by Heidi Lowe
The Neighbor: Part One & Two
by Heidi Lowe
Published by Heidi Lowe Books, 2016.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
THE NEIGHBOR: PART ONE & TWO
First edition. June 7, 2016
Copyright © 2016 Heidi Lowe
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CONTENTS
TITLE
PART ONE
PART TWO
BOOKS BY HEIDI LOWE
PART ONE
“Do you remember which box the coffee maker was in, because I've been through the Kitchen Box two times and–”
“I put it in one of the miscellaneous boxes.” My son didn't even look up from his phone when he spoke, telling me everything I needed to know about what he thought of me – his texting session was more entertaining than I was.
Cardboard boxes were piled and stacked all around our new living-room, bits and pieces of our old life sticking out every which way. I now regretted assigning the task of labeling the boxes to my reluctant teenage son, whose scrawled writing was barely legible.
“Which ones are the miscellaneous boxes?”
“I don't know,” he said impatiently. “Why don't you just look.”
I glowered at him. “You're being really unhelpful right now, Adrian.” That was me holding back, knowing that if I called him the things I really wanted to call him he'd probably never speak to me again. I was more grouchy than usual that afternoon, having gone without my morning coffee.
“Why should I make your life easier after you ruined mine?” He gave me a mean, squint-eyed look, and I saw my own green eyes staring back at me. He was lucky to have inherited my looks and not his father's. Sandy brown hair, big almond-shaped eyes, puckered pink lips – the same features had served me well when I was his age. I'd had my pick of the boys for years, until I met his father. Although he looked the spitting image of me, his whole petulant attitude was Eric's – it was the worst part of him.
I sighed. “Do we have to do this again? I did not ruin your life. You can make new friends – you're a sociable kid. And your old ones can visit whenever they want.”
“Yeah right, Mom, like anyone's gonna travel 600 miles to see me.”
“If that's too much trouble for them, maybe you should get some better friends.” I held back a laugh while he scowled at me. Then he turned back to his phone and made a conscious effort to ignore me.
“This blows,” he mumbled.
Hands on my hips, I peered around the room, looking from box to box and realizing, with great despair, that it would probably take forever to hunt down that coffee maker.
A determined knock at the door stopped me mid-search. I looked at Adrian quickly, as though expecting him to tell me who was there. He didn't pull his eyes away from his cell, didn't even flinch.
I zig-zagged through the maze of boxes and into the hallway. The faces of two grinning women greeted me when I pulled the door open. One woman clutched tightly to a bottle of red wine. Behind them, the yellow-gold rays of the Florida sun beamed, making all the streets on the lane look postcard perfect. I'd forgotten how beautiful Fort Lauderdale could be. It had been years since I'd been back to the city, the city I grew up in.
“Sabrina Klein, as I live and breathe.”
Before I knew it one of the women had engulfed me in a body crushing hug. When she let me go, I got the chance to look at her face again, and recognized her.
“Rachel? Wow, long time no see.” I stared back at one of my closest friends from high school, someone I hadn't seen in seventeen years. She hadn't changed all that much – I would have known that hug anywhere.
“There was a rumor going around that you were moving back to town, but I wanted to see it with my own eyes before I believed it. Who listens to rumors, right?” Ironically, she had always been the type to not only listen to them, but start many of her own. I wondered if anything had changed there.
She grinned animatedly, looking me up and down and shaking her head. I didn't know what any of it was supposed to mean. Beside her, the other woman looked on shyly, waiting to be introduced.
“It's really me,” I said. “Hi, I'm Sabrina.” I shook the hand of the other woman, realizing that Rachel wasn't going to introduce us.
“Denny. Nice to meet you.”
“We brought wine.” Rachel held up the bottle, then stepped past me into the house, without an invitation. Denny looked at me sceptically, uncertain whether to follow suit, until I ushered her inside. I led them to the kitchen.
Several minutes later, all three of us were sitting around the table downing the house-warming wine.
“Sorry again for the coffee mugs,” I said for the third time that afternoon. “These were the only things I could find. My son packed the kitchen stuff.”
“The last time I drank wine from a cup was when I was twelve and snuck a half empty bottle up to my room when my parents had gone to bed,” Rachel said, then laughed at the memory.
“I can't believe we now live on the same street,” I said. “Does that make me pathetic that I've come full circle? I'm thirty-five, my marriage is over and I'm pretty much right back where I started.” I took two swigs from my mug, misery prompting my actions. If I thought about my predicament too long it depressed me. My marriage, in its final years, had been pure hell, no exaggeration. It got to the point where my husband and I were sleeping in separate beds. The love vanished long before that, though. Adrian had been the glue that kept us together, but after awhile even that wasn't enough to keep us in a loveless marriage.
“Nonsense!” Denny said, startling me with her passion. The wine had obviously given her a voice, and she seemed hellbent on using it. “There's nothing pathetic about starting over. You're braver than most. To up and leave, with a teenage son... I wish I had your courage.”
