Stiff Competition

by Annelise Ryan

  “Really?” David says, his tone rife with skepticism. “Is Hurley going to do the right thing finally and offer to marry you?”

  “Hurley has always wanted to do the right thing. He asked me to marry him months ago. I’m the one who’s been holding out.”

  I start to shut the door again, but David puts out a hand to stop it. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t come over here intending to start a fight with you. It’s just that . . . you and . . . things . . . Oh hell, I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Things have changed a lot in the past year.”

  “Yes, they have.” It’s an understatement of astounding proportions. “We’ve both moved on and made some big changes. For the better, I think.”

  “Is it better, having a kid?” he asks, peering past me toward the bassinet.

  “Life is definitely more hectic and my energy levels are much more taxed. But Matthew is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Nothing in my life, no person in my life, has ever made me happier.”

  David switches his gaze back to me. “Can I see him?”

  I’m taken aback by his request. “I really am supposed to be somewhere,” I say, stalling and looking pointedly at my watch.

  “Please, just a quick peek.”

  “Okay.” I step back and wave him inside. “But make it quick.”

  David walks past me into the living room and heads for the bassinet. He’s about three feet away when Hoover utters a low guttural growl.

  “It’s okay, Hoover,” I say.

  David stops where he is and looks back at me. “He isn’t going to bite me, is he?”

  “Not if I tell him it’s okay. He’s very protective of Matthew.”

  “Matthew,” David echoes, with a curious tone. “How did you come by the name?”

  “It’s a masculine variation on Mattie,” I tell him. “His middle name is Izthak, after Izzy.”

  I can tell David is still leery of Hoover so I walk up to the bassinet with him and we stand there together looking down at my sleeping son. “He has Hurley’s hair,” David says after a bit.

  “Yes, at least so far. That could change, though.”

  He stares for a few more seconds and then looks over at me. “Are you really happy, Mattie?”

  I smile. “Yes, I am. I’m exhausted beyond belief and would give my right arm for a full night’s sleep, but I wouldn’t trade him for all the sleep in the world. I wouldn’t even trade him for ice cream.”

  David laughs. He knows my ice cream addiction well.

  Matthew stirs at the sound, stretching one fisted hand and sucking with his lips. Then he opens his eyes, looks up at David, and smiles.

  I glance at David’s face, curious to see his reaction. He smiles back at Matthew—a genuine, spontaneous response—but after a few seconds the smile fades into a frown. “I always thought you and I would be sharing an experience like this,” he says. “I guess I really mucked things up, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, you kinda did.”

  He looks at me with warmth, sincerity, and a hint of regret. “I truly am sorry for any hurt I caused you, Mattie. And I’m glad you’re happy.”

  “Thank you.” While it’s nice to hear this long overdue apology, I’m wary of the sudden change in David’s demeanor. Our relationship has been so marked by rancor and nastiness up until now, it’s hard to accept this newer, remorseful version of him.

  Matthew kicks his arms and legs, screws his face up, and starts to cry. I feel my milk let down and curse the timing. “That cry means it’s mealtime,” I say to David, hinting yet again that it’s time for him to go. I check Matthew’s diaper, find it’s wet, and go about changing him. He stops crying and starts cooing at me instead.

  David either didn’t get the hint or has chosen to ignore it, because he stands there watching me as I work. When I’m done, I pick Matthew up and hold him close to my chest. “Is there anything else?” I ask, bouncing Matthew in my arms and giving David an impatient look.

  “No, I guess not,” he says, and heads for the door.

  “Thanks again for bringing Hoover home.”

  “You’re welcome.” He finally leaves and as I watch him head off into the woods, I hold Matthew close, literally embracing my new life as I say good-bye to my old one.

  Chapter 26

  I swear my sister, Desi’s, house smells better than any place on Earth. It doesn’t take much to smell better than my place right now, given that the primary aromas are wet and dirty diapers, and unwashed dog. But Desi is always baking or cooking something yummy and delicious, and tonight is no exception. The house smells like Italy, the air fragrant with the scents of oregano, basil, and tomatoes.

