by Joy Fielding
Leo promptly lies back down, burying his nose in his stuffed Mario.
Maggie opens the drawer of the nightstand and removes her gun, carrying it back with her to the window. She stands there, waiting. But aside from the distant drone of traffic, all she hears is the silence of the night.
And then, another sound. Something guttural and all too familiar.
It takes Maggie a few seconds to recognize what it is.
Someone is crying.
Maggie returns the gun to her nightstand, throws a robe over her pajamas, then tiptoes down the stairs. She peeks through the keyhole, then turns off the alarm and opens the front door.
Aiden is sitting on the front step, wearing the same clothes he had on earlier, hugging his knees to his chest. His feet are bare, his shoulders shaking.
“Aiden,” Maggie says gently, sitting down beside him. One arm reaches up to stroke his back. “What are you doing here?”
He lifts his head. “I need to see Heidi. I know she’s here.”
“She’s asleep.”
“I need to see her.”
“It’s the middle of the night. You need to go home.”
“I have to talk to her.”
“You can talk to her in the morning.”
“Is she all right?”
“She will be.”
“She hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you.”
“I love her so much.”
“I know you do.”
“I’ve made such a mess.”
“Nothing that can’t be undone.”
He shakes his head. “Except I don’t know what to do.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
His eyes plead with hers. “Can’t you just tell me?”
Maggie almost smiles. “I think you already know.” She stands up. “Now go home. Get some sleep.”
He wipes his eyes, swallows one last sob, then pushes himself to his feet. “Okay. Sorry that I woke you up.”
“Get some sleep,” Maggie says again, watching him walk away, grateful that Heidi seems to have slept through this latest disturbance. Only after she sees Aiden disappear inside his house and close the door behind him does she follow suit.
Erin is standing at the top of the stairs. “What are you doing?” she asks as Maggie is resetting the alarm.
“I thought I heard something, so I…”
Erin shakes her head, rolls her eyes, and returns to her room before Maggie can finish.
“That’s my girl,” Maggie says, proceeding up the stairs and down the hall, fatigue clinging to her every step like a dead weight. What a night! All she wants now is to crawl beneath her covers and sleep till morning.
“Don’t move!” a voice orders as she reaches her bedroom. “Hands in the air.”
“Oh my God!”
Maggie slowly reaches behind her to flip on the overhead light. What she sees sends shivers from the top of her head to the bottoms of her feet, as if she has just stepped on a live wire.
Leo is sitting in the middle of the bed, giggling, the drawer to the nightstand open, his stuffed Mario in one hand, his mother’s Glock 19 in the other.
Chapter Forty-three
Sean is standing at his bedroom window, staring at the street below.
What the hell was that all about? he wonders, as Aiden and Maggie retreat to their respective houses.
He’d been lying in bed, unable to sleep, when he became aware of something happening outside. He’d climbed out of bed and gone to the window, witnessed Aiden at Maggie’s door, then watched him collapse on the step and bury his head in his hands. Maggie had appeared seconds later to sit down beside him, her hand on his back.
How he would have loved to have been able to listen in on that little tête-à-tête! Except that he couldn’t chance opening the window and having them notice him. As it was, he’d been forced to hide behind the curtains, sneaking only sporadic peeks at the scene below, in case one of them should glance his way.
Not that he doesn’t have his suspicions as to what Aiden was doing there. He’d had a front-row seat for the man’s unprovoked attack on Mark and watched Maggie comforting his distraught wife. He’d seen Heidi leave with Maggie and assumed she was spending the night at her place. Aiden had likely come to the same conclusion when Heidi failed to come home at the end of the night’s festivities.
Hence his middle-of-the-night foray.
Fortunately, whatever Maggie said to Aiden had been enough to calm him down.
For now.
But Aiden strikes Sean as a hothead, and he suspects it’s only a matter of time before he erupts again.
Some celebration tonight turned out to be! he thinks, and might have laughed out loud, had Olivia not been sleeping only a few feet away.
The last thing he wants to do is wake Olivia.
“So, it appears you have a clone,” she’d said as they were getting ready for bed.
“They say everyone has a double,” Sean had replied casually, silently cursing both Erin and her mother: Erin for almost giving him away and Maggie for butting her head in where it didn’t belong. He liked her better when she was a timid little mouse who kept to herself and rarely said a word to anybody. Suddenly, she’s everyone’s best friend, coming to his wife’s rescue at the grocery store and now to Heidi’s. Hell, she’s even managed to befriend that snooty bitch, Dani Wilson.
How the good doc ever got himself saddled with that one is something he’ll never understand.
He looks toward the Wilson house next door and thinks he sees Nick in his bedroom window. The commotion likely woke him up, Sean decides, lifting his hand to wave. But the doctor, if he was there at all, disappears before Sean can complete the gesture.
