passed her by in the past fourteen years, or more accurately, she had removed herself from it, and preferred to live a more quiet life than the one she had lived as a star. But the world had not forgotten her. She became a legend once she was a recluse.

Six months after Scott moved to New York with Silvana, and filed for divorce so he could marry her, their son, Justin, went to stay with his father and Silvana at a house Scott had rented in Maine for the month of August. Kendall and her husband were going to come and stay with them, with their daughter, Julia, for the last two weeks of August. Kendall didn’t like Silvana any more than Justin did, but she was close to her father and adored her little brother. She was unhappy about the separation, but she was closer to her father than her mother, and happy he was living in New York now. Kendall was married to a successful investment banker, and they had a very nice life in New York.

There was a speedboat Scott was looking forward to using at the house in Maine, and a small sailboat he knew Justin would love, since he had gone to sailing camp in Washington State two summers in a row. He was a fairly adept sailor for a boy of fourteen. Meredith had warned Scott that she didn’t want Justin sailing alone in the unfamiliar and unpredictable waters off the coast of Maine. Scott assured her that he would sail with him, but said that Justin was a better sailor than most men twice his age, and, it was a sport he loved. Justin always said he was going to buy a sailboat of his own one day and sail around the world.

They had agreed to Justin spending the month of August with his father, he was looking forward to it, and spending two weeks with his sister, whom he idolized. He missed his father after he’d moved to New York, and the divorce was painful for him too. He loved the idea of a whole month with his father, in spite of Silvana’s presence. He said she was dumb, and crawled all over his father like a snake, which Justin found embarrassing. He did his best to ignore her. Her English wasn’t good, so he had an excuse not to talk to her.

Ten days after Justin arrived in Maine, Scott was hungover one brilliantly sunny morning, after a party he and Silvana had gone to the night before at the home of new friends they’d made. Loath to get out of bed with a pounding headache, he let Justin take the small sailboat out. It was barely more than a dinghy, and Justin promised to stay close to the shore and come back in time for lunch.

An hour later, a squall had come up, the ocean erupted in unexpected waves, and Justin was out farther than he’d meant to be, carried by the currents and battered by the waves in the small boat. Scott had called the Coast Guard when he got up at noon, saw the fierce waves and realized Justin hadn’t come home. There was no sign of the dinghy when Scott stood on the dock, with the knot in his stomach growing. It was too rough to take the speedboat out to look for him.

The Coast Guard found the boat capsized that afternoon. There was no sign of Justin. His body washed up on the beach of one of the small neighboring islands two days later. Kendall had flown up to Maine by then to wait for news with her father, while Meredith sat by the phone and prayed in San Francisco. Her worst fears had come true. Scott was sobbing when he called Meredith the day it happened, and when they found Justin’s body. Kendall was distraught when she talked to her mother. They all were. Scott was devastated when he and Kendall flew to San Francisco with Justin’s body for the funeral Meredith had planned for their son. Kendall was deeply sympathetic to her father, knowing how guilty he felt, and she believed her mother was strong enough to weather it better. Scott wasn’t.

Fourteen years later, it was a blur of memory, which still haunted all of them. Meredith had barely spoken to Scott since. Kendall felt sorry for him and had grown even closer to her father. She visited her mother once or twice a year, dutifully, for a few years after Justin’s death, but she blamed her mother for how hard she’d been on Scott, and the toll it took on him. His own guilt had nearly destroyed him.