  “Oh, my,” Desi says as soon as I enter. “You’ve changed your hair.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I hate it, okay? Let’s move on.”

  “Let me see the little guy.” Desi grabs Matthew’s carrier from me and the rest of the family appears and swarms around the two of them. Even my brother-in-law, Lucien, makes goo-goo eyes and baby noises, chucking Matthew under his chin. It’s a softer side of Lucien that I rarely get to see.

  After several minutes of oohing and aahing, my thirteen-year-old niece, Erika, takes Matthew out of his carrier seat and settles on the couch with him in her lap. My nephew, Ethan, is curious, but less so than when he’s examining one of his bug specimens. He has an interesting and creepy collection of six- and eight-legged critters, most of which are dead, thank goodness. The two that are alive are scary enough: Fluffy, his tarantula, and Hissy, a three-inch-long Madagascar hissing cockroach. Fortunately they are caged up in what are hopefully escape-proof containers, though I’ll never think of the term hissy fit in quite the same way again.

  “I want one of these,” Erika says, bouncing Matthew in her lap.

  “Hey, don’t go getting any ideas,” Desi says. Then she shifts her attention to me. “Any word on Emily?”

  I shake my head. “Not yet. Hurley’s still in Chicago looking for her.”

  “She wouldn’t go to Chicago,” Erika says. “She hated that place.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “When she went with us to the water park this summer she kept talking about how the kids in Chicago always made fun of her because she didn’t wear designer clothes and couldn’t afford to do a lot of stuff. And from what I hear, the kids here are doing the same thing. Christine Randall said that her sister, Carly, was joking about how Emily was trying to cozy up with some of the cheerleaders who let her think they would accept her as a friend, but all they’re really doing is laughing at her behind her back.”

  My heart aches for Emily hearing about this. I can remember how hard it was to break into some of the cliques when I was in high school. Kids can be so cruel.

  “That’s horrible!” Desi says to her daughter. “I hope you don’t condone that sort of behavior, Erika.”

  “Of course not,” she says.

  “I know Carly Randall,” I tell Erika. “I went to school with her mother. And I talked to her yesterday when we were at the school. She never said a word about any of this.”

  “Of course not,” Erika says, looking at me like I’m as dense as a concrete block. “You’re a grown-up for one, and you’re connected to Emily. That’s two strikes against you.”

  “Why do the other girls dislike Emily so much? Is it because she’s the new kid?”

  “No, it’s more than that,” Erika says, playing with Matthew’s feet. “One of the other cheerleaders, Olivia Mason, likes Johnny Chester and she’s pissed off that Emily is dating him.”

  “Hey, watch the language,” Desi chastises. “Particularly around the little guy.”

  “Sorry,” Erika says, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, Christine says the other kids think Emily is weird because she’s so quiet and shy. And then when Johnny started showing interest in her, Olivia and her friends got really mad.”

  “It sounds like I need to have another chat with Carly,” I say, angered that the girl lied to me, and
angrier yet that Emily has had to put up with that sort of mean-spirited, cliquish behavior.

  Erika looks panicked. “Don’t tell her I said anything. I don’t want to make anyone mad at me.”

  “I won’t tell,” I promise.

  Desi nods toward the kitchen and says, “Dinner is almost ready. Want to give me a hand?”

  I look over at Erika, who is now holding Matthew over her shoulder. “You okay with him for now?”

  “Heck, yeah. I’ll keep him forever if you let me.”

  I follow Desi out into the kitchen and help by getting the dining room table set and filling water glasses. We chat about Matthew and how things are going now that I’m back to work.

  “It’s hard leaving him,” I tell her, “but I have to admit it’s also been kind of a relief to get away for a little while. I’m not as good a mom as you were.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Desi says, taking the lasagna out of the oven and setting it on the stove. “You’re a great mom.”

