Neighbors

by Danielle Steel

  “Can I grab a cup of coffee?” she asked cautiously, her dark hair piled on her head. She was incredibly sexy. “I usually go to a spinning class today. I guess everything’s going to be closed for a while,” she said, as Debbie handed her a mug of coffee, and Meredith poured two, for Tyla and herself. Tyla was a pretty woman, but her style was plain.

  Debbie had set out orange juice for the kids. Will drained his, and Daphne offered Martha a sip before she drank hers. Meredith smiled as she watched her, and they all sat down at the kitchen table. Ava poured herself a bowl of granola, when Meredith showed her where it was, and all Tyla wanted was a piece of toast and her mug of coffee. Debbie was using an electric stovetop to make the pancakes, since the gas stove and ovens were off.

  They talked about the damage in the city, as the two kids ate their pancakes. And halfway through the meal, Andrew walked in, wearing scrubs, looking exhausted.

  “I’ve been up all night,” he said, as Debbie handed him a mug of coffee, and he sat down at the table with the women and children.

  “Breakfast?” Debbie asked him, and he shook his head.

  “I ate at the hospital cafeteria before I came home. I just stopped at the house. One of the beams in the dining room is on the floor. I don’t think there’s a dish left in the kitchen, and there’s a tear in Will’s bedroom ceiling. I called our insurance adjuster, and all I got was voicemail,” he said, stretching his long legs out ahead of him. He glanced at his wife’s arm, and gave her a glance when he saw the bruise. “Why are you wearing your soccer uniform?” he asked his son, “there won’t be a game today.”

  “It’s what Mom brought me to wear,” he said in a small voice. His father didn’t look like he was in a good mood. He was tired after the long night. He’d been at the hospital working nonstop for twelve hours.

  “I have to go back at three o’clock. We’re all working double shifts. Half the people in the city must have broken something last night,” and many were still buried. An apartment building in the Sunset had collapsed, emergency teams were still digging people out, and people who had left their offices late were still trapped in elevators all over the financial district. “They’re estimating it will take five or six days to get to everyone downtown. And one of the bridges in the South Bay collapsed, they’re still pulling people out of the water, but they’re taking them to Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, and Alta Bates in Oakland. We’ve got more than we can handle now.” They’d had emergency drills for an event like this for years, but once it happened, it never went quite as smoothly as they hoped, or the way it had been planned. He spoke to his wife in a low voice. “I don’t see how you and the kids can move back in until we get the mess cleaned up and some of the damage fixed, I don’t have time to pursue it, and all of the contractors must be closed. But all the hotels are jammed, and a lot of them don’t have power yet.”

  At the hospital, they had emergency generators, but even there, there were areas that were dark and they couldn’t use. They’d had to send the last wave of injured to SF General and UCSF. They were over their maximum limit of patients they could deal with now, and people were still showing up in droves. It was going to be a very tough few weeks for health professionals all over the Bay Area. They were bringing in nurses from neighboring states, as fast as they could get them, and a flock of doctors from L.A.

  He was still describing the situation to them when Joel Fine walked in, and the two men exchanged an appreciative glance. They had hit it off from the moment they met. Joel didn’t greet either of the women, nor the two children, and started talking to Andrew as soon as he sat down, while Meredith watched them, and Jack showed up to help his wife in the kitchen. The two employees looked somewhat sullen, and anything but pleased to have a house full of guests, due to their employer’s largesse, inviting neighbors she didn’t even know to come and stay. And none of their houses were sound enough to move back into yet, and wouldn’t be for some time.

  Peter and Arthur Harriman walked into the kitchen as the others were finishing breakfast, and Debbie collected their plates and put them in the sink, grateful that the dishwasher was running, thanks to the generator. She felt like she was a one-man restaurant serving all of them. And if they stayed, they’d expect lunch and dinner too. Every restaurant in town was closed. And so were most of the grocery stores. Luckily Debbie had just done a massive grocery run right before the earthquake. And from her youth, she was good at making food stretch. She guessed that with canned and frozen food, as well as fresh, and a huge amount of pasta, she would be able to feed the whole group for several weeks, not that she wanted them to stay. But she could provide meals for them if they did. And all around the city, restaurants were giving away free food, before it could go bad. And a few generous grocery stores were open and doing the same, with frozen and perishable food.