Sean climbs back into bed, careful not to disturb Olivia. He knows he can’t fool her forever, that by continuing to lie to her he’s digging his own grave.
What he doesn’t know is how to stop.
* * *
—
Olivia feels the weight of her husband’s body as he sinks into bed beside her. She fights the urge to ask him what was going on outside, feigning sleep so as not to risk a conversation that would inevitably end with her confronting him with her suspicions.
Suspicions that his drinking has gotten out of hand.
That he’s been lying to her about Advert-X.
Lying about everything.
She buries her head in her pillow to stifle a groan. How else to explain his persistent vagueness when questioned about his job, how evasive and general his answers always are, how fidgety he gets when she presses for details, how she rarely sees him without a drink in his hand?
Take tonight. He must have consumed at least half a dozen beers, which might be acceptable if he were Mark’s age, but even Mark had stopped at three. And Mark had every reason to indulge. He’d been assaulted, for God’s sake!
What the hell was that about?
Was Julia’s grandson really having an affair with Aiden’s wife?
Olivia opens her eyes, stares into the darkness. She has a much more important question to consider than whether two of her neighbors are sleeping together. Namely, who was the man Erin saw on the beach last Monday afternoon?
Was it Sean’s clone?
Or was it Sean himself?
She sighs as she closes her eyes.
There’s only one way to find out.
* * *
—
Nick comes out of his bathroom and returns to the window, relieved to find the street empty again. As it should be at this hour of the morning. He looks over at his wife, wondering if she’s asleep or just pretending to be. Normally, she’s an extremely light sleeper, so attuned to the kids’ needs that she wakes up at the slightest disturbance. But she didn’t so much as stir when Aiden st
arted banging on Maggie’s door.
“What were you talking to Maggie about earlier?” he’d asked Dani as they were getting ready for bed.
“Nothin’,” she’d insisted.
“You were talking for quite a while. It had to be about something.”
“Just the usual small talk. ‘How are you? What’s been doin’?’ That sort of thing. Nothin’ important.”
“You’re sure?”
“ ’Course I’m sure.”
“I don’t like her.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t trust her. She’s a troublemaker.”
“She’s not…”
“Don’t be naïve. Some women, when their husbands leave them, they can’t resist making trouble for other people under the guise of friendship.”
“Maggie’s not like that.”
“How do you know what she’s like?”
“Well, I don’t….”
“No, you don’t. But I do. And I don’t think you should be talking to her anymore.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“But that’s crazy. We live right next door.”
“Are we going to have a problem here, Dani?”
“What? No. No problem.”
“Good.”
Luckily, that ended the discussion. Now there was only one more thing that needed to be dealt with. Nick takes a last look out the window, then walks to the bed. He gives Dani’s raised thigh a not-too-gentle slap. “Wake up.”
Dani bolts up in bed. “What’s happenin’? Are the boys…?”
“The boys are fine.”
She struggles to get her breathing under control. “Is somethin’ wrong? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“I don’t understand. Why’d you wake me up?”
“Because I’ve made a decision, and I didn’t want to get into an argument with you about it in front of the boys.”
“A decision about what?”
“We’re moving.”
“What?”
“First thing tomorrow, I’m calling a real estate agent and putting this house on the market.”
“What?” Dani says again.
“It’s high time we moved to a better neighborhood, preferably a gated community with a golf course, somewhere like where Julia’s son lives.”
Dani struggles to make sense of what her husband is saying. “Can we please talk about this in the mornin’?”
Nick climbs back into bed. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
* * *
—
Mark stands in the doorway to his grandmother’s bedroom, watching her sleep, the gentle rise and fall of her shoulders reassuring him that she’s alive and sleeping peacefully.
Which is a miracle, considering what he’s put her through lately.
He shakes his head, trying to erase the image of her confronting his dealer, his grandfather’s Smith & Wesson in her frail hands, the way the color drained from her face when it was over and she collapsed to the floor, and how for a minute, he thought she was dead. She’d spent two days in the hospital, for God’s sake.
All because of him.
And now, tonight. Her complexion and blood pressure were just starting to return to normal when Aiden had come flying out of nowhere to wrestle him to the ground.
“I don’t understand,” Julia had cried. “Why would he do such a thing? What’s the matter with him?”
Mark pushes his shoulders back, reliving the impact of Aiden’s body crashing into his. The lunatic could have killed me, he thinks, walking to the window and looking toward the house next door.
I’m the matter with him, he acknowledges. I’m the matter with everything.
Maggie knows that. That’s why she doesn’t want him anywhere near her daughter.
To be sure, Erin’s age may have something to do with it—shit, is she really only sixteen?—but that’s not the only reason. It’s not even the main one.
The real reason Maggie doesn’t want him anywhere near her daughter is that she knows instinctively that he’s a loser, that despite his grandmother’s unwavering faith in him, he’s never going to be anything but bad news.
