The Neighbor

  Ree cried until she could cry no more. Then she spread her hand on top of his, aligning each of her short stubby fingers against his own larger, longer digits.

  “We will get through this,” Jason whispered to his daughter.

  Slowly, she nodded against his shoulder.

  “Would you like some breakfast?”

  Another short nod.

  “I love you, Ree.”

  Breakfast turned out to be more complicated than he’d planned. Eggs were gone. Same with the loaf of bread, the majority of fresh fruit. Milk was low, but he thought he could eke out two bowls of cereal. The Cheerios box was suspiciously light, so he went with Rice Crispies. Ree liked the talking cereal and he always made a big show of deciphering what the crackling crisps said:

  “What, you want me to buy my daughter a pony? Oh no, you want me to buy myself a Corvette. Ooooh, that makes much more sense.”

  Jason got Ree to smile, then got her to giggle, and felt both of them relax.

  He finished his bowl of cereal. Ree ate half of hers, then began creating floating patterns in the milk with the remaining rice puffs. It kept her amused and gave him time to think.

  His body hurt. When he sat, when he walked, when he stood up. He wondered how the other guys looked. Then again, they’d jumped him from behind—he’d never seen them coming—so chances were, they looked pretty good.

  He was getting sloppy in his old age, he decided. First getting taken out by a thirteen-year-old kid, then this. Hell, with these kinds of fighting skills, he wasn’t gonna last a week in prison. A cheerful thought for the day.

  “Daddy, what happened to your face?” Ree asked, as he pushed away from the countertop, standing up to clear dishes.

  “I fell down.”

  “Ow, Daddy.”

  “No kidding.” He set the dishes in the sink, then opened the refrigerator to eye their lunch options. No milk, leaving them with a six-pack of Sandy’s prized Dr Pepper, four light yogurts, and some wilted lettuce. Second cheerful thought of the day Just because you were public enemy number one didn’t mean you got out of grocery shopping. If they planned on eating again today, they were going to have to hit the store.

  He wondered if he should wear a bandana over his face. Or wear a T-shirt with the word “Innocent” scrawled on the front, and the word “Guilty” scrawled on the back. That could be fun.

  “Hey, Ree,” he asked casually, closing the refrigerator and eyeing his daughter. “What do you say to some quality time at the grocery store?”

  Ree brightened immediately. She loved grocery shopping. It was an official Daddy-daughter chore, done at least one afternoon a week while they waited for Sandy to come home. He would strive to stick with the official wife-prepared grocery list. Ree would work to convince him to stray for such urgent purchases as Barbie Island Princess Pop-Tarts, or maple frosted doughnuts.

  He generally shaved for the outing, while Ree preferred donning a full ball gown and a rhinestone tiara. There was no point in touring twenty aisles of food if you couldn’t make a production out of it.

  This morning, she bolted upstairs to brush her teeth, then returned to the kitchen wearing a blue-flowered dress with rainbow fairy wings and pink sequined shoes. She handed him some pink gauzy hair thing, and requested a ponytail. He did his best.

  Jason wrote the grocery list, then made an attempt at general hygiene. Shaving his beard revealed an ugly bruise. Combing back his hair emphasized the shiner on his eye. No doubt about it, he looked like hell. Or more precisely, like an ax murderer. Third cheerful thought for the day.

  He gave up on grooming and returned downstairs, where Ree was waiting eagerly by the front door, yellow daffodil purse in hand.

  “You remember the reporters?” he asked her. “The people with cameras and microphones gathered across the street?”

  Ree nodded solemnly.

  “Well, they’re still there, honey. And when we open that door, they’re probably going to start shouting a ton of questions and taking pictures. They’re just trying to do their job, okay? They’re gonna be all crazy-like. And you and I are going to calmly walk to our car, and drive to the grocery store. Okay?”

  “It’s okay, Daddy. I saw them when I went upstairs. That’s why I put on my fairy wings. So if they yell too much, I can fly right over them.”

  “You are a very smart girl,” he told her, and then, because there was no time like the present, he opened the front door.

  The screaming started with the first glimpse of his shoe.

  “Jason, Jason, any news of Sandy?”

  “Will you be talking to the police today?”

  “When can we expect a formal briefing?”

  He ushered Ree out, keeping her close to his side as he closed the door behind them, locking it. His hands were shaking. He tried to keep his movements slow and measured. No rush, no guilty sprints. Grieving husband, taking his little girl to purchase badly needed milk and bread.

  “Will you be assisting with the search efforts, Jason? How many volunteers have turned out to find Sandy?”

  “Love your wings, honey! Are you an angel?”

  That comment caught his attention, made him look up sharply. He was resigned to them shouting at him, but he didn’t want the pack of vultures going after Ree.

  “Daddy?” his daughter whispered beside him, and he looked down to see the anxiety scribbled across her face.

