The Pretty Woman Who Lived Next Door

by Preston Pairo

  “I’m positive,” Cara said. “It was the Saturday after I’d been in Raleigh. Your dad was in Delaware, then went down to Florida to see your mom.”

  “That would have been the twenty-second,” George verified.

  Whether Delgado believed any of this—or didn’t want to believe it—he looked hard at Miles, gave a sharp: “Thank you for your time.” His expression making clear he didn’t consider the matter closed.

  #

  Back at the dining room table, wine glasses in hand, Cara gleefully told George that it had actually been Jennifer with Miles all night—or what would have been all night if Jennifer’s mother hadn’t shown up. “I don’t want to embarrass Miles, George, but let’s say that Jennifer wasn’t in the mood to deal with her mom. So I stepped in…”

  As Cara recounted that night’s memorable events, George grinned. And Miles couldn’t help thinking how differently the past thirty minutes would have gone had his mother been present instead of Cara Blakely—their pretty neighbor in her soft V-neck sweater and tight jeans, who looked different to Miles now every time he saw her.

  #

  “Was that alright?” Cara asked Miles, sounding happy but tired. “What I told that officer? And your father?”

  “Perfect.” Miles’ voice was low as he spoke to her on his cell phone from bed, looking out his opened window.

  Cara had gone home an hour ago, and was in her own bed now, lying on her side facing toward him, her nightstand lamp on low, snuggled under the blanket Miles knew the feel of from having been in her bed with Jennifer.

  It was just after one in the morning. A cold November night, four days before Thanksgiving.

  Cara said, “Your dad didn’t seem upset.”

  “I think you could tell him most anything and he wouldn’t mind.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Cara replied, then: “I didn’t mention Jennifer to the officer because he would probably question her, right? And then her mother would find out.”

  “He’s already been to her house because it’s pretty much around school she was with me that night. But Jennifer stuck to her story about a Georgetown guy, and even gave that cop some name. When he couldn’t find the guy he went back to Jennifer and confronted her. She acted pissed and said the guy must have given her a fake name.”

  Cara said, “She’s in love with you.”

  “You think so?”

  “Definitely.”

  Miles shifted positions. He liked having someone to talk to in the middle of the night, and was glad Cara kept a light on so he could see her.

  She said, “I’m sorry about what’s going on with your mom. But your father seems to be handling it pretty well.”

  Miles wanted to tell Cara he thought she was the reason his dad was doing as well as he was, but wasn’t sure how she’d react. “I think he’s okay. A couple weeks ago he said he was going back to my Aunt Kay’s to see my mom again. But it never happened. I’m not sure why. Did he say anything to you?”

  “The most he says is he knows she’s seeing someone—that, and he hopes she’s happy.”

  “I worry one day she’s going to say she wants to get back together, and my dad’ll say yes—even if he doesn’t want to. Because I don’t think he does.”

  “It’s hard to say, Miles… Situations like that are really hard.”

  “I wish he’d find someone else.”

  “He’s a really good man.” Cara’s words came slowly, as if she might be drifting to sleep. “And he loves you so much—even more than Jennifer does.”

  “I love him, too.”

  “I know—and it’s sweet. You’re so sweet to him…”

  From his window, Miles could see her head on the pillow, but couldn’t tell if her eyes were closed. After another quiet minute or so, he said softly: “Have a good night sleep, Cara.”

  “You, too, Miles.”

  They ended the call and Cara turned off her light. Miles did the same, then settled onto his back and thought about Delgado having finally arrived.

  The detective seemed to have purposefully left questioning him for last, as if having wanted to get as much information as he could from every other source to try to catch Miles in a lie. Only Miles hadn’t needed to lie at all. He’d merely stood back while Cara did that for him, which left him uneasy. Because lies were like burrs—irritations that kept drawing attention.

  Back at school on Monday, Debra Vance—Mademoiselle Vance as he called her now (no longer utilizing names of French cities)—confirmed Miles’ concerns.

