Slice

by William Patterson

  She looked outside through the window once again. There was Bryan, looking a little older than she remembered him, with his red hair slightly receding at his temples, but really just as handsome as ever. He was flashing that smile of his, and his green eyes still sparkled when he did so. Heather stood by his side, not smiling much, as Bryan spoke with Mr. Thayer, and their two little kids, redheads like Bryan, clung to their father’s pants.

  Those could have been my kids, Jessie thought.

  But she’d her own kid, and Jessie wouldn’t trade Abby for anything, for any other life. For all the pain she’d been through with Emil—and the memory of the callous way he’d slit that man’s throat would never fully leave her—Jessie wouldn’t change what she had been through. If she hadn’t met Emil—if she hadn’t slept with him—she wouldn’t have Abby. And life without Abby was unimaginable.

  You didn’t feel that way about the boy.

  Jessie forced such thoughts out of her head. It had been a while since she thought about the twin she’d miscarried, the little boy fetus in the pool of blood—the little boy who had haunted her dreams for so long. For the last couple of years—and especially since she’d learned Emil had been killed—Jessie had been largely free from such haunting memories. Why was she suddenly thinking about the baby she’d lost this afternoon—when she had a yard full of guests to entertain?

  She knew why. Those people out in the yard represented her past. They knew Mom and Dad. They knew her secrets. They knew what she had been through. Not just with Emil either. They knew about her heartbreak with Todd and with Bryan, and they all would watch to see how Jessie reacted when she greeted them, their wives at their sides.

  Jessie held her chin high and walked through the dining room toward the back door. As she did so, she passed a photograph of Mom. She’d found it yesterday, and slipped it into a frame and hung it on the wall. It was a picture that her mother had given her when she had gone off to college. Jessie had been nervous, afraid she wouldn’t be able to handle the workload and the pressures of living away from home for the first time in her life. Mom had found a photo of herself from when she was Jessie’s age—seventeen. In the photo, Mom was smiling wide, sporting her mid-1960s hairdo that flipped up at the ends. She wore a little black choker with a heart in the center. And she’d taken a black felt-tip marker and inscribed the photo for Jessie.

  You can do anything, my sweet baby. There is nothing you can’t accomplish when you put your mind, heart and spirit into it.

  She’d signed it, Love, Mom.

  Jessie paused and looked at the photo, rereading the inscription. Then she nodded to herself and headed outside.

  She walked straight into the foursome of Monica and Todd, and Heather and Bryan.

  “Hello, Jessie,” Heather said.

  There was a brief hug between the two women.

  “Welcome home,” Bryan told her.

  Jessie didn’t hug him, but shook his hand.

  “Thank you.” She paused. “It’s good to be home.”

  “You look great,” Bryan said.

  His words seemed thick, and pointed, and full of meaning. In that unspoken way Aunt Paulette would have described as psychic, Jessie seemed to sense Heather’s discomfort with her husband’s observation.

  “Jessie always looks great,” Todd reiterated, and this time Jessie felt Monica’s discomfort.

  “Where are your children?” Jessie asked, directing the question to Heather. She found she couldn’t look at Bryan fully. “I thought I saw them a moment ago.”

  It was Bryan who answered her. “They spotted the swing set,” he said.

  They all looked in that direction. Bryan’s two kids were scrambling onto the two swings, leaving Abby just to watch. Inga was with them, supervising it all.

  “Piper and Ashton are thrilled to have someone in the neighborhood finally to play with,” Heather said.

  “I hope they’ll be good friends,” Jessie said.

  There was a moment of awkward silence. “Good friends” was a term with some freighted history among that particular group.

  “I was pleased to see how well your son and Abby played together the other day,” Jessie said at last, breaking the silence. “Why didn’t your daughter come up as well?”

  Bryan and Heather were looking at her blankly.

  “Your son,” Jessie repeated.

  “This is the first time Ashton has been here,” Heather said.

  Jessie smiled. “No, actually, he came up the other day. . . . He and Abby swung on the swings for a bit, then walked down to the brook. Inga was with them.”

