I cooked nutritious meals to keep my father from ballooning up to blimp size without any exercise. I knocked myself out trying to make them appealing.
“What the hell is this?” Dad demanded with equal parts outrage and disgust over the dinner table one night. “Did I die and turn into a rabbit?”
“I think we call them salads.” Hope exaggerated that last word into about ten syllables.
“Don’t you use that tone with me, young lady.” Dad’s eyes glinted when he looked at her. “As far as I know, I’m your only source of income.”
“Dad,” I interrupted, sharing a quick glance with Hope. “It’s a salad, yes, but there’s all that good stuff in there. A little bacon—”
“Turkey bacon,” Hope amended. She caught my expression. “Which you can’t even tell.”
Later, I washed the dishes with some of the aggression I was trying to hide from my father. He was watching reruns of NYPD Blue on cable in the family room, with the volume turned up so loud I thought Sipowicz was inside my head.
“You want to go out?” Hope asked. She paused in the kitchen doorway. “Why don’t you just leave those? Jesus, Meredith, you’re not the hired help.”
“Who else is going to do them?” I asked, maybe with a little hostility. Definitely with an extra helping of self-pity.
Hope whistled. “That sounded so much like Mom it actually sent a chill down my spine. Did you know you could channel her like that?”
“Very funny.”
“I’m not kidding. Sneak up on Dad and do that. See if he jumps.” She sashayed past me and helped herself to a cookie. “In the meantime, please spare me the martyr routine. It’s frightening.”
I wiped my hands dry on one of my mother’s decorative dishtowels. “I think I got your point about five minutes ago.”
“You need to get out of this house,” Hope advised me, her expression serious. “You probably forgot, since you’ve been living hundreds of miles away, but it’s poisonous here.” She waved her hand at the walls. “Emotional asbestos.”
For fun, or something else—something much closer to obsessive-compulsive disorder than I was comfortable admitting—I cooked meals nobody ate. I made stews and soups and so many desserts I had to start freezing them. I fed the freaking fish twice a day, as ordered, and marked down changes in environment—also as ordered—on the intricately plotted graph Dad had provided for that very purpose. I cleaned and scrubbed, and then, finally, exactly ten days after I’d come north to help out, it occurred to me that I had turned into a housewife. Possibly even a Stepford Wife, as Hope had predicted.
It was different at home, for Travis, because I paid half the rent and held down my own job, as boring as it was. I wanted to cook and clean for Travis. I enjoyed it. In fact, I’d practically made it into an art form.
We had a comfortable routine in Atlanta—a routine I’d worked hard to perfect. I was good with the details of things, and my life with Travis was a triumph of details. From the moment he woke up to the moment he went to sleep, I made sure our life together flowed smoothly and easily. I spent hours at work trolling the Internet for recipes I thought he’d like, and tried never to repeat any single recipe too often—in case he thought I’d lost interest in cooking for him. I anticipated the work clothes he’d be likely to want each week, so I could be sure to either wash them or get them to the dry cleaner in time. I liked the glow of pride I got when he noticed the things I did for him, or when he told me how great our life together was.
And it was great, all right. I made sure of it. The weather was good, and unlike the East Coast, the people were cheerful. It was sweet and easy, and we lived in the shade of magnolia trees.
It was the perfect life.
Here in New Jersey, the same things felt entirely different. Here, working out the details seemed to be another chore like the ones Mom had assigned when we were kids. Here, I was an angry and bitter housewife with perfectionist leanings and the early signs of OCD.
Not just any housewife, then. My mother.
Kill me now.
I packed the cleaning supplies back onto their shelf in the laundry room and then approached my father in his den. He lay with his leg elevated in his recliner, books and remote controls within easy reach. I exchanged his soda for a new one, and crooked his straw into just the right angle.
“Dad,” I chirped brightly, “do you need anything else?”
“I’m just enjoying a little peace and quiet,” he said with a slightly battered version of his usual grin.
“I’m going to go out, then.” I frowned. “The phone is right here. If you feel even the slightest pain—”
“I was in a car accident, Meredith,” my father said impatiently.
Maybe my chirpy voice was getting to him—Lord knew, it was putting my own teeth on edge.
“I did not have a lobotomy,” he continued in the same tone. “I believe I can remember how to dial a phone.”
“All right then,” I said in my normal voice, ignoring his tone of voice. No one wanted to be the daughter who got in fights with her incapacitated father. “I’ll be back soon.”
It felt good to leave the house without being on an errand involving my father’s needs or groceries. It felt good to leave the house, period. It felt even better to drive a little bit too fast on the highway, almost like I was escaping, and drive around in my mother’s ridiculously oversized SUV—which, naturally, she required for all the suburban off roading she did.
I had the geography of northern New Jersey imprinted on my brain, from the thousands of hours I’d wasted as a teenager just driving the same streets again and again. On weekends or after school, Jeannie and I would drive aimlessly until we were lost, and then try to find our way back home again. The towns blurred together, a mess of tunnels and bridges and New York City glimmering in the distance, peeking up over this hill and across that ridge.
