I shoved the screen door open just enough to pop my new neighbor in the nose before I realized he was standing there. “Gaah!” he yelped, clutching his free hand to his face.
“Oh!” I cried. “I’m so sorry!”
“You are reedy bad at meeting people, aren’t you?” he groaned, blood trickling out from under his fingers. In his other hand, he held a key ring.
“Come in,” I said, chucking the Bundt and grabbing a handful of paper towels. I pressed the paper to his nose. “I’m so sorry.”
He tilted his head back. “I broght you some keys that Mrs. Witter left for you,” he said. “I did not expect a door to the face.”
“I’m so sorry. I usually don’t assault my neighbors. And I’m wearing pants. Look, see?” I said, indicating the very covering jeans I was wearing.
“Very nice,” he muttered, blotting at his reddened nostrils. He extended his other hand and shook mine. “Lefty Monroe.”
“Seriously?” I said. “You tell people that?”
He gave a brief flash of gleaming white teeth, then tucked them back away. It was the first time someone had smiled at me and then taken it back. Interesting. Lefty? And to think I was embarrassed that I was going to call him Wolverine.
“Lacey Terwilliger,” I said, extending my hand. I shook my head and corrected myself. “Lacey Vernon.”
“New alias or multiple personality?” he asked, arching a brow, not shaking my hand.
“Newly separated. I’m taking my maiden name back,” I said primly. I didn’t think guys with prison nicknames should throw stones. But I did just hit him in the face, so…
“Sorry,” he muttered, his eyes immediately putting up what I can only describe as “defense shields.” Well, that was just fine. No matter how good he looked in worn Levi’s, I planned to maintain and defend the no penis policy.
“I made you a Bundt cake,” I said, handing him the plate. “But now I think I owe you another one for smacking you in the face.”
“I would feel better if you kept your distance,” he admitted. “God knows what you could accomplish with a cabinet door. Mrs. Witter said she would have left the keys in the house, but that she was afraid to. She told a very long story about you managing to lock yourself out of every room in the cabin in one afternoon.”
“I was eight!” I cried. “This is the problem with continuing your acquaintance with people who have known you since your awkward adolescent phase. I’m expecting mine to be over just any day now. I’m really sorry about this morning. I didn’t know anyone else was up here. The McGees haven’t opened the house in years. I haven’t seen anyone coming and going…”
“I’m renting from the McGees. I work from home,” he said, his tone harsh and clipped. “I stay holed up for days at a time. I keep to myself.”
The message could not have been more clear if he’d put up an electric fence. Stay away. Neighbors will be shot on sight.
“Oh, that’s fine. I plan on being a quiet, keeps-to-herself, we-never-expected-to-find-those-bodies-in-the- deep-freeze type of neighbor, without the actual bodies.” I said. “That probably wasn’t reassuring, was it?”
He shook his head, turned on his heel, and walked out of the house without another word. Generally, people wait until they’ve known me for a while to have that sort of reaction. I stared after him as he made his way to his cabin, as much in bewilderment as to seize the opportunity to catch sight of his denim-clad butt. He seemed to walk with a slight limp in his left leg. And if I wasn’t mistaken, one of his cheeks was, well, fuller, than the other. It was an ass with character.
“Well, at least that wasn’t weird,” I marveled as he slammed the front door to his cabin behind him.
Of course, his being exceedingly grumpy and potentially crazy didn’t change the fact that I sort of wanted to see him naked. Fine. I really wanted to see him naked.
It was the Fourth of independent - also of July, Independence Day. And I was known as alone and it wasn’t so bad. I sat on the end of the dock, dangling my feet into the lake, watching revelers enjoy some ill-advised and not-quite-sober nighttime boating. I sipped lemonade treated with just a smidge of vodka while I watched the residents of Lighthouse Cove set off fireworks down the shore. Mama would have been horrified by the notion of my drinking alone, but mostly because I was so close to a body of water. She would have told me if it could kill Natalie Wood, it could kill me, too
In my mother’s mind, cautionary tales are timeless, however tenuously connected
I watched the lights reflecting off the water, violent blooms of color that made my eyes ache and my chest tighten. It was a little lonely, knowing that there were families out there, celebrating. It reminded me of the Fourth when Emmett and I were diagnosed with pinkeye and had to sit inside while all of the other kids ran around with sparklers. Every echo of a Roman candle taunted us
I had never spent a single holiday alone. As much as I used to resent being summoned to my parents’ house or to the in-laws’, it was sort of disorienting to have nowhere to go, nothing to do. If not for the fact that my mother kept making up excuses to call and check up on me - including calling to wish me a Happy Fourth that morning - I could have been eaten by wild boars or brutally murdered by my antisocial new neighbor and no one would know for weeks.
At the same time, I didn’t have to make three dozen deviled eggs or assemble some sort of patriotically themed outfit for the occasion. I wasn’t responsible to anyone, for anything.
My soon-to-be ex-husband didn’t seem to get that.
Mike had apparently decided that it was okay to break his lawyer’s contact embargo if he needed something from me. Because he was basically a giant five-year-old. Earlier that afternoon, I’d been lounging on the couch, reading The Stand instead of the Emotional Homework for New Divorcees book Mama had insisted I bring with me. I’d unearthed King’s masterwork from the front closet. I think one of my uncles had left it behind after a weekend visit. I was normally a Nora Roberts or Mary Higgins Clark reader, but I hadn’t been able to put this book down. It turned out that I really liked Stephen King, or at least post-apocalyptic, metaphorical Stephen King. (I was still decidedly against child-devouring clown Stephen King.) Who knew?
My cell phone rang and, distracted by the seemingly banal, creeping evil of Randall Flagg, I answered it without thinking. There was no greeting or acknowledgment of any kind, just Mike imperiously demanding, “I need my blue suit. Where did you leave it?”
I was so stunned at hearing his voice, I almost barked out that I’d dropped it at Speedy Cleaners on Schultz Avenue. Like a trained seal.
Despite recent personal revelations, my instinct to soothe and serve shamed me. I was so accustomed to jumping whenever Mike needed something, to catering to his whims before he realized he had them, that my response was automatic. I wasn’t a wife. I was a personal assistant - one of those harried, abused ones that sold their celebrity employers’ secrets to the tabloids.
Of course, my mouth didn’t have to catch up to my brain while I processed this, so my response was something along the lines of spluttering, “Beg pardon?”
“I. Need. My. Blue. Suit,” he said, enunciating every word as if he were talking to a very slow preschooler. “Where did you drop it off? Oh, and did you mail my Netflix envelope?”
I stared into the phone, sure I had just hallucinated what he’d said. He hadn’t talked to me for days, on the advice of counsel, and now he wanted to make sure I’d returned his rented copy of Alien vs. Predator?
Seriously?
Pressing the receiver to my ear, I demanded, “Do you have anything to say to me? How about, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been cheating on you. I was wrong’?”
“Oh, Lacey, I don’t want to go through this again.”
“We never went through it the first time, Mike. I mean, really, could you possibly be more cliche? Nailing your receptionist? Why not a cocktail waitress? Or a stewardess? I file for divorce, and all you have to say is, ‘Where is my blue suit?’ What is wrong with you?”
Unused to hearing this sort of talk from me, Mike stayed silent on the other end of the line. He finally snorted