  “I try, but the lack of sleep and the never-ending schedule of feedings and changings and laundry and bottle cleaning drives me crazy.”

  “You’re doing it alone and that makes it doubly hard. Even with help it’s hard, especially for those first few months.”

  “You did it and loved it,” I say. “Twice.”

  “Oh, I had my moments. Trust me,” she says with a chuckle. “There were days when I fantasized about running away from home the way Emily has.”

  The sobering change of subject throws us into an awkward silence. After a few seconds, Desi takes the lasagna into the dining room and sets it on the table. Then she comes back and takes some buttery garlic bread from the broiler and dumps it into a bread basket.

  “Let’s eat,” she says.

  I run out to the car and get the little bouncy seat I have for Matthew and place him in it in front of the TV. I can see him from the dining room table and watch as he stares at the changing colors on the TV screen. Every few minutes he kicks his legs and thrashes his arms with excitement, and I can’t help but wonder what’s going through his mind.

  The dinner conversation starts out with updates on what the kids are doing in school, but it inevitably comes back to Emily.

  “I went over to Hurley’s house and looked through her things, thinking I might find a diary, or some notes, or something that would give us a clue, but there was nothing. Don’t most kids her age keep a diary of some sort?” I look over at Erika. “Do you have one?”

  Erika hesitates just long enough to tell me she’s lying. “Heck, no,” she says. “But if I did have one, I’d hide it really well and make sure no one else could find it and read it.”

  By the time we’re done eating, Matthew starts to fuss so I grab him from his seat and head out to the kitchen to feed him. I settle on a stool at the bar and let Matthew nurse while Desi does the cleanup.

  After a few minutes, Desi walks over and leans across the bar toward me. “Erika does have a diary,” she says in a low voice. “And no doubt she’d be shocked to know that I not only know where she keeps it, I read it.”

  “You do?”

  “Oh, yes. I remember all too well what a teenaged girl is like and I want to make sure I keep tabs on her. I check all of her e-mails, the browser history on her computer, her social networking posts . . . all of it. So far she’s been a pretty good kid, but she’s starting to show a lot of interest in boys, so things could change in a heartbeat.”

  “Where does she hide the diary?” I ask, thinking it might give me a clue on where else I might look for one in Emily’s room.

  “There’s a tear in the lining on the bottom of her box spring and she stuffs it up inside there. The diary has a lock on it and I don’t know where she keeps the key, but it’s easy enough to pick the lock with a bobby pin. I used to do it with yours all the time.”

  “You read my diary?”

  “Of course I did,” she says with a laugh. “You had that pretty blue book with the gold clasp and lock on it, remember? All I had to do was bend the end of a bobby pin, stick it in the lock, and turn it. Easy-peasy.”

  “You stinker,” I say with a laugh, putting Matthew over my shoulder for a burp. “Did you read anything dicey in there?”

  “Oh, yeah. I read all about how you lost your virginity to Mitch Dalrymple.”

  I gasp. “You didn’t!”

  “I did,” she says, with a sly grin. “When I read the part about how he broke your heart I wanted to kill the guy.”

  I shake my head in awe. “I can’t believe you read that.”

  “You had no secrets from me, Mattie.”

  “Did you ever tell Mom?”

  “No, I wasn’t that mean. Besides, if I’d squealed you would have stopped writing in the diary and then what would I have done for entertainment? I was getting bored with those Nancy Drew mysteries we used to stage.”

  That memory makes me laugh. “Those were fun, weren’t they?”

  “Yes, they were,” Desi says with a chuckle. “Remember how we used to write notes in invisible ink?”

  “How could I forget? We almost burned the house down.”

