AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She was wiser now. More jaded but open to the truth about the minimal role she played in his thinking and in his life.
She refocused again, this time on that razor edge of green, and thought about pink. Aaron would hate the change. He viewed pink as a direct blow to his masculinity. So pink flowers in spring it would be.
After a quick scan of the quiet suburban cul-de-sac, she took the cell phone out of her pocket and checked for messages. Nothing waited for her.
Unexpected, but it was still early.
She wandered down to the mailbox. After Aaron ran over the last one during a bad ice storm in March, he’d picked out one shaped like a duck as the replacement. He joked about how great it would be if it made a noise. Spent the afternoon he bought it walking around the house and scaring the crap out of her by yelling, “Quack!” She had no idea why he found that funny or what the duck meant to him, but then many things Aaron did and said were a mystery to her.
A sign hung off the duck’s belly, taunting her.THE PAYNE’S. Block letters of a name she never informally or formallyagreed to take. Ridgefield was the last piece of who she’d been before. She clung to it even as she said yes to a marriage to someone as broken as she was.
Her refusal to capitulate on this one thing dropped a wedge in the center of her marriage. Her last stand led to the spousal fight that refused to die over the years.
Then there was the apostrophe. She’d dared to question if one should be there and he’d kicked the sign, shattering the bolt. The force of the blow knocked the left side from its hook and sent it swinging with a screeching sound of metal scraping against metal.
She’d left the unwanted sign hanging there ever since. Crooked. Half-broken and off center. It struck her as the perfect metaphor for their marriage.
“Lila?”
The singsongy voice made Lila cringe. She managed to plaster on a smile by the time she turned to face her seemingly ever-present neighbor. “Hello.”
Cassie Zimmer. Every sentence she uttered ended on a tonal upswing as if she were asking an unending series of questions instead of just talking. She smiled without ceasing. That alone made Lila want to slap her. She didn’t, of course, but the temptation hoveredright there.
From the day they moved in, Cassie had beenthatneighbor. She brought cookies on herwelcome to the neighborhoodvisit then overstayed by walking around the living room, asking an endless line of personal questions disguised as get-to-know-you talk while she peeked at every unpacked possession.Lila had mentally put Cassie on theintolerablelist she kept in her head, and Cassie had never worked her way off it again.
She was a one-woman neighborhood watch. Never mind that no one asked her to step up and take the position. Worse, it was as if Cassie sensed those rare occasions when Lila stepped outside for a moment of fresh air during the day and pounced, mindless chirpy greeting ready.
To be fair, Cassie likely was fine. Probably not all that offensive. Maybe even a decent neighbor because she’d be the first one to jump on 911 if she spied someone walking down the street whom she didn’t know. But Lila valued privacy and personal space, and Cassie had only a passing acquaintance with either.
“Are you thinking about doing some gardening?” Cassie winced. “Maybe not the best idea. You’re a bit out of season.”
Small talk. Lila’s least favorite thing.
“We need some color out here.” “We” meaning her. She liked color. What Aaron wanted didn’t really matter anymore.
Cassie fidgeted with the broken sign under the mailbox, as if simply rehanging it would fix the household’s problems.
“The bolt is cracked.”
“Hmm?” Cassie’s head shot up. “What?”
Lila refused to find a more descriptive way to say it. “No bolt.”
Cassie’s eyes widened. “Oh. I wonder what happened to it.”
Aaron had. But enough chatting. “I should head back inside.”
Lila didn’t get two steps before Cassie wound up again. “You look nice. Are you working today?”
“Today and every day.” Last week one of Aaron’s fellow teachers dropped something off at the house and joked about her barely working and then tried to cover with some drivel about her notneedingto work. His grating nasal voice still rang in her ears. Her employment was one of those pressure points that made Lila grind her back teeth together. Leave it to Cassie to locate the exposed nerve then jump up and down on it. “But yes, I need to do some research.”
“It must be so interesting to check out all those different houses. Peek inside and see what’s really happening in there.”
She had to feel the conversation drag, right? Lila couldn’t imagine Cassie didn’t hear it... or see the attempt to escape back up the driveway and into the house.
The anxiety Lila wrestled with for decades trickled in. Her control skimmed along the far edge, but soon it would crack. Then the race and swirl would begin inside her. That need to be away from people. To speak, but only on her terms.
When she decided to be “on,” that was fine. She’d practiced the skill of pretending to be comfortable while the flight instinct kicked into high gear inside of her. She’d lower her voice, slow it down to sound more in control. Concentrate so that her hands wouldn’t shake.