  #

  Debra Vance told Miles that Delgado was convinced Jennifer had lied about being with a Georgetown student the night Rusty Bremmer was assaulted. She said Delgado and Liaison Alexander had both interviewed kids at Kensington who said Jennifer told them she’d been with Miles, and there were references about that on social media.

  Now, Vance said, Cara Blakely had told Delgado she’d been with Miles—which Delgado didn’t believe either, and made him wonder what they were trying to hide.

  “There’s also something else,” Vance confided, then proceeded to reveal how Arnold Baylor, the school board attorney, was working with the State’s Attorney’s Office on an arrangement to grant Miles full criminal immunity for the assault on Rusty Bremmer—doing that in order to force Miles to testify at a school board hearing because if he had immunity, he couldn’t plead the fifth and remain silent. And at that hearing, Baylor intended to question Miles not just about Bremmer being beaten and teaching martial arts to Juan and the others, but about that man Miles killed in Florida.

  “Arnold claims it’s all fair game under the student code of conduct. And whether it is or isn’t, Arnold can apparently do just about anything he wants at a school board hearing because there isn’t any judge and is overseen by the board, which gets all its legal advice from him.”

  Suddenly, it wasn’t enough for Miles to have an alibi for when Bremmer was attacked, or not knowing who’d done it. There were going to be questions about that man he’d killed two years ago. And as his Florida lawyer had explained about the dismissal of that case: since the murder charges were dropped before a jury was impaneled or the first witness sworn, jeopardy had not attached. And since there wasn’t any statute of limitations for murder in Florida, those charges against Miles could be re-filed at any time.

  So Miles was going to need to be very, very careful.

  33.

  Three nights later—Thanksgiving—George Peterson offered a Thanksgiving toast, raising his wine glass to Cara. “To our wonderful friend.”

  Smiling, she replied, “To my wonderful friends,” emphasizing the plural.

  Miles smiled, but couldn’t help thinking how by this time next year it would all be different. He’d been thinking about that all day, cooking Thanksgiving dinner for his father and Cara, roasting a small turkey and making cornbread dressing and gravy from scratch.

  The three of them sat at the dining room table in the rented house Miles imagined would be occupied by someone else next November, by which time tonight’s warmth in the candlelit room would have long since cooled, the logs crackling in the fireplace reduced to ash and swept away. New leaves would have grown on the trees outside, turned red, fallen, and been raked, likely with lawn tools less methodically researched than those purchased by his father.

  Miles hoped Cara would have Ian back by then—perhaps have even sold her house and moved somewhere smaller, a place easier for a single parent to afford and take care of.

  For now, they reminisced about past Thanksgivings, telling fond stories about traveling to be with relatives. Miles’ father added his usual flair when recounting a Thanksgiving fishing trip on the gulf coast that involved Miles catching far more fish than Miles remembered. Cara sounded to have had a pleasant family life, but said everything changed after her father, a bank manager in the small town where she grew up, died six years ago and her mother moved west to live with Cara’s sister. When Cara said she hadn’t seen her moth
er in four years, she looked away as her eyes began to tear, but pushed that emotion back with a shrug, tried to smile, and said, “It can’t all be perfect.”

  George touched her hand. “We do the best we can.”

  Within minutes, they were on to more positive subjects. Cara was buoyed by her successes at work and early progress reported by the overseas divorce lawyer, who claimed Sean was being “reined in”—a term Cara happily recited throughout dinner, as if Sean was being made to pay a price for kidnapping their son.

  That she kept referring to it as “kidnapping” despite the law failing to see it that way made Miles wonder if Cara wasn’t being overly optimistic. The legal system had a way of offering what looked like a pool of glistening water in the middle of an arid desert that would later prove to be a mirage. Miles also still thought there was something about Cara that seemed too happy—too energized. As if she needed to keep saying everything was fine in order to drown out worries that it wasn’t.

  34.

  The following week, with his dad away on business, Miles was in bed with the lights out. It was late, but he wasn’t sleeping.