  Arthur thanked Meredith as soon as he heard her voice, and walked toward her, using his white cane. “I haven’t slept that well in years. Thank you for putting us up so kindly. What can I do to help you today?”

  “Not a thing, Mr. Harriman.” She smiled at him. “It’s an honor to have you here.” They sat down at the table, and Debbie took their breakfast order with a somber expression, as Jack went to answer a pounding at the back door. The bell at the front gate wasn’t working, and the gate had to be opened manually, using a key. When he returned, a tall erect man with salt and pepper hair, in a military uniform, walked in, looking businesslike and serious, and he smiled when he saw the two children. The adults were all surprised to see him in their midst. Meredith approached him quickly, and he introduced himself. She noticed a number of stripes and stars on his uniform and wasn’t sure what they meant. She wondered if the city was now under martial law, and how it would affect them if so.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you,” he said pleasantly. “I’m Colonel Charles Chapman, retired Air Force. I’m attached to the National Guard, as liaison to the Office of Emergency Services. I’m one of several retired officers walking the neighborhood today, going house to house to see if you need help. The National Guard troops have been deployed downtown to stop the looting, and it will be a while before the OES can get to all of you, but we’re trying to assess how bad the damage is in the residential neighborhoods. Do you all live here in this house?” He looked around the group at the table, and wondered if they were a big family living in the enormous house. Everyone appeared to be hale and hearty, and he noticed Andrew in medical scrubs, and other than two large broken urns with plants in them at the back door, he hadn’t seen any significant damage when he walked in. There was broken glass all around the house, and some broken windows, but Jack and Debbie had cleaned it up in the early morning hours before anyone got up. There were bags of it where they left their trash for the garbage collectors who hadn’t come, and probably wouldn’t for several days.

  “Thank you, Colonel,” Meredith said graciously as she walked up to him and they shook hands. “I actually live here, and these are my neighbors from the three houses adjacent to this one. They had quite a lot of damage, so they’re staying here with me.”

  “How bad is the damage?” he asked, looking at the others, and Peter, Joel, and Andrew reported what they had seen so far, but admitted that they hadn’t been able to assess it thoroughly the night before. “Your gas is turned off, I hope?” he asked them and they all nodded.

  “We have our own emergency generator,” Meredith explained to him, “but it’s limited as to the power it gives us.” Debbie was cooking on an electric stove, fortunately. Meredith guessed that the gas might not be turned on for several weeks. “The rest of the neighborhood was dark last night,” she reported to the colonel, which he already knew.

  “And it will be, possibly for weeks, or even months.” There was a collective groan when he said it, and he smiled, and looked at Meredith. “You’re kind to take your neighbors in. Most of the houses I’ve been to so far have
several additional people staying there, who couldn’t get home across the bridges, or whose houses are too damaged to be safe. Was anyone injured here last night?”

  “A few cuts and bruises, nothing major, Colonel,” Meredith answered. “We were all very lucky. A lot of broken glass. I think we’ll need an engineer to assess how sound our houses are before people move back in.” But hers was solid and had withstood it well. On closer inspection, Jack had discovered a crack in the façade of the house, but it was more cosmetic than structural. Meredith’s house was not at risk. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” she offered. He hesitated. He had many more houses to visit on his morning rounds, but it was tempting. They looked like a congenial group, and their hostess was an attractive woman with a gracious manner that was hard to resist.

  “A quick one.” He smiled at her. He’d been making home visits for four hours, and was grateful for a break. “You’re a doctor?” he asked Andrew as he joined them and sat down, and Andrew nodded and smiled at him. His family knew what no one else did, that his mood could go from tropical sunny to arctic glacial or volcanic in an instant. At his best, Andrew was personable and appeared to be a great guy. His demons lurked just beneath the surface, carefully kept out of sight.

