The Perfect Neighbors (18 page)

“She has a computer?” Tessa's mother asked. She held the firm position that kids today were exposed to far too many electronics, and that they should be running around outside, playing kick the can.

“We have a family computer the kids can use,” Harry said. This was his turf, since he was the electronics expert in the house. “Bree and Addison are allowed to use the computer with reasonable limits. I wouldn't let them get into a car at sixteen without any instruction and hand over the keys, and I'm certainly not going to let them go off to college without some training on responsible use of electronics . . .”

Tessa tuned out.

It wasn't until much later, when she and Claire were doing the dishes together, that Claire asked the question Tessa had been dreading.

“The children,” Claire had whispered, glancing toward the
doorway to make sure they weren't coming. “Are they exhibiting any . . . ill effects from Danny's death?”

Tessa shook her head swiftly. “None at all,” she said. It was important that they do this quickly, like pulling a tooth. She had to be firm and clear with Claire and tackle this head-on.

“The kids are doing wonderfully,” she said, glad she could speak the words honestly. “It's like nothing ever happened.”

“Good,” Claire said. She squirted dish liquid into a roasting pan and added water. “Was that part of why you moved? A clean slate?”

“Yes,” Tessa said, grateful that Claire understood. She couldn't understand all of it, of course—no one could except for her and Harry, because they were the only two who knew everything—but this made it easier.

Bree popped into the kitchen. “Mom, can we watch
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
?” she asked.

“Thanksgiving isn't even over, and they're showing Christmas specials,” Claire sighed.

“Sure,” Tessa said. “It's okay with me if it's okay with Aunt Claire.”

“Fine, fine,” Claire said.

When Bree left, Claire lowered her voice again. “Is Harry sick?” she asked. “You would tell me if he was sick, wouldn't you?”

“He's fine,” Tessa said. “Just work has been stressful. And he's turned into a runner. I think he might be training for a marathon, but he's keeping it quiet.”

“That's all it is?” Claire asked.

“I promise,” Tessa said.

What harm would a few more lies do, given all the ones she'd already told?

•  •  •

Melanie had a crush on Zach.

Her neater hair, her friendlier attitude, her new clothing
style—Gigi's suspicions solidified when Zach asked Melanie to pass the gravy. Maybe no one else noticed, but Gigi was so attuned to searching for clues about Melanie's emotional state that she zeroed in on the shift in her daughter immediately. The slight pink in Melanie's cheeks. The way she giggled when Zach's fingers brushed hers as she handed over the gravy boat.

Gigi turned to consider Zach. He was a clean-cut, ambitious, hardworking guy. On the surface, he was everything a mother might want for her daughter, except for the fact that at twenty-two, he was too old for Melanie.

Yet he was too perfect, too polished. He said all the right things. He was exceptionally polite without being the slightest bit warm. Couldn't Joe see that?

Joe felt guilty that Zach was working for him for free to get experience, but Gigi suspected Zach was the one using Joe, that he'd get the better end of the bargain. She didn't trust the young man. How candid was Joe with him on their long road trips, when they were driving in the darkness, sharing a sense of weary compatibility? She needed to warn her husband to be circumspect.

“This was delicious, Mrs. Kennedy,” Zach said after the last slice of pie had been eaten. “May I clear the table?”

“Thank you,” Gigi said.

Joe jumped up. “I'll help,” he said. “I need to work some of that off before we head to the shelter. Hey, Melanie, Julia—do you guys want to come with?”

“Sure,” Julia said.

Melanie smiled. “I'll come, too,” she said.

“That's my girl,” Joe said. He gave Gigi a look:
Wow—she's in a good mood.

“I'm going to change,” Melanie said and headed upstairs. Gigi followed Joe into the kitchen.

“Honey,” she began, but then she saw Zach at the sink.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I've got an old coat you can take to the shelter to donate,”
she said instead. She went upstairs to retrieve it, but she couldn't immediately find it in her closet. Finally she remembered it was in the attic. By the time she came back down, Melanie and Joe and Zach were preparing to head out. Gigi did a double take when she saw that Melanie was wearing lip gloss. The color was wrong for her; it was too red against Melanie's pale skin, but Gigi knew better than to offer a gentle suggestion that Melanie try a softer pink shade.