  “We’re going to the car, we’re driving to the grocery store,” he repeated levelly “We’re okay, Ree. They’re the ones behaving badly, not us.”

  She took his hand, keeping her body pressed tightly against his legs as they walked down the front steps, made their way across the lawn, headed toward the car parked on the driveway. He counted six vans today, up from four yesterday. From this distance, he couldn’t make out the station call letters. He’d have to check it out later, see if they’d broken onto the national stage.

  “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.

  | CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT |

  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.”

  “I am not your son.”

  “All right, Jason Jones.”

  Jason caught the edge again, the implied threat. He fisted his hand at his side, refusing to say another word.

  “You don’t like me much, do you, Jason?”

  Again Jason didn’t answer. The judge, however, seemed to be talking mostly to himself. “What I can’t understand is, why? We’ve never really spoken. You wanted my daughter, you got her. You wanted to get out of Georgia, you took my daughter and left. Seems to me, I have plenty of reason to be sore with you. Why, a father’s list of grievances against the boy who runs away with his only daughter … But what have I ever done to you, son? What have I ever done to you?”

  “You failed your daughter,” Jason heard himself say. “She needed you, and you failed her.”

  “What in heaven’s name are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about your wife! I’m talking about your crazed, boozed-up wife who beat Sandy each and every day while you did nothing to stop it. What kind of father abandons his child like that? What kind of father lets her be tortured on a daily basis and does nothing to stop it?”

  There was a pause. “My wife beat Sandy? That’s what Sandy told you?”

  Jason didn’t answer right away. The silence stretched out. This time, he broke first: “Yes.”

  “Now, see here.” The judge sounded offended. “Sandy’s mom was hardly a perfect parent. It’s true she probably drank more than she should. I worked so many hours back in those days, leaving Missy alone with Sandra much too often. I’m sure that tried Missy’s nerves, made her maybe more short-tempered than a mother should be. But beating … tormenting … I think that’s a trifle melodramatic. I do.”

  “Your wife never harmed Sandy?”

  “Spare the rod, spoil the child. I saw her whack Sandy’s behind a time or two, but no more than any exasperated parent.”

  “Missy never drank to excess?”

  “Well, it’s true she had a weakness for gin. Maybe a couple of nights a week … But Missy wasn’t a violent drunk. If she had a few too many, then she carried herself off to bed. She wouldn’t have hurt a fly, let alone our daughter.”

  “What about chasing you around the house with knives?”

  “Excuse me?” The judge sounded shocked.

  “She hurt San
dy. Slammed her fingers into doorframes, forced her to drink bleach, fed her household objects just so she could take Sandy to the hospital. Your wife was a very, very sick woman.”

  The silence lasted longer this time. When the judge finally spoke, he sounded genuinely flummoxed. “This is what Sandy told you? This is what Sandra said about her own mother? Well then, no wonder you have been so curt with me. I take it back, I do. I can see your position entirely. Of all the crazy … Well. Well.” The judge didn’t seem to know what else to say.

  Jason found himself shifting from foot to foot, no longer feeling so certain about things. The first trickle of unease crept up his spine.

  “Am I allowed to speak in my defense?” the judge asked.

  “I suppose.”

  “One, I swear to you, son, this is the first I have heard of such dreadful acts. It is possible, I suppose, that things transpired between Sandy and my poor wife that I never knew of. To be truthful, however, I don’t believe that to be the case. I love my daughter, Jason. I always have. But I’m also one of the few men out there that can say I truly, completely head-over-heels loved my wife. Saw Missy the first time when I was nineteen years old, and knew at that moment I’d marry her, make her my own. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful—though she was. And not because she was kind and well mannered—though she was. But she was Missy, and I loved her for that alone.

  “Maybe you think I’m going on. This has nothing to do with anything. But by the time Sandy was twelve, I fear it had everything to do with everything. See, Sandy grew jealous. Of my deference to Missy, or maybe the flowers I brought home for no good reason, or the pretty baubles I liked to bestow on my lovely bride. Girls get to a certain age, and they start, consciously or unconsciously, competing with their mamas. I think Sandy thought she couldn’t win. It started to make her angry, hostile to her own mother.

  “Except then her mama died, before Sandy and her had a chance to work things out. Sandy took it hard. My sweet little girl … She changed overnight. Developed a wild streak, started to run around. She wanted to do what she wanted to do and wouldn’t take no for an answer. She had an abortion, Jason. You know that? Ree wasn’t her first pregnancy, maybe not even her second. Bet she never told you that, did she? I’m not even supposed to know, except the clinic recognized her name and called me. I gave my permission. What else could I do? She was still just a child herself—she was far too young and unstable to be a mother. I prayed, Jason, I prayed for my girl like you wouldn’t believe, right up until the moment you took her out of my life.”