Love, Suburban Style (16 page)

Ben shrugs, eyes on the batter.

The batter swings again. Strikes out.

Commercial.

“Jeez, do you ever shut up?” Ben asks his sister.

“Dad! Ben just told me to shut up.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you—”

“No, he didn’t,” Sam says wearily. “He said—”

“He said to shut up.”

“I did not. I posed a rhetorical question about you and your big mouth.”

“Ben.” Sam gives him a warning look.

“You should tell him he can’t watch the rest of the game for that, Dad.”

“For what?” Ben demands.

“For being mean to me. You’re always mean to me. That’s what I told Meg. She said big brothers are like that.”

Meg.

Again.

This isn’t good for anyone.

Especially not for Katie.

“I don’t want you over there, bugging… Meg.” Sam is reluctant to even allow her name to settle on his tongue. “She’s busy trying to get settled in. The last thing she needs is an extra kid underfoot.”

“No, she said that I could come over and help her. She needs me.”

No,
Sam thinks sadly,
you need her.

Pop psychology 101.

Desperate for a female role model, Katie has latched on to Meg.

That’s happened before—but usually with other girls.

Never with an adult woman.

Why now?

Why Meg?

It can’t be that she reminds Katie of Sheryl, because the two women couldn’t be more opposite.

Sam can’t imagine pragmatic, conservative Sheryl moving into a run-down old house, or wearing cutoffs, or talking too much when she got nervous, the way Meg did when she introduced Sam to her daughter and her friend.

No, Sheryl was always quieter. More serious. More centered.

That’s what I need,
Sam tells himself firmly.

And that’s what Katie and Ben need.

If any of them get attached to the new neighbors in more than the most casual way, it can only lead to trouble.

It’s one thing for Sam to take risks with his own emotional well-being.

It’s quite another for him to allow the children to do that.

Yes, it would be irresponsible of Sam to allow Katie to spend any amount of time with Meg. She’ll only get hurt.

We’ll all steer clear,
he concludes.

That’s the only way to protect his kids from getting hurt.

“Hey, Katie,” he says thoughtfully, “I’ve been reconsidering Erin’s family’s invitation to take you to the Catskills…”

“You have?” She sucks in a quick breath.

He nods. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said no right away.”

Katie squeals. “Daddy! Are you serious? I can go?”

He nods, trying to hide his reluctance.

“
OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod!
I’ve got to go call Erin!” She bounds out of the room.

Crisis averted.

For now,
he thinks grimly.

And on television, the batter for the opposing team leads off the inning with a home run.

In the upstairs bathroom, Meg turns on the faucet and waits for the water to heat up for her shower. That takes much longer in this old house, she’s noticed, than it did back home in Manhattan.

Old pipes, probably, she thinks, picking at a rubbery thread of caulk that’s come loose from the tiles alongside the tub.

This whole wall should probably be recaulked.

That, or retiled, she amends, noticing that a number of the tiles are cracked. Anyway, avocado green isn’t exactly her favorite color scheme. It would be nice to go with something neutral, like white or even—

Frowning, Meg notices that the water running into the tub is already steaming hot.

That’s strange.

Yesterday she had to run it for a full minute before it even got warm.

Then again…

The steam—which looks more like a mist, really—doesn’t seem to be coming from the water streaming from the tap, exactly.

It’s more like…

Hovering above the tub, and over a bit.

Meg reaches gingerly toward the water to test the temperature, poking one finger cautiously into the spray lest she get burned.

Burned?

It’s still cold.

In fact, not only is the water cold, but the temperature in the room seems to have dropped a good ten or fifteen degrees in the last few seconds.

What the…?

Heart pounding, Meg uneasily turns again to look at the steam. Which is more of a mist.

Which is slowly taking shape into an almost…

Human form.

“Oh my God,” Meg whispers, throwing her hands over her eyes and pressing down, hard.

This isn’t happening.

You are not seeing some kind of creepy… ectoplasm, or whatever it’s called.

