by Jan Coffey
The woman put her hands on the railing again. “Thanks for the use of your shoes.”
Surprised, Heather looked down at her wet clogs. “What?”
“I had kind of a crazy night last night.” Léa laughed a little. “I got here right in the middle of the storm. I was actually scared to death of going in. I haven’t been back here for twenty years. Anyway, right in the middle of my Amityville horror, the lights went off.”
Heather had no clue what an Amityville horror was, but she noticed that Léa Hardy looked sort of wound up. She got plenty wound up herself, sometimes.
“Anyway, I ended up with my foot stuck in that bottom step.”
Heather glanced down at the missing stair.
“You’re Heather, aren’t you?”
She gave a wary nod.
“Your father was nice enough to help me out and sit me on your front porch while he took out the stump of the tree that was sticking into the bottom of my foot. Anyway, that’s how I ended up wearing your shoes. From there to here.” She motioned to their porch and back to hers.
Through the slats of the railing, Heather saw the woman was wearing a pair of ankle socks. But there were scratch marks on one shin.
“Sorry to babble on.” Léa straightened up. “It felt kind of good walking out here and seeing somebody alive in the yard.”
Something about her openness kept Heather from bolting off. “You here to stay…or something.”
Léa shook her head. “I need to sell this place. Hopefully, soon. You know, for money reasons.”
“It has to do with your brother, doesn’t it?”
“As a matter of fact, it does. I need to hire a new lawyer for him.”
In Heather’s experience, most adults treated teenagers either as kids or as morons. This one was fairly cool.
“By the way, do you think it’d be okay if I snuck over to your house and picked up my purse?” Léa glanced over that way. “I think I left it on the front porch last night.”
“Sure. Whatever.” She adjusted the backpack on her shoulder. “I gotta go.”
“Thanks for stopping by.”
Heather gave an indifferent shrug and started walking again. At the end of the driveway, though, she turned around and stared at the Hardy woman who was still on the porch.
“Umm, good luck finding a good lawyer. I hope your brother gets out.”
Léa nodded once and then stared down at her white socks. She actually looked flustered.
Heather turned on her heal and started walking up Poplar Street. She didn’t know what got into her to say that.
No, she knew why. The first summer she’d been babysitting for Emily and Hanna, Ted used to come around a lot. He was a real cool dad, the kind her own father had been when she was little. And the girls really liked Ted.
The girls. Heather swallowed the painful lump in her throat and lit another cigarette. She didn’t want to think about them now. She didn’t want to think about Marilyn, either. Even though she was glad that someone had knocked off the bitch.
Her steps led her toward the park. Still, she didn’t know why she’d been nice to Léa. What did she care what Ted’s sister thought of her?
Shit, it was too late for being nice. Too late for being anything. Because after tomorrow it wouldn’t matter what people thought of her.
~~~~
It probably looked as if she’d swallowed her tongue, but Léa was genuinely touched by what Heather had said. And somehow, she could tell…she could feel that the words had been spoken in earnest.
She waited until the fog closed in behind the teenager’s retreating figure before pulling on her sneakers and edging down the steps. Around midnight, when she’d had another panic attack, Léa had realized she’d left her purse on the Conklin’s front porch. Without her keys, her wallet, her cell phone, or even her pepper spray, she’d felt horribly vulnerable. But there’d been no escaping the house. She had nowhere to go. And sneaking out there and having Max wake the neighborhood with his barking had been out of the question, too. So Léa had forced herself to wait out the dark.
Reaching the sidewalk, she turned around to take her first good look at the house in the daylight. Even through the soft layers of the fog and mist, the broken windows and peeling paint and sagging porch looked as ugly as before.
Léa headed toward the Conklin’s house. The neatly kept yard that she and Ted had played in was badly overgrown. If she wanted to make a better first impression on potential buyers, she had to clean the yard up first.
Behind the screen door, the beveled-glass front door was closed. Léa peered through the railing. Her purse lay by the foot of the wicker loveseat, where she’d dropped it last night.
She went up the porch stairs on tiptoes, but Max’s barking inside the house told her that he wasn’t fooled. As she hurried to pick up her purse, her only consolation was that Heather was already up and out. Maybe Mick was an early riser, too.
She had her purse under her arm and was making her escape when the front door opened.
“Léa!”
She winced guiltily. “Me again.”
“How’s your foot?”
“All better. In fact, I am back to normal.” She peeked at the man and the dog standing behind the screen. Mick’s hair was wet. No shirt. She looked down at Max, but found herself admiring the muscles of Mick’s hairy legs beneath the khaki shorts. She forced herself to look at his face.
“Sorry to sneak up on you. I left this here last night.” She held up her purse as proof. “When I saw Heather just now, she said it was okay if I came over and got it.”
“You saw Heather?” Without waiting for an answer, he pushed the door open. Dog and man were on the porch in an instant. Max circled her once before bouncing down the stairs and into the yard.
Léa focused her attention on the dog, then the railing, and finally the professionally trimmed bushes. She tried to think of anything but the expanse of Mick’s shoulders or how low the tan on his back went.