  Desi and I experimented with different ways to write notes back and forth using invisible ink. My science teacher in school had shown us how to do it using either lemon juice or milk, and writing on a piece of paper with a cotton swab or toothpick dipped in one of these. Once it dried, the reader would have to heat the paper by holding it over a candle or other flame source. Since we had a gas stove, Desi used that to heat a message I’d written in lemon juice. But she got a little too close to the flame and the paper started to burn. She dropped it on the counter where it caught a roll of paper towels on fire. Panicking, she grabbed a carton of milk that was on the counter and threw it on the flames. I squirted lemon juice from a bottle on top of that. The fire was put out, but not before it had burned the bottom of the kitchen curtains and left a burn mark on the countertop. Not to mention that there was spilt, curdled milk everywhere.

  Our clean freak of a mother had a major meltdown, and Desi and I joked about the term major meltdown even as we quaked in fear every time Mom walked into the kitchen and started sniffing. She could detect a single molecule of sour milk from a mile away and she made me and Desi scrub that kitchen from ceiling to floor a dozen times over the next two weeks.

  “Those secret notes were a lot of fun,” I say, reminiscing. “I should have written my diary notes out in invisible—” I stop as a flash of an idea comes to me. “I need to go,” I say, getting up with Matthew on my shoulder.

  “What?” Desi says, looking worried. “Is something wrong?”

  “No, but I need to go check on something.”

  I quickly get Matthew and myself bundled up and say my good-byes. Then I get in my car and drive to Hurley’s house. As soon as I’m inside, I head upstairs to Emily’s room and set Matthew down on the floor. For the sake of being thorough, I get down on my hands and knees and examine the underside of Emily’s bed, looking for openings or tears in the box springs. There aren’t any, so I get up and head for the desk drawer and the empty composition book. I open the book and carefully examine the pages. I can’t visualize anything written on them, but the paper has a slight wavy quality to it that makes me think something might be on it.

  I head for the dresser and the underwear drawer, remove the lighter I’d found earlier inside the tampon box, and carry it back to the desk. It takes me a minute to open the notebook in a way that allows me to single out a page. I have to set it on the edge of the desk with the page hanging over the side and some books weighing down the rest of the notebook. Then, holding the page in one hand and the lighter in the other, I flick a flame into existence and wave it back and forth beneath the page. Nothing happens so I try moving the lighter closer to the page until I create a small brown spot that nearly ignites. Still nothing is visible.

  Frustrated, I toss the lighter aside, and open up the middle desk drawer that holds all the pens.
It doesn’t take me long to spot one that looks different from the others. It’s shorter, and there is a small, clear plastic nub on one end of it. I remove the cap on the other end and expose a tip made of soft white plastic. There is no obvious roller ball or other device to facilitate ink flow and when I try to write on a piece of paper, nothing appears. I try depressing the clear plastic nub on the other end, but it won’t move. Then I see a small button on the side of the barrel. When I depress this, a bluish light emits from the clear button at the end. When I shine this light on the piece of paper I’d tried to write on a moment before, a bright white line appears.

  I shine the light over a page in Emily’s composition notebook, and my heart skips a beat as I see dozens of words spring to life.

  Chapter 27

  I settle into Emily’s chair and, using the light at the end of the pen, I scan and turn the pages quickly until I get to one that is empty. Then I go back to the last page with writing on it and start to read. It’s the tail end of a longer note, and after backtracking a couple more pages, I find the start I need.

  It takes me a few minutes to read the three-page entry, and when I’m done I take out my cell phone and call Hurley. The phone rings and then flips over to voice mail. I leave a message, telling him to call me right away because I have a lead on Emily. When I’m done, I call Richmond’s number. His end rings several times until I think it’s going to flip over to voice mail, too, but then Richmond answers sounding breathless and irritated.

  “Richmond,” he snaps, breathing heavily.

  “Bob, it’s Mattie. Are you at the gym? Did you finish up the stuff at Jeff Hunt’s place?”

  He doesn’t answer me and after several seconds of silence I start to think we’ve been disconnected. “Bob, are you there?”

  “What do you want, Mattie?” he grumbles.

  “I need your help.” I then explain to him what I’ve found and what I need.