  “That’s impossible,” Heather insisted. “Ashton never goes anywhere without his sister, and they know better than to leave our yard without asking permission.”

  Jessie frowned. “Well, it was some little boy. . . . Aunt Paulette said it must have been Ashton because there aren’t any other little boys in the neighborhood.”

  “That’s right. No other little kids, period. I don’t know who it was that played with your daughter, Jessie, but it wasn’t Ashton.”

  Jessie looked off at the boy on the swing set.

  “Strange,” she said.

  “Well,” Bryan offered, “I suppose whoever it was, we’ll learn next week. Is Abby starting school at Independent Day?”

  “Yes,” Jessie replied. “She starts kindergarten.”

  “Ashton’s in first grade there, and Piper’s in second,” Bryan said. “I imagine you’ll find Abby’s little playmate there. Maybe he comes from one of the new houses they built on the other side of the woods.”

  “But then he would have had to cross Manning’s property,” Todd said, “and our esteemed neighbor has ‘no trespassing’ signs everywhere.”

  “I don’t know about you, Todd,” Bryan said, “but a ‘no trespassing’ sign never stopped me as a kid.”

  “Well, some of us like to play by the rules,” Todd replied icily.

  Jessie picked up on the disdain between the two men, and wondered why. Then she remembered that they worked at rival investment brokerages in the city. Both had gotten help early in their careers from Mr. Thayer, but then Bryan had jumped ship, going over to the other side. Now they were like two hostile tomcats, each staking out their territories and trying to assert their claim as the alpha male. Jessie found it all terribly tedious, and oh so terribly just like men.

  Another awkward silence had descended.

  “You should see the work Jessie has already done inside Mom’s house,” Monica said, trying to keep the conversation going. “Hardly here a week, and already she’s retiling the bathroom and repainting the kitchen. . . .”

  “Well,” Jessie admitted, “it’s mostly Inga, Abby’s nanny. She’s a terrific help around the house. Really handy.”

  She watched as Bryan’s eyes looked back over at the swings and seemed to take in every detail of Inga’s solid, strong, full figure.

  “We’ve been through four nannies in six years,” Heather said, sighing. “Our two are rather . . . a handful.”

  At that moment Ashton was shouting at the top of his lungs, angry at his sister for swinging higher than he could manage. The little girl was laughing derisively at him. Jessie noticed that Abby still stood off to the side, watching the other children monopolize her swing set.

  “Kids,” Heather said, shaking her head.

  “Well, I should mingle,” Jessie said, feeling she’d spent more than enough time trying to make conversation. “Please help yourself to some punch.”

  Everyone smiled as Jessie moved off across the yard.

  She headed straight for the swing set.

  “Everything going okay?” Inga asked as Jessie approached.

  Inga knew the backstories that united the afternoon’s guests. Jessie had shared the basic details: the breakups, the rejections, the heartbreak, the scandals. So the nanny understood all too well the difficulties Jessie would face meeting everyone today.

  “As well as can be expected,�
� Jessie said, with a small laugh.

  She looked at the little redheaded boy with freckles sprinkled across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. He was attempting to swing as high as his older sister but without much success. His face was flushed and his teeth were gritted.

  Inga seemed to intuit Jessie’s thoughts.

  “Not the same kid,” she said. “Not the one who was up here the other day.”

  Ashton’s big green eyes made contact with Jessie’s. She looked away.

  “Mommy,” Abby said, tugging on Jessie’s khaki shorts. “When can I have a turn on the swings?”

  “These are our guests, sweetie. Let them swing first. I’m sure they’ll give you a turn soon.”

  “No, I won’t,” said the little girl, Piper. “I am going to swing all day. Ashton can give her his swing, since he keeps losing to me anyhow.”

  “I’m not getting off, either,” Ashton shouted. “I am going to beat you, Piper. You’ll see!”

  “Five more minutes and one of you is giving Abby a turn,” Jessie told them. “These are her swings, after all.”

