“I had no idea you were a policeman,” I said. I couldn’t keep the resentment out of my voice.
“Undercover,” said Jeff. “Pretty stressful. Messes with your head. Impossible to form a relationship with anyone. I’m not getting any younger. I’m desperate to meet that ‘special lady.’ Want to be a dad one day!”
I did not want to hear that Jeff was desperate to meet that special lady. It was like he’d shared an intimate, slightly revolting sexual secret.
“A nice young family is moving in to my place,” he continued. “Two little kids. Boy and girl. You’ll find them a bit livelier than me.”
And that suddenly seemed to remind him of the sort of neighbors we’d been, and he took an abrupt step backward.
“So,” he said. “I’ve kept you long enough. Just thought I should let you know so you didn’t get a surprise when the movers arrive tomorrow. The young family will be moving in the day after.”
“Best of luck with everything,” I said.
“Thanks,” he said and smiled, and he had an unexpectedly nice, shy smile, and I was filled with a strange, sad regret. I could have been his friend. I could have invited him over for a drink or a coffee. Maybe then he wouldn’t have needed his silly sea change.
Before Patrick, I would have been the sort of person who would have done that. This is all Patrick’s fault.
And now there will be a “nice young family” living next door. My bland little duplex will no longer be my safe haven from other people’s happiness. The thought of having to hear and see this smug family loving each other every day of my life is unbearable and unacceptable. I hate families with one boy and one girl, like a family in a car commercial. It’s so tidy. They’re always so pleased with themselves.
I can feel this explosive pressure building in my head. Something has to happen. I have to make something happen. Soon. I’m just not sure what.
When Ellen got home from lunch with her mother and godmothers, she sat on the front step with her bag on her lap. She didn’t want to take the keys out of her bag and open the door to an empty house. She wanted to ring the bell and wait for the sound of slow, shuffling footsteps. Her grandfather always opened the door with a wary, almost belligerent expression on his face that would vanish when he saw it was her. “She’s here!” he’d call out jubilantly to her grandmother, and he’d open the door wide and Ellen would smell baking.
They’d been dead for over a year, but today for some reason it didn’t seem possible that they weren’t inside. They must have opened that door to her hundreds of times. It didn’t feel like she was just recalling memories. It seemed perfectly reasonable that they were still there, somewhere, on some other plane of existence, and if she just sat here quietly for long enough and really concentrated, she could slip through time or matter or something and rest her head on her grandfather’s shoulder just one more time and see him redden slightly the way he always did whenever she hugged him.
“What’s on your mind, Ellie?” Her grandmother was the only one who had ever called her Ellie. (“I did not, and never would have, named my child ‘Ellie,’” Anne would shudder.)
She longed to tell her grandparents about this new development in her life, that David Greenfield, that strange, enticing name on her birth certificate, was no longer the carefully selected sperm donor of her youth but the “loveliest man her mother had ever known.” It was like hearing that Santa Claus really did exist after all, when you no longer cared or believed in the possibility of magic, when it was just plain confusing.
“That mother of yours.” Her grandmother would shake her head and put the kettle on again. Ellen sighed and smiled. Yes, that’s what this was really all about. She wanted her mother reprimanded for creating this upheaval in her life. Her grandparents were always on her side.
And the reason she wanted her mother reprimanded was just fear. Fear of change. Fear of the unknown. The same fear that caused her grandfather to look wary when he opened the door. Is that change knocking on my door?
She sighed, took her keys out of her bag and stood up. Her eye was caught by something on the wrought-iron mosaic table near the front door. Her grandmother had made that table after she’d done a mosaics course. (It wasn’t actually very good. The green and orange rectangles were all out of alignment. Apparently the teacher had kept scolding her grandmother for talking too much during class.)
A book had been placed upright in the center of the table, carefully displayed like it was for sale in a bookshop. There was a pink camellia flower lying diagonally next to it.
An icy thumb caressed Ellen’s spine. It was the book she’d lent Saskia. She’d returned it, as promised. Ellen picked up the book and flicked through the pages. No note. Just the creepy, careful way it was displayed. And the flower. What did the flower mean?
“Is this the hypnotherapy place?” A voice interrupted her thoughts.
Ellen jumped and gave a startled, girly shriek.
“Oh! I’m so sorry to frighten you like that!” A man in his late forties or early fifties with a humble, apologetic look on his face stood at the bottom of the porch stairs looking up at her. He was carrying a notebook with a pen carefully clipped to the side, and wearing a business shirt that appeared two sizes too big for him, without a tie. He looked like a man running late for his new Bible study group.
Ellen pressed her hand to her chest to calm her thumping heart.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just very deep in thought.” She smiled and held out her hand as she walked down the steps to meet him. “This is definitely the right place. You’re Alfred, right? Alfred Boyle. I’m Ellen.”
Alfred was a new client who had found her on the Internet and e-mailed a few weeks back to ask for written confirmation of her pricing. He’d said in his e-mail that he was a partner in an accounting firm and that he “required help improving his public speaking skills in a professional setting.”
As Ellen opened the front door for him and led him up the stairs, she glanced around hoping for a fleeting glimpse of her grandparents (what would they have to say about Saskia?), but the house was empty, and no matter how hard she sniffed, hoping for the scents of her grandmother’s baking, all she could smell was the Thai chicken curry she’d made the night before.