Gigi didn't have an opportunity to pull Joe aside. She wasn't even exactly sure what she'd say to him.
Watch our daughter
, maybe.

She stood on the doorstep, waving, as they headed down the walk. When they reached the car, Zach pulled open the front passenger's door and gestured for Melanie to step inside.

Like a date
, Gigi thought, watching Melanie smile up at Zach as he gently closed her door.

No, she didn't trust Zach for a minute.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Newport Cove Listserv Digest

*Remove me from listserv?

Hi, I moved away from Newport Cove a year ago and still receive these emails. Can someone remove me from this listserv? Thanks! —Abigail Donohue, formerly of Blossom Street

*Maternity clothes—free!

Lots of casual clothes, well-worn but clean. Yours for the asking as I will definitely not be needing them again. —Reece Harmon, Daisy Way

*Re: Remove me from listserv?

Abigail, simply hit the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of your listserv digest and you should be taken off the list. —Tally White, Iris Lane

*Re: Remove me from listserv?

There's an unsubscribe link somewhere near the bottom in every digest, just click and that should do it. —Bob Welsh, Magnolia Street

*A cheery reminder!

When replying to an individual's question on the listserv, there's no need to hit “reply all” if the question doesn't relate to the community at large. You can simply respond to the individual by clicking on their email address, which
is embedded in their message, so that the entire listserv doesn't get multiple messages with duplicate information. —Sincerely, Shannon Dockser, Newport Cove Manager

*Re: Remove me from listserv?

Just hit “unsubscribe” at the bottom of the digest and you'll be taken off. —Margaret Grainger, Crabtree Lane

•  •  •

You have 22 new matches!
the headline of her email proclaimed.

Twenty-two sounded overwhelming, but it was better than none, Susan thought as she took a sip of her latte and clicked the button that would lead her to the dating website. She'd signed up for it the day after Thanksgiving, making her perhaps the only forty-year-old woman on the planet who wanted to begin dating to improve the emotional health of her son.

Maybe she'd meet a few guys for drinks. Maybe one of them would even be nice. Or just have all of his own teeth and speak passable English—she shouldn't set her expectations too high.

She navigated to the photo of her first match, whose ID was TheMan4U. His photo looked surprisingly normal. He was of Japanese descent, a triathlete, and an accountant. Nope, Susan thought. She was doing this to forget Randall, not to be reminded of him by a man with the same occupation.

She scrolled over to the next photo. This guy—­BeachBum39—was extremely handsome. He was posing shirtless on a beach, a golden retriever by his feet. Susan began to read his bio:
Note: My true age is 46, but I was getting contacted by too many women in their forties and fifties so I've changed my age to 39 in my profile. Be assured I look and act much younger than my real age!

You act like a baby, that's for sure
, Susan thought as she instantly deleted the guy's face from her screen. So he wanted to
date younger women—but he was dismissive of women who wanted to date younger men? On behalf of womankind, Susan felt like reaching through her computer, grabbing the Frisbee in his hand, and bashing it into his face.

By the time she'd gone through all twenty-two matches, she'd eliminated every contender except for two. And she wasn't all that excited by those guys. It was like reaching into a bin of reduced-for-quick-sale apples and choosing the two that were the least bruised. But maybe she should be more open-minded. Lots of people had trouble expressing themselves in writing, so she shouldn't jump to conclusions about Searching4Luv and his scant three-sentence bio.
I love to be outdoors and all water sports. I have a big family, a steady job, and a ferret named Bo. You never know where chemistry will turn up so let's meet and see if there is a spark . . .

She'd send him a quick email, suggesting a drink. She'd make one of her friends come along with her and sit at a nearby table, just in case Searching4Luv was really ­Searching4AHostage.

Hi
, she wrote.
I love to be outdoors as well
 . . . Her fingers hovered above her keyboard as she tried to think of what else to say. Bo sounds nifty? Are ferrets in the weasel family?

She dropped her head into her hands. She hated this. She hated every humiliating moment.

