Jack had a point there, too. As a high school teacher, Sam has seen more than his share of unplanned teenaged pregnancies. They usually happen to the nice, naive kids. The ones whose parents are in denial.
“Look,” Jack persisted, “just get the condoms, stick them in the cabinet, mention it to Ben, then leave it alone.”
That wasn’t nearly as easy for Sam to do as it was for Jack to say.
It was also easy for Jack to say, amid Sam’s many precautions as he was headed to the city with Ben today, “Do you really think I’m going to lose him somewhere? And that even if I did, he wouldn’t find his way back home again?”
Sam just shook his head.
Bad things happen in this world.
Children are kidnaped. Struck by lightning.
Their mothers walk out the door to go grocery shopping and never come back.
Sam squeezes his eyes closed in an effort to stave off the vivid memory of the crushed blue station wagon at the intersection. But he can’t shut it out, nor a haunting echo of the wailing sirens that sounded less than five minutes after Sheryl left home that day. When he heard them, he somehow knew.
He just knew.
And he was right.
The nightmare had begun.
Widowed, devastated, he moved back into this house with his children—and dog—in tow. His mother had offered to move in with him instead, but he couldn’t stand the thought of staying on in that house they rented in Pelham without Sheryl. Everywhere he looked, there were memories.
Here, at least, he stood a chance of eventually moving on.
So he came home to Glenhaven Park.
He commuted to his old teaching job in lower Westchester until, miraculously, a position opened up right here at his old school. Things had fallen into place within a year of Sheryl’s death—he and the kids were settled in here with his mother, surviving.
Yes, there are memories in this house, too. Plenty of them. He grew up here, raised with his brother Jack under this very roof. Ben has his boyhood room now, and Katie has Jack’s. Sam has his parents’.
Mom passed away two years ago. It was unexpected, though not the tragedy losing Sheryl had been.
In fact, at first, Sam reacted so numbly to the loss of his mother that Jack was worried about him. Gradually, the pain seeped in. But with it came an odd sense of peace. He bought out Jack’s half of their inherited property, and this felt like home once again, in a way it didn’t while he was living here with his mother.
Hearing another roll of thunder, Sam rises abruptly from his chair.
There goes the ball game, he thinks. The Yankees should be throwing out the starting pitch right around the time the pizza arrives. He was planning to watch the game, but the cable frequently goes out in thunderstorms. Plus, the Yanks are playing at home in the Bronx only thirty-some miles south of here—the game will be affected by the rain anyway.
It’s going to be a long, dull, lonely night.
So what else is new?
Sam steps over Rover, plunks his open novel facedown on the coffee table, and bends over the back of the couch to peek out the front picture window.
The first thing he sees is the Trailblazer, parked on the driveway.
Yup, windows down.
And…
Huh. There’s a big U-Haul truck parked at the curb in front of the Duckworth house next door.
Here we go again.
This time, the house wasn’t even on the market all that long. A FOR SALE sign hadn’t yet been planted in the lawn before he heard the place had been sold again.
He has no idea who bought it this time, nor does he care.
Why should he?
It won’t be long before his new neighbors get wind of the rumors, fall victim to their imaginations, and go the way of the Delgados, and the Sterns before them, and the Blumbergs before them.
Seeing movement behind the truck, he spots a petite figure staggering backward, only half-visible beneath a towering cardboard box.
So the new people have children—and they’ve put them to work.
Well, that’s good. Most of the kids around Glenhaven Park these days are the spoiled offspring of privileged parents.
Sam is thinking that it will be nice for Katie and Ben to have kids next door after all… until it occurs to him that it won’t be nice at all when they move.
Maybe I won’t even tell the kids about the new neighbors, he decides, wondering how long it will take before the resident ghost puts in its first appearance. For all he knows, these people will be gone before dawn.
At the window before him, the lace curtain stirs in a sudden gust through the open screen.
Then the still air is shattered by another reverberation of thunder. This time it’s closer.
Yup, a storm is closing in.
Sam grabs his keys and heads for the door just in time to hear another loud crash.
Only this time, it isn’t courtesy of Mother Nature—and this time, it’s followed by a very human curse word.
He looks to the source and sees the newcomer just inside her black wrought-iron gate. She dropped the box she was carrying.
Uh-oh. Her mom isn’t going to be very pleased about this. She’s surrounded by shards of broken pottery, which she kicks angrily, with another curse—pretty salty language for a little girl, there.
“Need help, sweetheart?” Sam calls, stepping out onto his porch.
She looks up, startled.
Then she grins, and calls back, “That would be terrific, Honeybunch.”
That’s when he realizes that she isn’t a little girl at all.
She’s a woman.
A petite, curvy, beautiful woman.
A petite, curvy, beautiful woman whose eyes have just gone from mocking his mistake—he just affectionately called a strange woman “sweetheart”!—to wide with sudden recognition.
“Sam Rooney?”
He frowns.
“Sam? Is that you?”
He nods vigorously. Yup. He’s positive he’s Sam… and he’s also pretty sure he’s never seen this woman before in his life.