She mumbled something else, the word scumbag sticking out. I looked at Rachel for answers because there was obviously a huge piece of the story I was missing. But before she could speak, Denny broke in again.
“At least your husband wasn't unfaithful while you were lying in a hospital bed recovering from a life-threatening illness.”
I looked again at Rachel to corroborate, and she nodded sadly.
“That's awful, I'm so sorry.” And I meant it. Eric hadn't cheated on me, as far as I knew, and for that I was grateful. Being cheated on would have hurt far worse than him falling out of love with me.
“He didn't seem to think so,” Rachel said, putting a hand over Denny's. “Welcome to Azalea Avenue. Hold on to your husbands.”
“You mean he did it with someone on this street?” I asked, shocked. I knew that sort of thing happened, but so close to home? How scandalous!
“Yup. And you have the misfortune of living next door to Azalea's very own Cleopatra. The little harlot who'll sleep with anything that moves,” Denny said bitterly.
“Her name's actually Casey, as tacky as the person it belongs to.” Rachel grinned wickedly. “Resident whore and husband-thief.”
“She's a real prostitute?” I asked. I didn't know how much shock I could take that early in the day, and on such a small amount of wine.
“She'll deny it, but we've seen all the people leaving her house. Men... women.” Denny made a face at that part, as though the idea of two women sleeping together disgusted her.
“At all hours of the day. And the parties she throws,” Rachel added. Her face displayed the same disgust as Denny's – twins in their outrage. It was almost comical.
“You say s
he lives in the house next door?” I asked warily. “There I was thinking I'd moved to a peaceful neighborhood.”
“Enjoy your peace while you can,” Rachel said. “She's out of town, I think. Hopefully she doesn't come back. The last family in your house left because of her.”
“She sounds terrible!” I had never been one to pass judgment so readily, without considering all the facts; and despite the fact that I knew Rachel's penchant for exaggerating, I couldn't bring myself to stay open-minded about the neighbor from hell.
“She is,” Denny said with a determined nod. “She's the worst human being you're ever likely to meet.”
Over the days that passed I worked tirelessly to unpack all of our junk from the old house and make our new place more homely. It took five days to get settled in – me in the study, and Adrian into his new school.
I sat down to work for the first time, at my old desk but in our new study, which was much smaller than the last one. Everything in the new house was smaller – that would take some getting used to. I was relieved to get back to work, and signed into my email account to retrieve the new assignments from my contact. I rubbed my hands together, ready to get down to writing again, hoping the new assignment was something interesting. Freelance copywriter was always a daily lottery; I never knew what products would pop up in my mailbox. I'd sort of fallen into the job, realizing that it was something I could do in my sleep, that paid reasonably well. But it was a crapshoot. The most insipid thing I'd ever had to write was an ad for spark plugs. The most exciting, a new scented lingerie range.
I opened up the first message and let out a loud sigh. A vacuum cleaner.
I'd just started reading the attachment with the specs, when I heard a knock at the door. I jumped up, wasting no time putting off writing some spiel convincing gullible consumers that they couldn't live without the latest vacuum cleaner (which was almost identical to the previous model).
“Delivery for Miss Casey Adams. Will you sign for it?” the mailman said, shoving a parcel into my hands the moment I opened the door. He pulled a pen from his shirt pocket.
“I think she's at number 86.”
“No one's home. Will you sign for it?” He sounded impatient, like he had better things to do than his job.
“Sure,” I said, then added under my breath, “because it doesn't look as though I have a choice.”
When the mailman had gone, I closed the door and looked at the parcel dubiously. It wasn't very heavy, or very big, about the size of a shoebox. But I doubted there were shoes inside. My mind ran wild with thoughts of what could be in there, my imagination driven by the stories Rachel and Denny had told me about the recipient.
“What if it's a bomb?” I asked myself out loud, then laughed at my stupidity. Why would it be a bomb? She stole people's husbands, she wasn't a terrorist!
I set the parcel on my desk and went back to work, though every now and then my eyes wandered to the mysterious, unmoving box that was watching me and playing on my curiosity. More times than I wanted to admit, I picked it up and shook it lightly, putting it to my ear to hear what moved inside. Nothing. It could have been anything.
Later that afternoon Adrian returned from school, dragging his feet, his school bag and his attitude into the study to remind me, in case I'd forgotten, that his life sucked.
“I'm gonna be the new kid until I graduate, I hope you know that. I might as well be dead.”
I looked at him over my reading glasses. “Stop overreacting, honey. It can't be that bad.”
“It is that bad. No one starts a new school in junior year. No one.”
“You'll survive, I promise.” I couldn't even feign sympathy, and he saw that immediately, causing him to shoot me a mean look.
“Why couldn't I have stayed in Wilmington with Dad?”
“We've been through this a dozen times. Your dad works away from home several days a week – there'd be no one to keep an eye on you.”
He growled furiously. He'd been doing that a lot lately. I put it down to his age – the terrible sixteen, where everything was a constant disappointment, and your parents were only there to get in your way. I liked to think I was one of the more laid back mothers, quite lenient with him, even when he was driving me crazy.