It’s plain old steam. That’s what it’s called.

Right, steam. From water that’s downright chilly.

That makes total sense.

Well, does a ghost make any sense, either?

Hell, no.

Hands still covering most of her face, she cautiously spreads her fingers a bit and opens her eyes to peer through the slits.

The mist—or steam—or ectoplasm, or whatever it was—is gone.

Of course it’s gone.

Because it was never there.

Maybe she won’t take a long, hot, soothing shower after all.

Maybe she’ll jump right into bed and pull the covers over her head.

Come on, don’t be such a baby,
she tells herself.
You know it was just steam. See? It’s everywhere now.

That’s true. The bathroom is filling with wisps of mist that hover above the running tap and disperse through the room, fogging over the mirror above the sink.

That’s what happens when you run hot water in a small room with no fan ventilation.

She knows that. She’s always known that.

Then why was there steam when the water was cold?

The air was cold, too.

Not anymore. Now it’s warm and humid.

Maybe the chill was her imagination.

Maybe it wasn’t, and the house is haunted.

What are you going to do about it if that’s the case?

You can’t move. You have nowhere to go.

Haunted or not,
Meg reminds herself grimly as she strips off her clothes for her shower,
this place is home sweet home from here on in, so you’ll just have to make the best of it.

Chapter
8

L
ooking out the window, wiping a trickle of sweat from his brow, Sam decides he can put it off no longer.

He has to mow the grass.

His lawn is embarrassingly overgrown compared to the others on the street—well, with the drastic exception of the one next door.

Which, ironically, happens to be the very reason he hasn’t mowed
his
lawn these last few days.

He doesn’t want to run into Meg.

Nor does he want Katie to run into Meg.

Which can’t happen in the immediate future, since she is safely in the Catskills with her friend Erin’s family, and won’t be back until tonight.

Safely
in the Catskills?

Hah.

Sam hasn’t stopped worrying about her since she left.

It didn’t help matters that her parting words just before Erin’s dad pulled into the driveway to pick her up yesterday morning were, “Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll be fine. I’m glad you let me go. And Meg didn’t even have to help me convince you!”

“
Meg?
”

Katie nodded. “She said the Catskills are safe, unless you’re climbing them, and since I’m not, she thought you should let me go.”

“She did, did she?” Sam muttered.

“Well… more or less.”

That conversation keeps ringing in his head.

Meg has no right to interfere in his relationship with his daughter, that’s for damned sure.

Then again…

More or less.

Katie does have a tendency to overexaggerate things. For all he knows, she was complaining to Meg about his not giving her permission for the trip, and Meg said something vague like “Uh-huh,” and Katie interpreted it as a preorder for a Team Katie T-shirt.

Whatever.

None of it changes the fact that the house next door is off-limits.

But you can’t hide inside forever.

No, he really has to mow the lawn. Quickly. Before the midday heat can set in…

And before he runs into Meg and a different kind of heat can set in.

Anger,
he reminds himself.
You’re thinking about the heat of anger. Not the heat of…

Passion.

Meg nearly jumps out of her skin at a loud sound before she realizes that this time, it’s nothing remotely supernatural.

No, what she just heard was a pair of car doors slamming just beyond the screened windows of her new living room

That’s a relief.

There have been more than a few unexplained creaks and slams these past few days, and it’s left her more than a little jittery.

Setting down the box she was about to carry into the kitchen, she hurries over to look out, asking, “You don’t think it’s them already, do you, Chita Rivera?”

Chita Rivera, who is curled on the floor against one of the boxes, sends her a calm look that says she does indeed think it’s them.

Sure enough, Olympia Flickinger and her daughter Sophie have just climbed out of a gleaming black Range Rover. Olympia is wearing a cream-colored sleeveless top and matching slacks that set off her golden skin. Sophie is in a sundress. Both have their hair in ponytails that look crisp and chic.