Eventually, I headed back into town, staring at the familiar streets and sights of the place I’d grown up. At one end of the main thoroughfare were the train tracks that carried so many residents to work each morning in Manhattan. At the other was the impressive-looking high school where I’d marked my time and allowed Jeannie and Christian to sweep me along in their wake. The public pool where we’d all learned to swim was just a stone’s throw from the public library and the town hall with all its policemen, whose days could hardly be considered difficult, what with the dangerous jaywalkers and illegal parkers. It was a deliberately, self-consciously nice place to live. Safe when very little was safe anymore—or it had been. I could remember some truly poor adolescent decisions—Christian’s decisions, of course, which I got caught up in—that had ended well enough, simply because it was so safe. It was hard to believe that New York City was only some fifteen miles away.
It was even harder to believe I was home again. It was different at Christmas. My visits were packed full and I rarely had more than a few days. No time to reexplore the place where I’d grown up. No time to even want to.
I parked near the shaded green lawn of the central square and wandered. Gentrification had claimed the place, bringing shiny chain stores and a booming restaurant business. It was a different town entirely than the one I remembered: face-lifted and sleek, and filled to bursting with Saturday day trippers from the city and New Jersey ladies who lunched across three counties.
It was blazingly hot in the afternoon sun, and I ducked into the bookstore to escape it. It was the last remaining independent bookstore in town. There were three separate corporate giants out on the highway, an easy drive, and so the bookstore was forced to cater to the many elitists who lived in town and could be convinced that waiting to order a book was better for their intellectual health than going out to the larger highway stores and picking it up immediately.
I smiled automatically at the woman behind the counter and wandered around the display tables. I picked up a signed copy of the latest Stephen King novel, and then set it down again without reading the back. I liked the weight
of books, their shape in my hands. I ran my fingers along a stack of brightly colored paperbacks. Pinks and lime greens, all begging to be bought.
And then I looked up and saw a familiar figure standing at the table, facing me but frowning down at the book in his hands.
I hadn’t seen him in years, but I recognized him immediately. Scott Sheridan.
He’d grown up across the street from us. Christian had spent long years tormenting Scott simply because Scott was there and Christian could. Scott had been forever branded a loser in our class in school because he’d had the misfortune to cry once in the third grade and to thereafter express a lack of interest in team sports.
But the fact that I recognized him didn’t mean he looked the same.
From his dark hair to the fine, lean lines of his body, he bore almost no resemblance at all to the version of him I carried in my head—that gawky teenage boy, all elbows and skinny legs. This Scott Sheridan wore casual shorts and a T-shirt with the careless grace of a man entirely comfortable with himself and his body. A man who was not looked down upon because he’d burst into tears in the third grade. A man who was more hot than cute, but was, shockingly, both.
I tried to make the versions match.
He looked up, and I was trapped in his gaze. It made my stomach clench. This Scott Sheridan was all gray eyes, dark hair, and a mouth that inspired several choice fantasies. In rapid, vivid succession.
I was so surprised I took a step back.
“Meredith McKay,” he said, sounding out my name. As if he was remembering how to say it.
“Scotty Sheridan,” I replied. And no more fantasies about his mouth, please. My heart could only take so much.
His smile crinkled up the corners of his eyes, and my heart skipped a beat. “I pretty much dropped the ‘y’ when I turned ten,” he said.
I felt myself flush red. “Of course you did,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
He considered me for a long moment, and then flicked his eyes back to the book in his hand. He shut it with a snap and returned his gaze to mine. There was a smile lurking somewhere in there, somewhere not quite hidden.
“I heard about your father,” he said politely. “I hope he’s doing well?”
“He’s better every day.” Which was technically true.
Scott nodded. “That’s great,” he said. “You’re up visiting?”
“Oh.”
I hadn’t yet had to explain my presence to anyone. It had occurred to me that my mother’s failure to return to her husband’s side might possibly be seen as a curious decision. Even a negligent decision. And I certainly didn’t want to be responsible for casting my mother in an unfavorable light, even if only in front of a former classmate, who, if I remembered right, had had a ferocious crush on me for the better part of puberty. It made my cheeks heat to think of it.
When I focused on him again, Scott was smiling.
“Was that a trick question?”
“No!” I laughed. “Of course not! I’m just here to help out.”
There was something about him, about the way he looked at me, as if he delighted in what he saw. He made me nervous. He also made me wish I had paid some attention to my appearance before racing from the house. I was blushing again, which could only draw attention to the state of my hair and the less-than-pristine tank top I’d pulled on earlier. I tugged at it.
Why, exactly, do I care what I look like in front of Scotty Sheridan? asked a small voice within me. I ignored it.
“I was about to get some coffee,” Scott said after a moment, his smile deepening. Almost as if he could read my mind. “Want to come?”
I was so surprised that I froze. The invitation hung there. Scott laughed.
“Come on,” he said. “You danced with me at the senior prom. What’s a cup of coffee next to such a supreme sacrifice?”
“I did?” Even as I asked, I had a hazy memory of some slow song and Scott’s oddly formal swaying. “I completely forgot about that,” I said quickly, before his smile could do something more dangerous. Maybe to my respiratory system. “But I’d love to have a cup of coffee with you. We can catch up.”