Gigi had urged her to try online dating. “C'mon, everyone's doing it,” she'd said. “Quality people are on dating sites because they're too busy to go out to bars and try to meet people like in the old days.”

Susan scrolled down to the “Interests” section and discovered that Searching4Luv had been, in the last year alone, sailing in the Caribbean and mountain climbing. He'd done a Tough Mudder 10K and had the mud-splattered photo to prove it. He loved outdoor concerts and had been to see U2, Imagine Dragons, and Taylor Swift (
that was my 10-year-old daughter's birthday present,
he'd written).

Susan clicked over to her profile. She'd uploaded a candid photo from a family vacation a few years ago. She'd had to crop it to cut out Randall and Cole, but she didn't want to use her professional photo because it was on her website and on the radio station's website and there was too great a chance someone would recognize it. No matter how often she heard that online dating was no big deal, she couldn't shake a sense of embarrassment.

Under “Interests,” she'd written:
Reading, taking walks with my dog, and watching Downton Abbey.

I'm boring, she thought. Yawn-inducing boring. Searching4Luv probably wouldn't even be interested in her!

Somehow, that made him marginally more attractive.

Terrific. Now
she
was acting like a baby. She closed the lid of her computer and got up and left the coffee shop.

Ten minutes of online dating, and she'd already frayed her self-esteem. Maybe it worked for others, but it had only made her feel worse. There were so many lonely people in the world.

There had to be a guy out there, a good man who would love her, she tried to tell herself.

But you had that
, the traitorous voice in her head answered.
You already had that with Randall, and you threw it away.

•  •  •

“We've got a problem, Mrs. Kennedy,” Zach said, sitting down across from Gigi.

“What is it, Zach?” she asked. It bugged her that she called him by his first name while he refused to do the same. It didn't feel respectful that he referred to her as Mrs. Kennedy. It felt as if he were trying to be perceived as respectful, which was something quite different.

“A source has told me that Max Connor's campaign has some information on you,” Zach said.

He'd asked to meet her alone, without Joe present, and
she'd agreed. She'd thought it might be easier to pinpoint exactly what made her feel uneasy around Zach if she could talk to him without distraction. And so, while Joe was attending the grand opening of a new civic center, Zach had stayed behind.

Here it comes
, Gigi thought. She sat up straighter, trying to keep her face from revealing anything.

“What information, Zach?” Gigi asked.

“It seems they have a copy of an old arrest record,” Zach began.

“For trespassing?” Gigi interrupted. “Yes. I was protesting the destruction of an old redwood tree. So were a dozen other college students. We were all arrested and let go that same day. No one even saw the inside of a jail.”

“This is about another matter,” Zach said delicately.

Gigi could feel herself blush, and it infuriated her. Who cared what some pipsqueak thought about her past?

The problem was, Zach was enjoying this, Gigi realized. What bothered her about Zach snapped into focus. He craved power. He didn't so much believe in Joe as he believed Joe could get Zach what he wanted.

Zach reached for a manila envelope on the couch next to him and handed it to Gigi.

“You have a file on me?” she asked, trying to smile to show that she wasn't the least bit intimidated by him.

“Well, Max's campaign does,” Zach said. “A source in his campaign had this.”

“Wait a minute—you have a source in Max's campaign who's feeding you information?” Gigi asked.

“She didn't exactly give me the information. She was indiscreet in where she kept it, and I, let's say, stumbled upon it,” Zach said.

His eyes flickered briefly, revealing the unpleasantness Gigi had glimpsed before, and suddenly Gigi wondered if the source was a young woman who had a crush on Zach.
She'd seen the way girls acted around him—Joe's press secretary, even her own daughter! She tried to imagine how it had happened. Maybe they'd slept together, and Zach had gone through her belongings while she was in the bathroom.

Gigi didn't open the folder. “It was the shoplifting incident, right?” she asked.

Zach nodded.

“So Max's campaign is going to trot out this old misdemeanor and try to punish my husband for it?” Gigi said. “That's ridiculous.”

“It is,” Zach said. “But yes, they're probably going to leak it.”

“Would a newspaper actually print that kind of junk?” Gigi asked.

