Janice Johnson - More Than Neighbors

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“THAT DOESN’T SMELL very good.”

Ciara turned to see that Mark had appeared in the kitchen.

“Shut the door,” she said hastily—too late.

Watson burst into the kitchen, leaping to put his paws on her chest, his wet tongue catching her chin before she could take evasive maneuvers. She had to fend him off with an elbow. “Mark!”

Eventually, he propelled the reluctant dog out of the kitchen and latched the swinging door. Ciara hoped the young dog would learn enough manners soon so that they didn’t have to exile him from any room where they were cooking or eating, but for now, she was grateful for the door. In their previous house, she wouldn’t have had any way to keep Watson from putting his paws on the dinner table and snatching food off Mark’s plate.

Above the whine that penetrated the closed door, she said, “This is a new recipe. There’s nothing in it you shouldn’t like.” She carried the casserole dish to the table and set it on a hot pad. “Try it.”

“I don’t like it when foods are all mixed together,” he said disconsolately.

“You like raisin-oatmeal cookies. Flour, sugar, oatmeal, raisins and several other ingredients, all mixed together.”

“That’s different.” He sighed loudly and plopped down in his place.

“You like spaghetti,” she pointed out.

“It’s not new!” he burst out.

Ciara only laughed. “Try this casserole. It may surprise you.”

She poured them both milk, dished up the peas she’d chosen because they were a favorite of his and sat down herself. She watched as he used the serving spoon to transfer a minuscule amount of the cheesy hamburger bake onto his plate, but said nothing.

He stared down at his plate. “Dad said he’d call tonight. Do you think he already did and we didn’t hear it?”

Familiar tension felt like wires strung through her body being pulled tight. “I think I’d have heard the phone, but you can check voice mail. After dinner,” she added, reading his mind even before he started to jump to his feet.

“But Mom—”

She took a bite to give herself a minute. “It’s only six-thirty. If he said this evening, it’ll probably be later anyway.”

Mark hunched his shoulders and stabbed at his peas. Several went skittering off his plate. “He’ll forget. He always forgets.”

He was right. Jeff did always forget. She wished he wouldn’t make promises at all, however casual. He knew how literal Mark was. In his world view, if you said you were going to do something, you did it.

“Your dad is pretty busy these days,” she said gently. New wife, new baby, promotion at work. Out with the old.

No, not fair—the new family and promotion at work had absolutely nothing to do with his disengagement from his first son. That happened as soon as he began to suspect Mark wasn’t a chip off the old block. The son he had once described as a “retard” was her fault, he had declared. Jeff was unimpressed with the reality that Mark scored at 95 percent or above on most standardized tests given in school.

“You know what I mean,” he’d growled.

Yes, she did. He meant Mark wasn’t a swaggering, sports-crazy, rough-and-tough boy’s boy. Instead, he was thoughtful, given to intense interests— none of which his father shared—and, at least so far, spectacularly un athletic. Ciara could not understand how any of that made Mark unlovable to a parent.

“How’d things go with Mr. Tennert today?” she asked in an attempt to divert him.

It worked. His face brightened. “He said to call him Gabe, you know.”

“Right.” She was trying to stick to Mr. Tennert, who sounded like a neighbor, versus Gabe, who was a sexy guy she found herself thinking about way more often than was healthy.

“It was good.” He chattered on, explaining how today they’d worked on finding the missing angles in triangles and quadrilaterals.

At one point she leveled a look at his plate, and he took a tiny bite then a larger one before he continued his enthusiastic recitation about complementary, supplementary, vertical and adjacent angles. Ciara pinned an interested smile on her face and tuned him out.

“He remembers everything about geometry,” Mark concluded with satisfaction. “That’s good, because I think it’s cool.”

Panic briefly raised its head. What if Gabe Tennert lost interest in helping Mark with his math?

I can research anything, she reminded herself. I am perfectly capable of staying ahead of a seventh grader.

It was humiliating to know she wasn’t buying her own pep talk.

Gabe had also had Mark sawing assorted pieces of scrap lumber. He’d done some miter cuts today, and Gabe had shown him how to mark intended cuts so as not to make a mistake.

“Mark them.” Her son cackled. “Get it?”

She produced a chuckle.

This was Thursday. She hadn’t encountered their neighbor since their Saturday morning confrontation over Watson chasing his horses. Having seen the bone-deep reluctance on his face, she’d honestly been surprised when he’d let Mark come down to his workshop later that same morning. She was even more surprised that he had scheduled appointments thereafter, meaning Mark had disappeared for up to two hours to the neighbor’s both Tuesday and today.

She was trying to keep her distance, but had expressed her gratitude by sending a loaf of freshly baked bread with Mark on Tuesday and a Bundt cake today. Mark had reported an enthusiastic reception for both the cookies and the bread. She asked now about the cake.

“He said you don’t have to send stuff every time.”

“Oh.” Ciara was disconcerted to feel let down. “Does he not like desserts?”

“He had, like, a humongous piece of cake while he helped me with my math.” Lines appeared between Mark’s eyebrows. “So I don’t know why he said that.”

Her spirits rose. “He was probably being polite.”

He stared at her. “Why is it polite to say he doesn’t want your food if he really likes it?”

Ciara told herself it was just the age, or maybe being dense about the games people played in the name of civility was a boy thing. She explained why people said, “Oh, you didn’t have to,” when that wasn’t really what they meant at all. Mark appeared to be listening earnestly, but his expression never cleared.

Her suspicion was confirmed when he said finally, “People are weird.”

Well, yes, they were, but Mark nonetheless had to learn the art of telling polite lies. Right now, if he’d been required to take a standardized test on this particular art, Ciara was afraid he’d score somewhere in the first percentile. He always said what he was thinking.

It seemed like every time she took the phone after he’d spoken to his dad, the first words out of Jeff’s mouth were, “For God’s sake, do you know what he just said to me?”

Um...the truth?

It was surprising how often the truth came out sounding awfully rude.

“When are you going back to Gabe’s?”

“Saturday. Tomorrow he’s going to a house to make measurements for cabinets. I wanted to go with him, but Gabe says I can’t ’cuz it’s going to take him most of the day and he knows I have to do schoolwork.”

“I don’t suppose he often builds cabinets for houses in Goodwater,” she said thoughtfully. She wondered if anyone in this small town could afford him.

“This house is at someplace called Medical Lake. Gabe says it’s called that ’cuz people used to think the lake water cured them of all kinds of diseases.”

In her initial search, she’d browsed houses online in Medical Lake. As in much of Eastern Washington, real-estate prices were staggeringly low compared to the Seattle area.