“I can't wait till I'm eighteen, then I'm outta here.”
I couldn't wait either, though I didn't tell him that. I loved my son, but I'd forgotten how it felt to not have anyone depend on me, and the freedom that went with that.
“Who's Casey and why do you have her mail?” he asked, nodding to the parcel.
“The lady next door. I think she's still away.”
He picked it up and shook it lightly. “I wonder what's inside. Can I open it?”
“No, you may not.” I took it from him. “Anyone would think I didn't raise you properly.”
Once he'd stormed off, I called myself a hypocrite because I'd considered doing exactly as he'd wanted, my curiosity getting the better of me.
Adrian had already left for school when I woke up the next morning. He'd left a mess in the kitchen with his breakfast – I suspected he'd done it on purpose just to screw with me. Grudgingly I cleaned up after him.
My cellphone buzzed in my jeans.
“You've gone a whole week without calling to see how your son's getting on,” I opened with, skipping the hellos and how are yous.
Whatever he said in response, something equally as caustic, didn't commute because the line was crackly. The reception in the house was terrible – another thing Adrian busted my ass about.
“I can't hear you. Just a second,” I shouted into the receiver, before wandering into the front yard.
“I said I sent Adrian a text message the evening you arrived.”
“He didn't mention it.” Well, that didn't say much. Adrian had barely spoken to me since we'd moved, and only opened his mouth to complain, to remind me that I wasn't his favorite parent.
I sat on the stoop, marveling at the beautiful day and the picturesque lane. All of the detached houses had a type of unattainable perfection about them, with not a brick or stroke of paint out of place. The grass covering the lawns was the most vibrant green, immaculately trimmed. I looked down at my own lawn, where the green had lost some of its color and had grown wild. I'd have to hire someone to mow it. No more Eric to do the jobs I hated. That was probably the only thing I'd miss about him.
“How's he doing?”
“You know Adrian, nothing is ever good enough for him.”
He replied, but something caught my eye and drew my attention. It was the house next door. More accurately, the driveway of the house next door. A red Porsche 911 with the roof down now took up the once empty space. Beside it sat a Range Rover. The neighbor from hell had returned.
“Sabrina, are you still there?”
“What?” I said, returning to earth. “Sorry, what did you say?”
“How's the house?”
“Fine. Small, but fine. Look, Eric, I have to run. I'll let Adrian know you called.” I hung up before he could add anything else.
I hurried back inside and retrieved the parcel. And then I noticed that my hands were shaking. In fact, I was shaking all over. I was... nervous! This revelation made me feel like such a fool. Okay, so I'd heard awful stories about this Casey woman, and I had already made up my mind that she would be bitch of the year, but I had nothing to be nervous about. I didn't have a husband for her to steal, and I mostly liked to keep to myself. Anxiety over meeting her was the last emotion I should have felt. Yet it took me several minutes to calm down enough to leave the house and make my way the fifteen or so meters next door.
I heard animated chatter inside as I stepped up to the door. Taking a deep breath I tapped firmly, parcel held tightly in my other hand. The door swung open seconds later.
“Uh, hello, is Casey–”
“I told him already, if he had a problem with my work he should have come to me instead of running off to the competition like so
me little bitch. I warned him about those damn highlights anyway. I told him they wouldn't suit him. Highlights don't work on people with heads the size of pumpkins!” A tall, slender, and extremely camp black man answered the door, phone pressed to his ear. He barely even acknowledged me before ushering me inside impatiently and continuing with his heated conversation.
“Okay...” I said, stepping hurriedly inside. He wandered off into another room and left me standing in the hallway, lost and clueless. And when I realized that he had no intention of taking me to Casey, I followed the chatter into the living-room. There were four people – three men and one woman. Two of the men were undoubtedly as gay as the one who'd opened the door. The third lay with his head on the woman's lap and his legs up on the couch arms, while the woman stroked his hair. The two other men were sitting on the floor, a bag of potato chips between them.
“Hi... Sorry to bother you. I'm looking for Casey.”
All four of them turned to look at me; one of the men on the floor even waved.
“Oh, that bitch,” the other guy beside him said, though without animosity, “she's in the shower. Come, sit with us while you wait.” He patted a space on the floor beside him. “You could be here awhile. The girl is filthy!” He delivered every line dramatically, even throwing in a stereotypical wrist swing.
“I really only came to drop this off. The mailman delivered it to my house when she was away.”
“Ooo, what's that? D'you think it's the twelve-incher they wanted her to 'test drive'?” This came from the other guy on the floor, who was slightly chubby and very well dressed. His laugh was dirty, and I knew instantly that the twelve-incher he had referred to was a dildo. “She gets all the fun.”
I fought the urge to drop the package and wipe my hands on my jeans. I wasn't a prude, but there was just something icky about the thought that I'd had a twelve-inch dildo sitting on my desk the whole time. I would definitely rethink signing for other people's mail in the future.