“She was out?”
“Heading that way.” She pointed up the street.
“Fifteen. She’s fifteen,” he muttered before turning to her. “I have to keep reminding myself that she is old enough to go out for a walk if she feels like it.”
From experience Léa knew not to say anything. This was exactly what parents sometimes needed. Somebody to hear them out.
“And I suppose it doesn’t really matter that I was planning for us to spend the day together.” There was definitely a touch of regret in his voice. “But this is exactly what I’ve been on her case to do. To stop moping around the house and get out more. Of course, I didn’t expect her to be going visiting at six in the morning, either.”
He turned his attention back to her.
“Sorry to unload this on you. My daughter and I are just going through an adjustment period. You’ve got your own troubles.”
Léa shook her head. “That’s okay. It was nice meeting her.”
“She actually talked to you?”
“Well, when I gave her a chance, she did hold up her end of the conversation.”
“Conversation, huh? Are you sure this is the same Heather that we are talking about? Purple hair—”
“Pierced eyebrows, ears—” She touched her lip. “I’m not sure, but I thought she had a stud on her tongue. Maybe she didn’t. Same shoes I borrowed last night.”
Mick laughed and his face grew pensive. “So how does she compare?”
“Compare with what?”
“With all the troubled teens you deal with in your job?”
Léa tried to hide her surprise that Mick knew what she did for a living. “Looks alone don’t shock me anymore. It’s very common for adolescents to experiment with strange styles of dress and manners. They’re trying to separate themselves from the family unit. It’s the same in every generation.”
“Is this what she is trying to do?”
“That’s what most teenagers do.”
“
You are being evasive. My question was about Heather.”
“Mick, I know as a parent you want someone to give you a straight answer. But I exchanged only a few words with her this morning. Without really knowing Heather, it would be impossible for me to differentiate between what is normal teen rebellion and what is over the line.”
Immediate concern darkened his expression. “What do you mean, ‘over the line’?”
“Never mind I said anything.” Léa shook her head. She had no right to worry him with something that wasn’t there. “I was only talking shop. People like me have a hard time leaving their jobs at work.”
“What do you mean, people like you?”
“You ask an awful lot of questions. You didn’t by any chance go to law school after you flunked out of med school?”
“I didn’t flunk out of med school.” Now a hint of a smile tugged at his lips. “But you still haven’t answered my question.”
People like me. People who had no personal lives of their own, whatsoever. But she could not say this to him.
“I tend to get emotionally attached to the troubled teens I work with.” She waved him off as he started to respond. “I know! That is not a particularly good thing for someone in my profession, but that’s the way I am. And on that note, I will make my exit.”
“Have you had breakfast yet?”
“No,” she said before thinking. If she had taken a second before answering, she could have lied. Already, she was feeling things she didn’t want to feel. Thinking things she didn’t want to think. And Mick Conklin was definitely out of her league. “I am heading out to grab something now.”
“Where to?”
She gave him a narrow glare. He was rubbing a spot on his chest, and it was distracting.
“Is this a twenty-questions thing?”
“Hardly. Just trying to be a good neighbor. Where are you going for breakfast? And can I come?”
“Are you trying to hit on me?” Léa immediately looked away. It took a couple of seconds to swallow the knot of embarrassment choking her. “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”
When she looked back at him, Mick was studying every flaw in her face.
“Now, Ms. Hardy,” he said, a mischievous glint in his blue eyes. “If I were hitting on you, I’d do it this way. First, I’d invite you to come inside for breakfast. Then, after making a couple of phone calls to cancel my appointments for the day, I’d make some of my world famous raisin bread French toast with applesauce. And let’s just say, that would only be the start.”
His tone was light, but she knew he was serious. Léa tried to ignore the heat spreading from her belly all the way up to the tips of her ears.
“Oh, the old ‘world-famous French toast’ line, is it?” she said flippantly. “Can I place an order to go?”
His rumble of laughter made her smile. “You sure know how to put a man in his place.”
He was right about that. Léa was an expert at turning down offers. A lifetime of practice had perfected her technique. She looked down as Max ran back up onto the porch.
“In all seriousness, with everything I have on my plate for today and tomorrow, I won’t have time for any sit-down meals.” She smiled warmly. “I am grateful, though, for what you’ve done for me already. I’ll see you around.”
She walked down the steps and crossed the lawn before that six-foot temptation behind her succeeded in clouding her thinking. She frowned as she headed toward her car, knowing it might be once in a lifetime that a man like Mick Conklin would pay any kind of attention to someone like her.
Well, maybe in her next life she’d get the chance to take him up on it.
~~~~
“What’s so difficult to understand, Ted? I’m not happy.” Marilyn couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She wouldn’t allow his hurt to play on her guilt. She went back to packing the suitcases on the bed.
“You accuse me of working too much. Fine, I’ll try to cut my hours. You claim that I don’t give you enough attention. We can fix that. I’ll ask Léa or your mother to come and stay with the girls, and we’ll take a trip. You miss living in Stonybrook.” He threw his hands up in frustration. “We’ll move back. Running away is no answer!”