  Next door, Cara’s house was dark except for the pole lamp out front. Her living room light had already switched off on its timer. Cara wasn’t home.

  She’d come home late the past couple nights, once with a guy who Miles thought might be new—a guy who stayed about an hour during which Cara’s bedroom light never came on and no shadows moved behind her blinds. But when the man left, he walked with that cool kind of swagger Miles thought certain guys had after sex—guys he didn’t like.

  Just before 2:00 a.m., Cara’s car turned into the driveway and pulled forward on the far side of her house, blocking him from seeing if anyone got out with her. But he heard only one car door close.

  Minutes later, Cara’s bedroom light came on. A single shadow moved behind the blinds, passing back and forth a few times. Was she pacing?

  Moments later, her bedroom light went out. Her window slid open.

  “Miles?” Cara sounded upset. “Miles?” Saying it a little louder.

  He leaned closer to his own opened window. “I’m here.”

  Cara said, “I’ve done something terrible.”

  #

  Cara was waiting at her front door to let him in. She wore a plush robe and her hair smelled of cigarettes as Miles put his arms around her.

  “Everything’s okay,” he said softly, then shivered, which surprised him. Because it wasn’t a reaction to the cool temperature inside Cara’s house, but a response to her body pressing against him. He closed his eyes.

  Cara whispered: “Please don’t tell your father.”

  #

  Miles would understand. Cara believed there had been a connection between them from the first moment their eyes met: the night she’d gone to George and Miles’ house to apologize for causing Miles to be suspected of Ian’s abduction. She’d been on the sofa talking with George when Miles surprised them coming into the living room. She’d gasped, not just from being startled but because there was something about him that felt as if reaching her on a—how could she put it?—was it an emotional level? Spiritual? Molecular? Physical? All of the above?

  With him now on her living room sofa, the lights out, she curled against Miles beneath the beautiful quilt she’d bought at a charity raffle and told him how it started on that trip to Raleigh:

  It began with Wendy, who drove the Mercedes and had a title of administrative assistant and an office next to the company’s high-strung owner. In the bar of that expensive hotel in North Hills, Wendy had told Cara that the client they were trying to land had the hots for her. Coming right out and saying it that way, adding, “He likes your body.”

  It had been embarrassing at first, then Cara had been flattered, because Harrison—the Raleigh businessman—was good-looking, smart, successful, and very gentile in that easy southern way.

  When Wendy had asked, “What do you think?” Cara replied she was hardly in the frame of mind to go out with someone, not with the mess she had at home. Her problems weren’t exactly a secret at work.

  Only Wendy said she was thinking just the opposite. How Harrison could be the solution to Cara’s problems. The money problems, anyway.

  Telling this to Miles, Cara paused. With her head on his chest, she could hear the strong, steady beat of his heart. “Do you understand what Wendy was saying?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Because I didn’t—at first. Which she could tell, I guess, from my expression.” Cara spoke with quiet thoughtfulness, as if recalling details of a dream. “She ordered us more drinks, even though I hadn’t finished mine. And when the bartender brought them over she asked him if she could borrow a pen—and said it that way she talks to men. Like she’s flirting, but it seems like much more. And after he got her a pen and said she could keep it, she started writing on a napkin and said to me, ‘The thing I like most about guys is how they’ll do anything if you feed their fantasy that you’ll have sex with them.’ Then she turned the napkin toward me and what she’d written was a string of dollar signs. I still didn’t get it. Wendy looked at me—not like she thought I was stupid or naïve—well, maybe naïve—but she said we’d talk about it another time. Then she balled up the napkin and threw it toward a trash can behind the bar, only it missed and landed on the floor. And when the bartender came back over and picked it up, Wendy told him sorry about making the extra work for him, and he said, no problem, then walked away, and Wendy looked at me and said, ‘See?’ And I said, ‘So you’re going to have sex with him?’ Because I still didn’t get it. And she said, ‘It takes more than that to get me in bed.’ So I asked, ‘Like what?’ Which was when she said, ‘Money.’”