Though she certainly seems to know him.
Brushing off her red shorts and pulling down the hem of her orange T-shirt, she takes a few steps closer, toward the line of shrubs dividing their property.
“I don’t believe it… it really is you. Hi!”
“Hello.” His tone is meant to be friendly, but even he can hear that it’s unnaturally formal and fraught with uncertainty. “Uh, how are you?”
“Not great at the moment…” She laughs, indicating the broken pottery. “But generally speaking, I’ve been okay. How about you? Are you visiting your parents?”
“My parents?” he echoes, then shakes his head. “No, they, ah, passed away.”
“Oh, no. I’m so sorry.” She does seem to be genuinely sympathetic. But why? “When did it happen?”
“Dad died back when I was still in college. Mom died almost two years ago.”
“I’m so sorry,” she says again. “So then the house…”
“I live here now.”
“Really?” She comes closer still.
Close enough for him to clearly see her features: big green eyes, pert nose, wide—like Julia Roberts’s—mouth, straight white teeth.
All right, he has no idea who the heck she is, even now.
So maybe she’s mistaken him for somebody else.
Then again, she does know that his parents used to live here, so…
“Are you… ah…”
“Meg,” she supplies, thinking he’s fishing for her name when what he was going to ask was Are you sure we’ve met?
“Meg,” he echoes, nodding. “Right! Meg.”
Still no clue.
Meg who?
“Meg…” He snaps his fingers a few times, as if it’s on the tip of his tongue.
“Jones,” she says, as thunder claps in the not-so-distant distance.
“Oh! That’s it. Meg Jones. Now I remember.”
>
“Really?” She takes a few steps closer, wearing a strange smile, her hands on her hips. “That’s funny. Because it’s actually not Jones.”
“It isn’t?”
She laughs… but frankly, she doesn’t seem all that amused. “I was testing you. You have no idea who I am, do you?”
Uh-oh.
“No,” he confesses. “I don’t.”
“We went to high school together.”
“Really?”
He wonders why he never dated her. She’s beautiful. Quick-witted. Spirited.
Definitely his type.
Or maybe—
Nah. He definitely didn’t date her. He’d remember that.
“I graduated a year behind you. I’m Meg Addams.”
“Really?”
“Really. Ring a bell?”
“No… but I have a lousy memory.”
Total lie. He has a great memory.
That’s why it’s so shocking that he doesn’t remember her.
Another clap of thunder, startlingly close, then fat raindrops begin splatting abruptly all around them.
“No!” Meg turns and hurries back toward the sidewalk.
“Isn’t everything broken?” he calls, watching her scramble to pick it up.
“Not all of it. I’m going to save what I can. My daughter made most of it when she was little.”
Daughter. Oh.
Well, maybe she doesn’t have a husband.
His next thought: Why do I care?
The one after that: How can I find out?
“You have a daughter? Where is she? What about your husband? Did you hire movers? You aren’t trying to do this entire move on your own, are you?”
Too many questions.
But he was trying to make the one about the husband a little less obvious.
And you did it so well it just got buried.
Meg looks up, apparently not sure what to answer first. “I, uh, no, they’ll be back in a while, but I’ve got to—”
Lightning flashes. She jumps a little.
“Wait, I’m coming to help you,” Sam calls, and stops at his Trailblazer first, mulling over her reply as he hurriedly rolls up the windows.
They’ll be back in a while.
So she is married, with at least one kid.
Oh, well, Sam thinks, crossing to the gate to help her. It’s not as though he’s interested in dating her… or anyone.
Just…
For a moment there…
Well, he could have sworn when he looked at her that something stirred to life in a long-neglected, shadowy place deep inside him.
Chapter
4
He doesn’t even remember me.
Wow.
But at least they had a real conversation.
All those years ago, when Meg was obsessing about Sam Rooney, it never occurred to her that it would take twenty years before she managed to connect with him.
Connect, as in, talk to.
Not connect as in…
Well, in the way a dreamy, infatuated young girl yearns to connect with the good-looking, athletic, charismatic student council president.
Sam Rooney.
He looks exactly the same.
Well, in a more manly way. He’s still tall…
Of course he’s still tall. Did you expect him to shrink?
Meg is utterly irritated with herself for even noticing his looks.
After all, he’s a dad now. He must be, because when she and Geoffrey arrived for the walk-through on Friday morning, she saw a young girl riding aimlessly up and down the adjacent driveway on her bike, and several teenaged boys shooting hoops beneath the net on the detached garage.
Geoffrey, of course, had to comment on the scene. “Oh, happy joy, it’s Kinder Kamp right in your own backyard.”
“That’s not my backyard.”
“It might as well be.” He looked around distastefully, hands tucked into the pockets of his black Armani silk slacks as though afraid he might contaminate them otherwise. “This is all very…”
“Suburban?” she supplied, when he couldn’t seem to find the right word.
“I was going to say frightening.”
Now, surreptitiously watching Sam Rooney stride toward the U-Haul, where she’s pretending to survey the towers of boxes, she is a little frightened.