  “I’ll make sure they do,” Inga said, giving Jessie a wink.

  Jessie tousled Abby’s hair and started back across the yard before Inga stopped her.

  “Remember the crap you’ve been through, Jessie,” the nanny told her. “You got through all of that. And you’ll get through today, too.”

  Jessie gave her a smile and a thumbs-up.

  Aunt Paulette was passing around a tray of cheese and crackers among the guests. “Everyone keeps saying how pretty you look,” she whispered as Jessie passed.

  Dear Aunt Paulette. She made Jessie think of Mom, and that was a good thing.

  “When are we going to get the house tour?” Gert Gorin was asking as Jessie approached.

  “Well, come along now then,” Jessie replied. “There’s not a lot to show, but you can see what there is to see.”

  The Gorins and Mr. Thayer followed her into the house. She took them through the kitchen, instructing them to step over the paint cans and containers of spackle, and then up the stairs, where hours of scrubbing and vacuuming had left the wood floors shining and the windows sparkling in the afternoon sun. Jessie noticed Gert Gorin’s eagle eyes taking in everything, her inquisitive mind soaking it all up.

  “Where does the nanny sleep?” Gert wanted to know.

  “Her room’s down the hall,” Jessie replied.

  “Mmhmm,” Gert said, looking away.

  Jessie glanced out the window down at the guests. She was glad to see that Abby had finally gotten onto the swing set, but she sat by herself. The other two kids were chasing each other in circles through the grass. Inga had moved over to the grill, where she was lighting the charcoal. It was an old-fashioned grill, no gas, no instant charcoal. It would take a while for the briquettes to get hot enough for cooking. Monica and Todd and Heather and Bryan were still together, the women largely silent as the two men spoke about something—something boring and corporate, Jessie was sure. She had no doubt they were constantly trying to one-up each other. Aunt Paulette still flitted among them all with her platter of cheese.

  Jessie was about to look away from the window when she spotted something else. A man was walking through the bushes at the far end of the yard toward the house. From up here Jessie couldn’t make out what the man looked like. But he seemed tall and dark. He walked slowly, carefully, deliberately.

  It could only be John Manning.

  So their famous neighbor had decided to grace them with his presence after all.

  Jessie hurriedly finished the tour so she could get back outside and greet her newest guest. She’d never read any of John Manning’s books—she didn’t like horror stories; she’d lived through enough of her own—but she knew people who did. Her editor at the publishing house was a huge fan of Manning’s, and wished she could lure him away from his current contract. After all, John Manning’s books had sold millions of copies, and made him and his publishers millions of dollars. A number of movies had been made from his books, and his latest, The Sound of a Scream, was being turned into a TV miniseries. Inga had just started reading it, curious about the man who lived just beyond their pine trees—and whose wife had died in a mysterious fall just a few feet from where they lived.

  “What a dark imagination,” Inga had said after reading the first few pages. “He sure enjoys slaughtering people.”

  It was hard for Jessie to imagine writing about such things. In her own work she wrote about transformation and survival and joy—not death and destruction. And she’d come to believe that what one wrote reflected the core of who one was. So she was more than a little apprehensive about meeting this neighbor of theirs.

  When they returned outside, they found that the sun, so bright just moments before, had slipped behind a cloud. The shadows had abruptly disappeared from the yard, leaving the day shrouded in a bluish haze. Jessie noticed that John Manning had approached none of the adults, but rather had paused at the grill, where the three little children were now watching Inga lay the hamburger patties over the smoldering coals. He was saying something to the kids, though Jessie couldn’t hear what he said. He seemed so enormous standing next to the children. Well over six feet, he was dressed all in black: a black T-shirt over black jeans, and on his feet he wore black sneakers. Jessie felt a sudden chill and forced herself to shrug it off.

  “Hello,” she said, approaching, her hand held out in greeting, a smile on her face.

  John Manning’s deep-set dark eyes looked up from the children and found her gaze. Jessie took a small, involuntary step backward, as if knocked off stride by the man’s extraordinary, movie-star good looks. He reached out and took Jessie’s hand.