“I am not running, Ted. I’m moving out. Moving out of this house. Away from you.”
“Marilyn!” His anger seethed in the edge of his tone. “How am I supposed to make you happy when you don’t give us a chance? How can you give up on us when we have so much at stake?”
He was talking about the girls. Everything was about them. The center of his universe had become them.
“I’m taking Emily and Hanna with me. You can come and see us as often as you like. I’m not filing for divorce, so think of this as a break. I need a break from you. And you need a break to clear your head and think of a way to convince me our marriage is worth it.”
Chapter 7
The gas station attendant stared at her across the empty lot. Heather turned her back to the rows of gas pumps and continued to wrestle with the Goodwill box sitting near the edge of the pavement.
As it was, the backpack would not fit into the metal chute. No amount of shoving, twisting, even cursing worked. Frustrated, Heather dragged the bag out and pulled it open.
The black leather jacket had been a Christmas gift from her father. She looked at it, remembering how excited she’d been that he had actually picked the right thing—without her asking for it, or giving him any ideas. She’d even forgiven him for not coming to California for New Year’s as he’d promised her over the phone. Regardless of the warm spring days in L.A., she’d worn the jacket to school every single day for the rest of the school year.
She stuffed it into the chute and watched the box swallow it up.
The Metallica T-shirt and the CD were from the first concert she’d ever gone to. Heather had felt like such a grown-up, getting invited to go with some of the older kids of one of Natalie’s friends. Those went down really smooth.
Something pulled in her chest when she looked at the old worn-out teddy bear. He was her oldest friend. For as far back as she could remember, he’d always been there. During all her trips back and forth across the country, Teddy had always traveled with her, tucked under her arm. It hurt to think that he wouldn’t be there tonight for Heather to cuddle with when she went to bed. She hurriedly pushed the stuffed animal down the chute.
After tomorrow, none of it mattered anyway.
Heather spotted the pair of diamond earrings at the bottom of the bag. One of her friends had told her that they were a carat or something each—like Heather knew the difference. But it was so typical of her mother to buy something that outrageously expensive for her just because Heather had asked for earrings. Natalie wanted everything simple. She didn’t have time to do any thinking or planning. She never even attempted to surprise her daughter with anything original. She herself always ate in the same handful of restaurants. Always vacationed on the same island. Drove the same type of car. Always bought whatever Heather asked for.
More than a few times over the past few years, Heather had wondered how was it that Mick and Natalie had lasted together as long as they had. In so many ways, they were total opposites.
She decided against throwing the earrings away individually. Instead, she just clipped the bag shut and slid it down the chute. No problem this time.
“Heather!”
From somewhere behind her she heard a teenage boy’s voice, but she didn’t turn or answer. She shook another cigarette out of the pack and lit it.
“Heather, is that you?”
Ignoring the persistent voice, she started down the sidewalk. The engine of a car roared to life somewhere in the gas station, and she heard it chugging up next to her.
“Heather, it’s me, Chris Webster!”
She experienced a momentary lapse in judgment. She turned and looked. Behind the wheel of an ancient station wagon, a young man’s face split into a huge grin. Great. How had she ev
er been stupid enough to consider this dork her first love?
“I heard you were back in town. God, I can’t believe it. You really are back.”
She wanted to tell him how stupid it sounded, the way he kind of repeated the same thing. But she didn’t, because she didn’t want to encourage him to hang around. She took another drag off her cigarette and turned her steps down the street again.
“Hey, you got a minute?”
He didn’t wait for her to answer, but pulled the car into an open parking space on the street, killed the engine and hopped out.
He was much taller, and his chest had really filled out. Heather noticed his face had changed, too. The kid look was pretty much gone. He’d actually gotten kind of cute without those ugly glasses he used to wear. All the freckles were still there, though, and the bright red hair. Okay, he wasn’t a dork.
“My God, you look different.”
She had to stop, since he was now standing in her way.
“So do you. Big deal.” The only reason why she answered him at all was because he hadn’t ogled her breasts as soon as he got out of the car. Standard operating procedure for most boys, in her experience.
“I heard you were back in town.”
“You already said that.” She took another puff of the cigarette.
He hesitated. “Are you mad at me or something? I mean, for not calling you when you got back?”
She shot him an incredulous look. “Why would I be mad at something like that?”
He shrugged and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “How would I know? Who knows why girls act the way they do. I mean…if we were going out together or something…it’d be different.”
“Yeah, well, we’re not.”
His baby blue eyes turned soft. “But I sort of thought…we were going out the last time you were here. But then, you never answered any of my e-mails.”
Heather threw the cigarette on the sidewalk and crushed it out. “Well, it was nice talking to you, but I gotta go.” She pushed past him.
“Hey, can you come out with me tonight?” He fell in beside her. “Remember Kevin? Anyway, he and a couple of other guys started this band last year, and they’re playing tonight, and I can get out of work early and—”