  Cara paused before continuing, comforted by the way Miles’ hand gently rubbed her back. With her eyes closed, she said, “I told Wendy I couldn’t do that. And she said that was fine. She just wanted to let me know it was ‘out there’ and if I changed my mind to let her know. And that the company had a good shot at landing Harrison’s account no matter what.”

  She paused again, then: “The thing is…it was like Wendy knew I’d do it. It was like there was some aura about me she’d picked up on. Which made me think maybe that was why I got hired there in the first place. Maybe it was why they were so good letting me have time off to take care of Ian and talk with lawyers. And maybe if I didn’t do it they’d fire me. That’s what I told myself. That was my justification for agreeing to do it. But that wasn’t it. It was the money, Miles. I did it for the money.”

  #

  Miles liked Cara’s house. He liked being there with her, imagining it was what a home was supposed to feel like. A place to live with a wife, with a sense of security from its history of personal effects: the furnishings, the trinkets—whatever you called the little things on the shelves. He couldn’t see them now in the dark, but knew they were there: those inexpensive statuettes, the book ends, any number of vases—one with artificial flowers, another with coins, another with colorful round pieces of glass he imagined would catch the morning light through the front window.

  Perhaps some of the objects were from where Cara grew up. He pictured them in that place—wherever that would have been—a childhood far different from his own he imagined without any real knowledge of her life before first seeing her three months ago.

  Listening to Cara confess what she’d done, holding her, he tried to distract himself with these visions of home and family. Because while he was very comfortable with her in his arms, he was also aroused, and didn’t like that about himself—how Carla talking about having sex with a man she barely knew stirred a swelling in his penis he tried to keep from getting full-on hard. Because he believed there was a flaw deep inside men that some suppressed better than others and some didn’t suppress at all but let run wild. Not just the objectification of women, but being turned on by their submissiveness, or that sex could be simplified by being purchased. When sex was never simple.
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  There was also a part of him that was angry because he believed Cara had no real choice other than to do what she did—that the legal system had cornered her with so few viable options. But then Cara told him about Europe. About Amsterdam. And that what she’d done with Harrison from Raleigh and other men since—the ones he and his father had seen her bring home—was not new to her. Cara had done this before.

  #

  “When I was in college,” Cara explained, “I wanted to have a study semester abroad. But I couldn’t afford it so I went to Amsterdam anyway, hoping I had enough money to last a couple months on a sort of vacation.” Still curled warmly against Miles beneath the quilt, she tucked her hand around his side, holding him. “I’d just turned twenty and it was the first time I was on my own. I really liked it. Maybe because the weed and chocolate were so good. I lived in this little boarding house first, then rented a room in a beautiful old house overlooking one of those wonderful canals. I met the owner in a coffee shop. Her name was Danique. And a few weeks after I moved in I found out she was a prostitute. But not one of the women who danced in windows in the red light district. Danique had a very-select, high-paying clientele. Men who took her on lavish trips—sometimes even bringing along their wives for threesomes.

  “She was away a lot,” Cara continued. “So I often had her house to myself. And sometimes men came looking for Danique, and when I said she was out of town, they’d ask if I was available. I said no, I was just watching her house. Then this Irish fellow—very good-looking—came by a second time when Danique was away, and asked if I was certain I wasn’t available. And when I said no, he said, ‘How ‘bout just coffee then? Keep a lonely fellow company.’

  “He was in his forties. He was charming and witty. We went for a walk and had dinner, then walked some more after, and when he took me back to Danique’s he gave me a proper kiss goodbye, then turned and was walking away when I caught up to him and grabbed the sleeve of his coat. I can still feel that tweed fabric in my fingers. I told him I was available after all. He asked if I was sure, because he knew so much more about me by then. He knew I wasn’t a prostitute. I said I was sure. But not for money. But because I liked him.” Cara reminisced fondly, her words no longer taut with urgency or embarrassment.