Mark tiptoes to the dresser and slowly opens the drawer containing Julia’s jewelry box. It’s too risky to open it here, so he carries it into his bedroom and closes the door. Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” assaults his ears as he opens the box and grabs a handful of gold chains, stuffing them inside the pockets of his jeans.
He returns the box to Julia’s dresser drawer, then crosses to her bedside and gently pulls the covers she’s dislodged in her sleep over her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Nana,” he whispers, kissing her dry cheek. “I love you.” Then he hurries down the stairs and disappears into the night.
Chapter Forty-four
“I said, don’t move. Put both hands in the air.”
Maggie struggles to remain calm as she raises both arms above her head, her eyes riveted to the gun in her son’s unsteady hands. “Leo, honey. Listen to me very carefully. I need you to put the gun down on the bed.”
Leo giggles, causing the Glock in his hands to shake. “But Mario wants to play.”
“It’s not a toy, sweetheart.”
“You were playing with it before. I saw you.” Leo twists the gun over in his hands, so that the barrel is now pointing directly at his head.
“Oh God,” Maggie gasps as she watches him examining it. “No, honey. It’s a real gun. Please, put it down.”
“It’s real?”
“Yes.”
“Is it loaded?”
“Yes.”
“With real bullets?”
“With real bullets,” she repeats. “Which means it’s very dangerous. You don’t want Mario to get hurt. Please put it down.”
Leo lowers the gun to his lap.
His finger remains on the trigger.
“Okay. That’s good. Now, slowly and carefully, take your hands away.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Mario’s scared,” he says, starting to cry.
“It’s okay, honey. Listen to Mommy, and everything will be fine. Just lift your finger off the trigger and let go of the gun.”
“I can’t. I’m afraid.”
“Okay. It’s okay. Can Mommy help you?”
He nods.
“Okay. Don’t you move. Mommy’s coming.” Maggie slowly lowers her hands as she takes baby steps toward the bed. “Okay,” she says when she reaches his side. “Now you sit very still, and Mommy’s going to help you lift your finger. So, watch that you don’t press down. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“All right. Here we go.” Maggie holds her breath as she reaches over to gingerly pry her son’s finger from the trigger. “Thatta boy. You’re doing great. Almost off.” Slowly, carefully, as if she is dismantling a bomb, she removes Leo’s finger from the trigger and his hand from the gun’s handle. She lays the weapon beside the alarm clock on the nightstand, then bursts into tears.
She pulls Leo to her chest, aware it could have just as easily been his dead body she was clinging to. “Oh God. Oh God. Oh God,” she cries, imagining what could have been.
“You’re squeezing too tight,” Leo says. “Mario can’t breathe.”
Maggie immediately loosens her grip, although she doesn’t let go.
“Am I in trouble?” he asks.
“No, sweetheart. You’re not in trouble. This was my fault, not yours.”
“How come you have a gun?”
“Because I was scared.”
“Because Daddy isn’t here?”
Maggie shrugs. She’s been scared for so long it’s hard to know what she’s scared of anymore. �
�First thing tomorrow, I’m going to get rid of that stupid gun,” she tells him. “And then you know what?”
“What?”
Maggie smiles through her tears. “Then I’m not going to be scared anymore.”
* * *
—
Aiden sits at the kitchen table in the dark, the only light coming from the iPad open in front of him. He clicks onto Facebook and types in the name Gordon Young, then stops, erases it, types it in again, then erases it again.
What the hell is he doing?
How much more of a mess can he make of this night?
He’s hated Fourth of July celebrations ever since he came back from Afghanistan, the intermittent, bomb-like explosions of the colorful displays, the rifle-like rat-a-tat-tat of the firecrackers, the easy patriotism that knows nothing of death and destruction.
He knows that he made a complete ass of himself by tackling Julia Fisher’s grandson in front of all the neighbors, that he embarrassed Heidi and scared the poor old lady half to death. He’s lucky Mark wasn’t seriously injured.
And for what? Had he really thought the kid was an enemy combatant? Did he honestly believe his mother’s accusations had any merit?
He bites down on his bottom lip till he tastes blood. What is the matter with him? He knows that Heidi would never cheat on him. He knows the baby is his. Why does he let his mother put such stupid ideas into his head? Why does he continue to let her manipulate and control him?
“She’s just using this baby to try and trap you,” Lisa said even before they were fully through their front door. “You know that.”
“I don’t think…” he started to reply.
“That’s the problem. You aren’t thinking clearly. Not where she’s concerned. You never have. Darling, don’t you see? She’s just using you. This baby is her meal ticket. You deserve so much better.”
Heidi’s the one who deserves better, Aiden thinks now.
He’d waited for her to come home when the night’s celebration was over and the last of the fireworks had been sent soaring into the sky. From his living room window, he’d watched the neighbors packing up and putting everything away and waited for Heidi to break from Maggie’s side and come back home to him.