Meg’s hand goes to her own ponytail, which is anything but. She pulled it back hastily with a rubber band first thing this morning because her hair was hot and sweaty against her neck. For all she knows, she has dust and cobwebs in it by now.

She looks at her watch… which she’s wearing only because she already lost it once in the past few days. The house is still so upside down she doesn’t have any place specific to leave it when she takes it off.

It’s only eight-thirty-five. The Flickingers are twenty-five minutes early.

“It figures,” she tells Chita Rivera, who wisely leaves the room as if she can’t bear to witness what’s going to happen next.

Meg was hoping to at least have cleared the living room of boxes. The piano arrived yesterday, but she was too busy out shopping for furniture to organize the room.

At least she managed to order couches, tables, chairs, bureaus, and beds… all of it purchased from the enormous Crate & Barrel store down at the mall. The good news is that it was all pretty affordable. The bad is that none of it will be delivered for at least a couple of weeks… longer for the upholstered stuff.

Thus, the only seats she can offer the Flickingers are the piano bench or a couple of cardboard cartons that have sufficed for Meg and Cosette so far.

As Olympia and Sophie descend through the gate, Meg stands on her tiptoes to see into the tremendous built-in mirror above the fireplace and immediately wishes she hadn’t.

Her hair is unkempt, her face is flushed and shiny.

Is it any wonder she looks this bad? She’s been trying to unpack and organize since she rolled out of bed—or rather, hoisted herself from the floor—a few hours ago.

It’s got to be almost ninety-five degrees this overcast morning already: the kind of still, muggy late-summer heat that threatens to build, then erupt into thunderstorms as the day trudges on.

Meg hurriedly removes the rubber band from her hair, attempts to fluff the matted curls with her fingertips, and cleans the streak of dirt from her chin with the spit-dampened hem of her T-shirt.

There.

Yeah, right.

If it were anyone but the Flickingers, she wouldn’t care about feeling quite so… grimy.

Well, the Flickingers, or Sam Rooney.

But she hasn’t even caught a glimpse of him since soccer practice a few days ago, which is strange, considering that he lives right next door and his car has been in the driveway.

His son has been shooting hoops, and his daughter has been reading on the porch and riding her bike up and down the driveway, but no sign of Sam.

Not that she should be looking for him.

Well, old habits die hard.

The doorbell rings.

So much for being presentable.

Meg turns away from the mirror, kicks a couple of the lighter boxes into the corner, and starts for the door.

The bell rings again before she reaches it.

“Coming,” she calls, trying to keep the irritation from her voice.

She opens the door and pastes a smile on her face. “Hi, Olympia. And you must be Sophie.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” the girl says politely, reaching out to shake her hand.

“You, too.” Meg is impressed with her manners and resists the urge to wipe off her own sweaty, dirty hand on her shorts before shaking Sophie’s dry, clean one.

Sophie, however, does no such thing. The moment she releases Meg’s grasp, she wrinkles her nose distastefully and runs her palm along the side of her dress.

“I’m sorry… I should have called to confirm the appointment,” Olympia says. “You have so much going on with the move, it’s completely understandable that you’d forget.”

“Oh, I didn’t forget. I’m just… running a little late.”

No, you aren’t. They’re running almost a half hour early. Why are you letting them off the hook? Being that early is just as rude as being late.

“Do you want us to wait on the porch while you… get ready?” Olympia offers dubiously.

“No, that’s okay. I’m ready. Come on in.”

“Thank you.” As the Flickingers primly cross the threshold, Meg hears a mower start up next door.

Glancing over at Sam’s house beyond the hedge, she spots him in the yard, shirtless.

Whoa.

It’s all she can do to pry her eyes from the sight of his glorious, sun-bronzed chest, muscular arms, and washboard abs just above the waist of his white cotton shorts.

That his honed physique is visible even from this vantage point is blatant testimony that the man is still in amazing physical condition, just as Meg suspected.

Suspected?

You dreamed it.