  “Ms. Clarkson, I take it,” he said.

  “Yes,” Jessie replied, and realized her voice unexpectedly trembled a bit. She was being foolish. She wasn’t usually impressed by celebrities. Even handsome celebrities. “Thanks for coming.”

  John Manning gave her a small, tentative smile. “I thought I should, given that we live next to each other. I’ve gotten used to seeing this house always dark. Now I’ll need to accustom myself to seeing lights over here.”

  Jessie remembered the day she’d seen him stranding in his window, staring over at her house. For some silly reason, she trembled again. Her hand was still in Manning’s, and he must have felt the tremor pass through her body.

  “You seem cold,” he observed, “and on such a beautiful, warm day.”

  There was something about his eyes. So dark, so magnetic. It was as if Jessie was being drawn into his mind against her will. Suddenly she saw an image: Manning’s wife, Millie, lying facedown in a pool of blood on their concrete patio. She trembled again.

  “I guess I’ll feel better once the sun comes back out from behind the cloud,” Jessie said, and extricated her hand from Manning’s grip.

  He smiled a little wider. “We won’t have to wait long for that, I don’t think.” He looked up. “Except for that one big cumulus straight above, the sky is otherwise a solid sheet of blue.”

  Even as he spoke the sun emerged from behind the cloud, filling the yard up once again with golden light.

  “Happier now?” Manning said, his smile turning cheeky.

  Jessie laughed. “Thanks for arranging it.”

  “Anything to be a good neighbor,” he told her.

  In the direct sunlight, Manning seemed even more handsome. His dark eyes were flecked with gold. Jessie didn’t know what it was, but she found herself entranced by this man, and she felt as if she could stand there all day looking into his eyes.

  “I understand you’re a writer,” Manning was saying.

  “Yes,” Jessie said, although her voice seemed a world away. “I . . . am.”

  He smiled. “Perhaps we can share trade secrets sometime.”

  Jessie felt her whole body blush.

  But then Inga was at her side, breaking the spell.

  “Excuse me, M
r. Manning,” the nanny was saying, “but I wanted to tell you I’m a third of the way through The Sound of a Scream and you have me absolutely hooked.”

  Jessie noticed the small smile that had been playing with Manning’s lips suddenly broaden across his face. “Well, thank you very much,” he said, turning his attention away from Jessie and toward Inga. “It’s especially rewarding to have such a pretty fan.”

  “This is Abby’s nanny, Inga,” Jessie said, as introduction. She noticed Inga was blushing a bit.

  “And such an exquisite accent,” the author was saying, taking Inga’s hand in his and kissing it. He hadn’t done that to Jessie. “I’d say it’s Bayerisch, if I hear correctly.”

  Jessie was surprised. She thought Inga barely had an accent at all. She spoke perfect English to Jessie’s ears.

  It was Inga’s turn to smile broadly. “Yes, indeed it is. I am impressed. I was born in the south of Germany. You must have traveled quite a bit in my country.”

  “I have indeed.”

  Suddenly Manning began speaking in thick, guttural German to Inga’s obvious delight. It wasn’t often she got to converse with someone in her native tongue.

  Jessie stood by awkwardly as the two carried on in a lively conversation completely oblivious to her. It was as if neither even remembered she was standing there. She felt oddly left out—even jealous.

  She told herself she was being ridiculous.

  “Help yourself to some punch,” Jessie whispered, leaning in toward Manning, who barely acknowledged her comment. He was too busy speaking fluent German, telling Inga something about his book, since the phrase “sound of a scream” kept popping out from the indistinguishable foreign words. Jessie gave them both a little smile and slunk away.

  Of course John Manning would pay greater attention to Inga than to Jessie. Inga was nineteen years old, shapely and sexy, with the biggest, brightest blue eyes Jessie had ever seen. She had some experience with men preferring other women to her. Why should she have been surprised by Manning’s sudden diversion of interest? Moreover, why should she be bothered by it?