Of herself.
Of the strange, fluttery eruption in her stomach.
He looks the same as he did back in high school—tall, yes, and also lean and muscular. He’s wearing his wavy brown hair a little longer and shaggier than he did back then.
And those killer blue eyes are just as piercing.
Looking at him, Meg is fifteen all over again.
Terrific. Is she doomed to go around with perpetual butterflies in her stomach whenever she sees the Dad Next Door?
Watching him approach, she wonders what his wife is like and is sure that she would never go around in ancient red shorts and an orange T-shirt. No, she probably looks as though she stepped out of a J. Crew catalogue.
Then again… Sam doesn’t.
His no-frills wardrobe has seen better days: a plain old athletic-looking gray T-shirt (which reveals impressive biceps), blue running shorts (which reveal tanned, muscular, masculine-hairy legs) and white Nikes without socks (which reveal that he’s been painting something in a reddish maroon color).
He looks like… a guy. That’s the beauty of it. He’s just a regular Joe, handsome through no conscious effort of his own.
In Meg’s world—or rather, in Astor Hudson’s world—guys like him simply don’t exist.
The life she’s about to leave behind is populated by beautiful men, yes. Some are gay, some are married. Most of the ones who aren’t, she’s fallen for—and been dumped by. Some are in show business and some aren’t. What they all have in common is a highly motivated physical appearance.
They’ve got hundred-dollar haircuts; they’ve been waxed, massaged, manicured. They use product as opposed to plain old soap and shampoo to maintain their hair and skin. They knock around in designer clothes and wear custom-made shirts, and when they go without socks, their bare, pedicured feet are clad in Italian leather loafers. Their muscles are buff, strictly courtesy of the gym.
Somehow, Meg knows that Sam’s aren’t. No, he got them the old-fashioned way. Which is…
Well, how do regular guys get muscles?
She has no idea, but she really should stop looking at them.
Sam’s muscles.
Stop.
She really should stop looking at him.
Even though he’s looking at her.
Looking at her as though…
Well, as though he’s interested.
At last.
Oh, sure.
Now that he’s a married dad, he’s finally, finally noticed her?
Unless…
Meg sneaks a peek at his left hand.
Bare ring finger!
Red alert: bare ring finger!
Wait a minute.
Is he just one of those guys who eschews jewelry of any kind?
Or can he possibly be…
Single?
A single dad?
Earth to Meg… come in, Meg. Did you forget that you’ve sworn off men?
“So… we’d better get busy,” he says, reaching her side.
Busy.
Yes…
Oh. The boxes. He’s talking about the boxes.
Right.
“Are you sure you don’t mind helping me?” Amazing how laid-back she’s managing to sound. “I wouldn’t even accept the offer if I didn’t have to get the truck back…”
“I don’t mind at all. I’ll carry the big stuff; you just direct me where you want it to go when we get it inside.”
He doesn’t even flinch as he reaches into the truck and lifts out a large, book-filled box that took all three of them—Geoffrey, Meg, and Cosette—to hoist into the truck.
Meg grabs a smaller ca
rton and leads the way through the gate, which she has already propped open with a big rock. Plenty of those lying around the disastrous yard.
“Wow. I still can’t believe it,” she says mostly to herself, shaking her head at the looming monstrosity before them.
“Believe what?”
“That I just bought the old Duckworth place.”
“So you remember it? Don’t tell me—you didn’t live in this neighborhood, did you?”
“No, but…”
But I spent a lot of time here. A few years, pedaling and strolling up and down this very street, hoping for a glimpse of you.
“Every kid in town knew about the haunted house,” she says instead.
Following her up the walk, he asks, “Did you really believe it was haunted?”
Something in his overly casual tone makes her turn to look at him.
God, he’s handsome.
He also seems to be holding his breath for her reply to his inane question.
“Did you think it was haunted?” she returns, unsettled by the memory of that glint she saw—or thought she saw—in the attic window a few minutes ago.
He grins at her across the boxes in their arms. “I asked you first.”
“I sure did,” she admits. “Whenever I went past it I used to—”
She breaks off. Oops.
“You used to what?” he asks, and starts up the uneven steps, eyes cast downward to avoid tripping.
Good. Then he can’t see how red her face must be.
And he doesn’t seem to realize that she had no legitimate reason to pass the Duckworth house, ever.
“I used to just rush by it and get away from it as fast as I could,” she says briefly, and reaches for the doorknob. “Oh, careful when we go in… I don’t want my cat to escape.”
“Cat?” He doesn’t exactly make a face, but…
“You don’t like cats?”
Sam shakes his head with an unapologetic, “Nope.”
A-ha! Definite deal breaker.
Even if Sam Rooney did turn out to be single and available—which he probably isn’t—she could never fall in love with a man who doesn’t like cats.
Fall in love?
Who said anything about love?
You’re not allowed to fall in love.
Or even think about falling in love. Remember?
Yeah, well, anyway…
He’s probably married. Is he married?
“Do you want to let your wife know where you are, or anything?” she offers lamely.