“Your record is in the public domain,” Zach said. “So technically, they can. But I doubt they would go for something so minor. I'm sure the conservative bloggers will be all over it, though. They live for this sort of stuff.”

Gigi handed back the folder without looking at it.

“So if there's anything you want to tell me, anything we could use to offset this . . . ,” Zach said. His fingertip stroked the folder.

Gigi held his gaze steadily.

“Nope,” she said. “Seriously, Zach, you missed a campaign event for this nonsense?”

He smiled and stood up, conceding defeat graciously. “You're right,” he said. “I can probably still catch the tail end if I leave now.”

“I have some calls to make,” Gigi said. “Excuse me.”

Gigi went upstairs and waited until she heard the front door close before she came back down. She sat in the chair she'd just vacated, thinking about the contents of the manila folder.

It had been a scarf.

A silly scarf in a pattern she didn't even particularly like. She'd taken it from a snooty boutique. Like the sunglasses
she'd grabbed the previous month, and the inexpensive earrings she'd pocketed the month before that.

The first time it had happened, she'd been in a department store to return a pair of wool gloves that made her hands itch. She'd been waiting for the salesgirl to finish with the customer ahead of her in line when she'd seen a display of earrings on the counter in front of her. A pair of chunky silver hoops had caught her eye, so Gigi had picked them up. They were almost the exact price of the gloves. She'd do an exchange, Gigi had decided.

The salesgirl had finished ringing up her customer, then walked over to the other side of the counter to wait on another woman who'd just stepped up with a shirt in her hand.

“Excuse me,” Gigi had called, but the girl hadn't heard her.

Anger—more than the tiny affront warranted—roiled within her. Gigi had always railed against social injustices, but living in the manicured suburbs and caring for an infant hadn't given her much to protest lately.

She'd started to put the earrings back, then she'd let them roll into her palm and she'd closed her fist. She left the gloves with their receipt on the counter. She fully expected to set off the alarm at the security gate by the exit and be stopped by a security guard. She was looking forward to it, actually—she'd like to give the silly young salesgirl a piece of her middle-aged mind.

But she walked through the doors without triggering a sound.

She'd stood in the parking lot, wondering if she should go back. But then, unexpectedly, exhilaration had swept through her. The store would never miss the thirty-dollar pair of earrings. She'd done it! She'd lodged her own minor protest.

At home, the earrings seemed shinier, more enticing than her other pairs. Sometimes Gigi took them out just to look at them, remembering her tiny victory.

She wasn't tempted to do it again, though. The thought of
slipping an expensive chocolate bar into her pocket at the grocery store didn't tantalize her. She was never seized with the impulse to stuff an extra peach into the little square baskets that were sold for two dollars at the farmers' market.

The sunglasses, though.

Gigi usually just wore cheap Ray-Ban knockoffs purchased from the drugstore, and they were forever breaking. She'd had one pair for only a week when the tiny screw by her temple came out, separating the stem from the glasses. She'd popped into the drugstore to pick up a repair kit and she'd seen something that made her blood boil: There was a young mother ahead of her in line, juggling a toddler on her hip, trying to pay for a pack of diapers and a few other items. When the mother tried to pay with her credit card, the cashier asked for a photo ID.

Gigi was incensed. She'd shopped at this particular chain dozens of times, sometimes ringing up totals far higher than this young mother's, and she'd never once been asked to show an ID. It had happened because the woman was black, Gigi was certain. She'd heard about a similar incident happening to an African-American friend of hers. When it was Gigi's turn to approach the counter, she put down her glasses repair kit and deodorant and the few other items she'd collected. She paid with a credit card.

No one had asked for her ID.

On her way out of the store, Gigi had reached out and pulled a pair of sunglasses off the display unit. She was taking a stand, just like when she'd linked arms with other students to form a human barricade and save the old redwood tree!

Again, no one stopped her. Maybe store clerks weren't suspicious of her because she was white, because she looked comfortably middle-class. The notion incensed her.

She never even wore the sunglasses. They were oversized, with rhinestones, and looked completely ridiculous on her. But they served as a kind of trophy.