  “I am. I’m an orthopedic surgeon. We’re on emergency status with double and triple shifts. I’m going back in a few hours. We had a busy night.”

  “The casualties have been higher than we projected,” the colonel said as he took a sip of the steaming coffee, “but the death toll isn’t quite as bad as we feared with an earthquake of this magnitude.” It had been an 8.2 on the Richter scale, which was serious business, and more powerful than the 1906 quake. But the city codes for earthquake-proof construction had protected many people, and reduced the potential damage. In poorer neighborhoods with old houses, and on landfill, many homes had collapsed. “They put us old dogs to work, checking out the neighborhoods. I live nearby, so I was assigned to this one. I’ve been knocking on doors all night.” He didn’t look tired and he had a calming manner that reassured them all. “I retired two years ago, but I stayed in the National Guard, for situations like this. I’ve seen some bad earthquakes in my time, in war zones and underdeveloped countries where there were no codes for their construction, and the devastation after an earthquake like this is heartbreaking.” He had a relaxed, easy manner, spoke to all of them, asked Will about his soccer team, and asked Daphne if the Tooth Fairy had been to visit her for all the teeth she was missing, and she said she had, she had gotten a dollar for every tooth. When Colonel Chapman got up to leave, Meredith walked him through the main floor, out the front door, and let him out the main gate with her key. He handed her a card with his name, and OES cellphone number. “I’ve got the phone on me at all times. If you have a problem we can help you with, don’t hesitate to call me. It’s nice of you to take your neighbors in,” he said kindly.

  “It would be pretty awful if I didn’t, with a house this size,” she said modestly.

  “Still, I’m assuming you don’t know them, and you seem to like your privacy.” He motioned to the gate, the wall around her property, and the tall hedge that almost hid the house from the street.

  “I met them yesterday, and there’s no privacy at a time like this. They’re all very nice people.”

  He hesitated for a minute at the gate. “I know this sounds ridiculous, but I have the feeling we’ve met somewhere.” There was something about her face that was haunting him, and he couldn’t figure out what it was. “I was based in Washington, at the Pentagon, for the last ten years before I retired from the Air Force, and I moved out here two years ago when my wife died. I needed a change of scene, and figured it was time. I don’t know if we met here or in Washington, but I have the feeling our paths crossed somewhere.”

  “I haven’t been out much in a long time,” she said cautiously, not wanting to explain it to a total stranger. She wondered if he had seen her movies in the past, and it hadn’t clicked for him yet, and she wasn’t going to tell him.

  “Well, give a shout if there’s anything we can do for you.”

  “I think we have everything under control,” she said as she smiled at him, “but thank you.” He walked through the gate then, waved and headed down the street at a good clip, crossed the street at the corner, and she saw him knock on the door of a large handsome house. An older woman answered and he went inside, and she went back to the others. They were milling around the kitchen, trying to figure out what to do next. They all wanted to go back to their homes and check out the damage in daylight. She heard Andrew Johnson growl at his wife in a barely audible voice, as they walked up the stairs so Tyla could get her bag.

  “So which of the men here were you flirting with when I was working?” At first Meredith thought he was joking, but his tone said he wasn’t. There was a vicious edge to it, she saw him grab Tyla’s arm, and she winced. He had clamped his hand over the ugly purple bruise. There was nothing flirtatious about Tyla and no cause for what he’d said.

  “Don’t be silly, none of them. I was with the kids,” Tyla said, as they disappeared into the room they were using, and Meredith went to her own room. Debbie showed up a few minutes later.

  “So what am I supposed to feed them for lunch, now that I’m running a restaurant?” She knew she had to stretch the food supplies they had and make them last, since there was no way of knowing how long grocery stores would stay open and if their stock would run out. She looked sour and annoyed as she said it, and Meredith refused to give in to Debbie’s displeasure at having strangers in the house, during a crisis.

