I thought, Is he bored? Is that what he thinks when he looks at me in the morning? Is this it?
I didn’t know. I’d never asked.
The next morning, I watched him make coffee. Humming “Moon River.” Badly. He poured his coffee into his PROFESSOR BEAKER mug.
Out the kitchen window, I could see Vanessa’s back porch. She was sitting out there in a short white robe with her coffee. Watching our house.
When Irvin walked out to his car, she waved at him.
He waved back.
Just a wave. A neighborly wave. The same wave he gives Mrs. Pratt across the street.
But I stood at the kitchen window, and something inside me went cold and hard.
After that, Vanessa stopped pretending.
She leaned over the fence to talk to Irvin whenever he was in the yard. Always in something low-cut. Always laughing too loud at whatever he said. Always touching his arm.
She brought him things. Cookies. Brownies. A bottle of expensive wine “to thank him for all his help.” A book about the history of chemistry that she said she’d “found” at a bookstore and “thought of him.”
She texted him. She’d gotten his number when he fixed her garbage disposal. Hey neighbor, thanks again! with a smiley face. Then more. Saw this and thought of you, with a link to a chemistry joke. Are you mowing today? I’ll bring you a lemonade.
She showed up at our door twice more on my working Saturdays. Once in a bathing suit, asking if Irvin could look at her pool filter. She didn’t have a pool.
And every time she saw me, in the driveway or at the mailbox or across the fence, she smiled that cat smile.
Like she was winning.
Maddie noticed before I said anything.
She came into the kitchen one evening while I was making dinner. She leaned against the counter and crossed her arms.
“Mom,” she said. “What’s going on with the lady next door?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t do that.” She rolled her eyes. “She’s all over Dad. Every time he goes outside. She was out there in a bikini top yesterday when he was washing the car. In July. In Ohio. She doesn’t even have a pool.”
