“Maybe they don’t,” Stacey speaks up, “but we’re from LA.”
He turns to her. “Yeah? That’s cool. I thought I heard something about Kansas, so . . .”
“My dad grew up there. The rest of us are from California. So we are actually aware of, you know . . . miracles and modern medicine, and stuff.”
He offers a two-fingered salute and one-word response. “Respect.”
After a moment of silence, Jules hands him a long-tipped lighter. “Go out back and light the candles for me.”
“Are you going to say please?”
“Please. And thank you. And, Stacey, if you wouldn’t mind carrying this stuff out?”
“Sure.” She accepts a napkin-lined basket and bag of chips from Jules and follows Lennon out the door.
Jules turns to them. “Sorry. He’s a piece of work.”
Nora could say that he’s met his match in Stacey, but abstains. Tonight, her daughter has done just fine so far.
“You want some seltzer?” Courtney asks Piper.
“Is it pink?”
“What?”
Piper catches Jules’s eye. They laugh. “Never mind,” she tells Courtney. “Sure, I’ll have some.”
“Out back, ladies, in the big blue cooler.” Jules dispatches them to the patio, armed with tortillas and kimchi queso.
Heather turns to Nora and Keith. “Really, I’m so sorry about Lennon. He went through a bad breakup over the summer. He’s always been a little dark, but now he’s . . .”
“So dark he can walk into a room and suck the light and bright right out of it,” Jules says with a grim laugh. “But he truly would be willing to ride with your girls on the subway.”
“No need, I’m sure they’ll be fine,” Nora tells her.
Dark. She doesn’t like the word. Not now, not here . . .
Heather touches her arm. “Oh, Nora, when I said he was dark, I didn’t mean dangerous. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. He’s a good kid.”
“No, I know, I’m sure he is.”
Keith speaks up. “It’s not that. The girls need to get used to looking out for themselves in the city without a man along for the ride.”
Jules clears her throat. “Ah, I wasn’t implying they needed Lennon to protect them, just that his stop is way uptown, so he can make sure they get off at the right place.”
“By man, I was talking about me. Not that your son isn’t—”
“I get it, it’s all good.” Jules shakes a spice jar over the curry. “We like strong women in this house, believe me.”
“I’m assuming they’ll see Lennon on the train sometimes anyway,” Heather says. “He takes the same line, probably around the same time, along with everyone else in the neighborhood. How about some wine? Do you like Austrian white?”
They do. Heather pours four glasses of chilled Grüner Veltliner, and lifts hers in a toast. “Here’s to old kitchens and new friends.”
They clink.
Uneasy, Nora swallows her wine, gazing at a porcelain chimpanzee above the sink, feeling as though its wide-eyed, garish grin is fixed on her.
The monkey thought it was all in good fun . . .
Pop! goes the weasel . . .
Jacob
“Excuse me?” a female voice calls.
Still sitting on the steps, Jacob turns to see someone framed in the doorway of the adjacent row house.
“Are you waiting for someone, or something?”
“Yeah,” he calls back, and plucks the name from his memory. “Blake.”
She steps out onto her stoop, an older Latina woman with salt-and-pepper black hair. She’s wearing a white terry bathrobe, with red cat-eye glasses perched on the end of her nose.
“You’re waiting for Blake?”
“Right. We had plans tonight, but he’s not here and I can’t get ahold of him, so I figured I’d stick around in case he shows up.”
He waits for her to tell him that Blake and his wife have gone away to the beach.
She pushes her glasses up as if to get a better look at him. “You’ve been here a long time.”
He pushes himself to his feet, hands and jaw clenched, head down.
“Guess he forgot.” He shrugs and starts toward the boulevard.
“Hey!”
He stops but doesn’t turn back, fists shoved deep in his pockets.
“You forgot your newspaper.”
He curses and contemplates leaving it there, ignoring her, just disappearing around the corner.
But that wouldn’t be wise. Not if he ever wants to return to Anna’s house. And he wants to, needs to, return.
He swivels slowly, pasting on a smile. “Oh, right. Thanks.”
She keeps an eye on him as he gathers up the scattered sections of paper. He keeps an eye on her, too, confirming that she doesn’t have a phone in her hand, and isn’t calling Blake, or the police.
“You have a good night now, ma’am.”
She says nothing, but he can feel her scrutiny as he tucks the paper under his arm and walks away.
He strolls around the corner as if he has all the time, and not a care, in the world. As if she hasn’t followed him along Edgemont Boulevard. Several times he whirls around, expecting to see her, but she isn’t there, and then—
“Hey, watch where you’re going!”
Someone crashes into him from behind.
“Sorry.” He scans the street behind him, certain he just saw the woman scuttling into an alleyway. But when he backtracks, heart racing, the alley is empty.
Did he imagine her?
Did he imagine Anna, as well?
Has he spent so many years obsessing over her death—that night, that house—that he’s finally teetered right over the edge to insanity?
If you’re concerned that you might be going insane, then you probably aren’t . . .
People who are developing serious mental illness rarely suspect it . . .
Those words, uttered by a prison therapist he’d seen years ago, had brought tremendous comfort. He’d written them down, repeating them to himself like a mantra over the years, whenever doubts creep in.
Okay, so if you aren’t insane . . .
And you don’t believe in ghosts . . .
That leaves only one possibility.
Anna has come home to Glover Street at last.
Nora
Dinner is delicious, served at a pair of wrought-iron bistro tables in a pergola scented with trailing white jasmine. It perfumes the humid evening air, along with citronella candles and charcoal wafting from a neighboring yard. The night is sequined with stars and fireflies, strings of fairy lights and lamplight in surrounding windows. Jazz from Jules’s portable speaker drowns out the city sounds—and “Pop Goes the Weasel.”