  “Sandwiches, salad, pasta, whatever is easy for you. And you can take some chickens out of the freezer for tonight. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Just simple food to keep everyone fed.” Debbie was usually much more pleasant than that, and Meredith was surprised by her attitude. Jack had been no better. Whenever one of the guests spoke to him, he answered them tersely and was barely civil. It was unlike them, they were always so kind to her. Debbie and Jack’s unspoken hostility was a side of them Meredith had never seen.

  “I wasn’t expecting to run a hotel after the earthquake. There are shelters they could go to. They don’t need to stay here. They’re taking advantage of you.” She was trying to instill fear and anger into Meredith, and it wasn’t working. Meredith didn’t respond. She had an idea and went to knock on Tyla and Andrew’s door. Tyla looked startled and nervous when she opened it, and Andrew was standing right behind her.

  “I was wondering if you’d like me to keep the kids with me, while you check out your house,” Meredith offered, and Tyla turned to Andrew for the answer.

  “No, they can come with us. Will can help me clean up, and Daphne likes to stay close to her mom,” Andrew said. It seemed as though he didn’t want Meredith to have time alone with them, but that was understandable too. They really didn’t know her.

  “Well, let me know if I can do anything to help, or if you’d like Jack to come with you,” she said pleasantly.

  “We’ll be fine,” he said, and closed the door before Tyla could, and Meredith heard his words before she walked away. “What did you tell her?” he said in a vicious tone to his wife.

  “I didn’t tell her anything. She’s just trying to be nice,” Tyla said in a pleading tone.

  “Just keep her out of our business, and away from our kids,” he said in a raised voice, as Meredith walked away as soundlessly as she could. A few minutes later, she saw Peter and Arthur Harriman heading down the stairs, and went to speak to them, still startled by what Andrew had said to his wife. What were they hiding?

  “We’re going to check my piano,” Arthur explained to her. “I want to be sure it didn’t get damaged in the aftershocks,” he said with concern, as he made his way down the steps at a good clip, with Peter right behind him. For an eighty-two-year-old man, he was agile and alert, and had more energy than anyone
in the group. “Peter doesn’t think I should practice in the house in case something falls in an aftershock,” Arthur said, faintly annoyed. Normally, nothing could keep him from playing.

  “I have a piano here, in the drawing room, if you’d like to check it out. It’s probably not up to your standards. It’s a baby grand, a Steinway,” Meredith offered.

  “I’m sure it’s a fine instrument. I’m used to mine. We have a long relationship. I’ve had it for thirty years. My wife and I used to play duets on it. She was an excellent pianist as well. We met at Juilliard when we both studied there. We were seventeen when we met. We were married for fifty-seven years.”

  “Do you have children, Mr. Harriman?” she asked when they reached the front door. She was touched by what he had shared with her.

  “No, I don’t. We had each other, and our work. For us, that was enough. We never felt ready to include children in our lives. We were devoted to each other.”

  “It sounds like a beautiful love story,” Meredith said gently.

  “Do you have children?” he asked her, curious about her too. “Peter says this is a very big house, I doubt that you always lived here alone,” he said.

  “I have a daughter, in New York. She’s grown and married now, with a daughter of her own.” She didn’t tell him about Justin, the story was too sad and too personal to share with people she had just met, virtually strangers. “I love this house, and it is big, but I rarely go out. I have my own private world here.” He frowned as he looked at her, almost as though he could see her.

  “That’s never a good idea, having one’s own private world behind walls. The world needs you, Mrs. White. Look at us. We all need you now. Don’t deprive others of your company, or yourself of the world. It’s a troubled place these days, which is all the more reason for you to participate in it. You have a great deal to offer.” He couldn’t know that, and he knew who she was. He certainly didn’t lead a secluded life. He still had a heavy concert schedule, and traveled constantly. There was nothing elderly or reclusive about him. She was mildly embarrassed that she had admitted to him that she was. She let him and the Johnsons out of the gate a few minutes later, and the house was very quiet after that. She went upstairs to her room, and dealt with some bank papers she had meant to take care of the day before and hadn’t.