His mouth twitched, but he only gestured for me to precede him toward the door and arched an arrogant brow. He was definitely hot, I thought. But nothing as nice and safe as cute.
We walked back outside into the summer glare. I was entirely too happy to slip my sunglasses back on. I wanted the barrier.
“So,” I said as we walked into the coffee shop. “Why are you in town? Summer vacation?”
“I live here,” Scott said.
“Oh.”
“Not ‘oh,’” he said, sliding me a look heavy with amusement. “I’m not the loser your family thinks I am, Meredith. I work in the county prosecutor’s office, and I live here because my mother is old and frail and I’m all she has. I live out by the baseball field.” He threw me a cheeky grin. “Ironic, I know.”
“I didn’t say anything!” I protested.
“You didn’t have to.” He looked down at me and his eyes sparkled with mischief. “Your sister gave me the entire Scotty Sheridan Sucks story at Christmas.”
“The what?” I asked weakly, but I was horrified. A swift glance from him told me he wasn’t fooled. I had actually forgotten that too—but it quickly flooded back.
Scotty Sheridan Sucks had been a family game, played on car trips or to while away boring family events. Ring-led by Christian but always egged on by Hope’s evil imagination, we tried to top each other with fabricated Scotty Sheridan Sucks stories. Scotty Sheridan sucks, someone would begin, because he eats his own gym shorts. And so on. It had begun because of the notorious third-grade crying incident, but had taken on a life of its own as a sibling bonding ritual. It hadn’t been about the real Scott Sheridan at all, or at least it had only been about him at first, but how to explain that?
“What exactly did she tell you?”
“Enough,” Scott said. He grinned. “Scotty Sheridan sucks because he vacuums his—”
“Oh my God, please stop!” I was appalled.
“She was pretty drunk.” His eyebrows arched upward. “But I think I got the idea. I had no idea I inspired such creativity.”
Once at the coffee shop, we ordered iced coffee drinks and sat outside on one of the benches. The sun was hot and traffic eased by on the street in front of us. I was too aware of the man sitting next to me, and for once I was at a loss for words.
“Scott,” I ventured when the silence had drawn on too long. “I’m really sorry. Hope should never have told you any of that.”
What was wrong with my sister? Did she even live in the same world as the rest of us?
He laughed again. “It’s nice of you to apologize,” he said. “But I’m not sure you can.”
“What do you mean?”
He looked at me. “It’s like high school. Can anyone really apologize for things they did in high school? I think you’ll find no apology will do.”
I thought about some of the grudges I still held from back then. None of them were gone, necessarily, I’d just incorporated them into my adult self. And Scott was right, no apology could change that.
“So you won’t accept an apology.” I sipped at my drink and felt like smiling for some reason. “I have nothing else to offer you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He smiled back at me. “But I’ll note for the record that the apology was offered. It’s not as if you can pay restitution for dragging my good name through the mud for decades, now is it?”
I groaned. “So you’re saying I’m stuck in your debt?”
“Maybe.” He sipped from his drink and stretched his legs out in front of him. “That could be interesting, exploring debt and restitution with Meredith McKay.”
Our eyes locked and held, and I felt something turn over inside of me.
As if he could feel it himself, Scott grinned.
Chapter 5
In future, I would do my best to avoid having intense c
onversations, brimming with undercurrents I chose not to explore, with old acquaintances from high school, I told myself sternly while driving back from coffee with Scott.
Especially high school acquaintances who once had a crush on you, and were now entirely too interested in telling you all the reasons they held long-term grudges against your family. All the reasons. In detail.
In fact, high school in general was better avoided entirely, as a personal policy. Who had anything nice to say about their high school experience? And if they did, why would you want to talk to them? If that wasn’t irrefutable proof of mental illness, what was?
I picked up my cell phone to call Travis and rant about Scott, high school, and anything else that came to mind about being trapped in my hometown. When his office phone shot me straight to voice mail, though, I hung up. The truth was, Travis would be fairly alarmed to discover I had a rant in me. I wasn’t much of a ranter, and Travis didn’t really like surprises. Me in a full-on rant might make him nervous.
And if I was really honest with myself, I didn’t want to tell Travis about Scott. Like his once-upon-a-time crush on me, back in the day, was something private. Something that was only mine, that might make being here better somehow. Or maybe because I knew Travis would demand to hear the entire Scotty Sheridan story, and would start mocking him too.
In any case, I didn’t leave a message.
When I turned down our street, I had a near-giddy urge to slam my foot against the gas pedal in Mom’s huge car and roar off in a cloud of exhaust—anything to escape the figure loitering near the front lawn.
Of course, I knew better.
Gladys Van Eck knew the make, model, and permitted list of drivers of every vehicle within a five-mile radius of her home, which was, tragically, right next door.
Gladys Van Eck had been old when I was a kid, which meant she now had to be at least two hundred, and she’d been in a bad mood for at least the last hundred and seventy-five of those years. She owned a succession of mean-tempered, snotty-looking Yorkshire terriers whom she adorned in bows twice the size of their heads and paraded through the neighborhood. She claimed she was exercising them, but no one was fooled by this claim.