The Girl Next Door

by MacDonald, Patricia

  The reporter was returned to the screen. “The chief is confident that they have the situation in hand,” he said, “but there are others here in Hoffman who are not so sure.”

  The reporter’s face was then replaced by tape of some middle-aged woman shopping on Lafayette Street saying, “You’re darn right I’m worried about it. I mean, a man that violent living here in our community. I didn’t know the man, but I remember when it happened …”

  Oh my God, Nina thought. Who told them? We’ve been here one day. Already they’ve got him plastered all over the news. How can he get any peace? I knew he shouldn’t come back here.

  The camera switched back to the reporter, who was saying, “This is Ed Fitler, reporting from Hoffman, New Jersey, where an anxious town is trying to adjust to the homecoming of a convicted killer.”

  Fuming, Nina snapped off the TV and stalked over to the window. There had to be a law against that. How could they put that stuff on TV for everybody to see? She peered up and down the street, as far as the trees allowed her to see, but there was no sign of her father.

  She could picture him walking along out there, kicking through the leaves, his hands in his pockets, taking a little pleasure from his freedom. What if somebody saw him out there and recognized him? And decided they didn’t want him on their street? People could be so irrational and vicious. They might come chasing after him. They could hurt him. Kids were known for things like that. Adults, too. She couldn’t just leave him alone out there. She grabbed up the keys and her jacket and ran out to the car.

  Nina slowly trolled the quiet, lamplit streets of Hoffman. She drove up and down the streets looking for a thin man in a windbreaker. Where could he have gone? she wondered, as she peered up driveways and along sidewalks. Once the twilight joggers and dog walkers were finished, nobody walked around this town. Anyone who saw him might take him for a burglar. Anyone who recognized him might take him for something worse than that.

  Nina drove along the northern perimeter of the Madison Creek Nature Preserve, and then slowly turned down their old street. Before she even got around the corner she had a feeling she was going to find him. It made kind of a perverse sense that he would go there. And sure enough, as she rounded the corner, she saw, under the light of a streetlamp, his lonely figure, standing on the sidewalk staring up at the house. The house where she grew up. The house where her mother was murdered.

  Nina rolled up to the curb and lowered her window. Duncan turned around with a start and then recognized her.

  “Nina. What’s the matter?” he said irritably, bending down and looking into the open window.

  “Dad, I thought I better come pick you up.”

  “Why?” he demanded.

  She didn’t want to tell him about the newscast. It would probably be in the local paper on Aunt Mary’s doorstep the next day. That would be soon enough. But he was looking at her impatiently. “Why?” he repeated.

  “I was just … worried. You’d been gone so long. What are you doing all the way over here?”

  “Nina, leave me alone. I know you mean well, but you are hovering over me and I can’t stand it. You have to stop it. I’m not some child. I’m your father. I’ll come back when I’m ready.”

  Nina looked past him at the house where they had once lived. Through the branches of the trees she could see lights glowing in every window. It had taken a long time for someone to buy the house. Everyone knew what had happened there, and once prospective buyers found out, they never returned. The people who finally bought it got it at a bargain basement price. But there it stood, looking warm and homey, as if no family had ever been torn apart and scattered to the winds because of what happened in that house. She felt tears rise to her eyes again, but she blinked them back.

  “Fine,” she said coldly. “Do what you want.” She turned away from him and began to roll up the window. She half hoped that he would knock on the window, try to stop her, apologize for his curtness with her. But Duncan did none of those things. He stepped back onto the sidewalk and watched as she pulled away.

  I’m only trying to help you, she thought. It’s not as if I like being here. Everything here reminds me of all that. Of everything that happened. If you don’t want me to help you, fine. You can handle everything by yourself, fine.

  Dark thoughts jangled in her mind as she drove back to Aunt Mary’s house and pulled into the driveway. She got out, slamming the car door, and marched up the walk toward the front door. Halfway up the walk, she noticed that there was something on the front door that had not been there when she left. A piece of paper had been attached there, although its corners fluttered in the evening breeze. Her heart suddenly started to pound and she approached slowly, looking around to see if whoever left the paper was still around.

  Don’t panic, she thought. Maybe it’s a take-out menu, or somebody came to fix something and left a message for Aunt Mary. But she knew it wasn’t that. Nobody brought around take-out menus at this hour. Nobody came to do repairs. She stepped up to the door and looked at it. The message was written in capital letters in black, and it was easy to read: WIFE KILLER. GO BACK TO JAIL WHERE YOU BELONG.

  Nina tore it off the door, her face flaming. She turned and looked around her, wondering if whoever had posted it there was still watching the house, waiting to see what their reaction would be. Somebody knew that her father was in this house. Somebody cruel and vindictive. The street was quiet and peaceful, the image of slumbering suburbia on a mild autumn evening, she thought bitterly. The kind of place where no one would think dark thoughts, or plot against his neighbor.

  6

  NINA went to bed before her father returned, but she couldn’t fall asleep.

  She switched on the bedside lamp and lay in her aunt’s sagging double bed, looking around at the dingy corners of the bedroom, wondering how long it had been since the curtains had been taken down and washed, or the room had been painted. I can fix this room up for her, Nina thought. I’ll clean it and paint it so that when she comes home it will be fresh for her. Nina occupied herself with these plans until she heard the front door open and then close again. Quickly she switched off the lamp so that Duncan would not think she was waiting for him.

  When Duncan came down for breakfast the next day he looked exhausted. After a night’s sleep, Nina felt better and was back in his corner. She had hidden the posted message in her room so that he would not see it. Whoever the sick bastard was who had hung it on the door, Duncan did not need to know about it.

  “What do we need to do today?” he said, as he slowly ate a bowl of cold cereal.

  “Well, I’ve decided to give Aunt Mary’s room a freshening up. It will be a nice surprise for her when she comes home. So, I need to go to Lowe’s and buy some paint. Maybe you could help me move the furniture away from the walls and take down the curtains.”

  “Sure,” he said absently. “You want your old room? I can sleep on the couch in the living room. That’s fine for me.”

  “No, no. I can sleep in the sewing room. There’s a sofabed in there. But we do need to start thinking about finding you an apartment. What else do you need to do?” she asked.

  Duncan grimaced as he chewed. “God, I need to go to a dentist. My teeth are a mess.”

  “Today?” she said.

  “No, today I need to go to Motor Vehicles. Get a temporary license and apply for my new license.”

  “Are you allowed to do that?” she asked.

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “I can’t vote. I can’t drink. But I can drive,” he said.

  “All right. We’ll do that.”

  “I was hoping,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Maybe I could see my grandchildren.”

  Nina tried to hide her surprise. After that humiliating boycott of dinner at her apartment, she wondered why he would want to set himself up for rejection again so soon. Duncan seemed to notice her reluctance.

  “What’s the matter? You know I want to see them. That’
s one of the reasons I came back here.”

  Nina grimaced. “I know but … Gemma’s probably working. I don’t want to disturb her,” she said.

  “Oh, I don’t expect an invitation. I meant … you know, get a look at the kids. I haven’t even seen Patrick’s house. Could we drive by it? Maybe the kids will be playing outside. I just want to see them.”

  “I … guess we could,” said Nina, embarrassed by the pleading note in his voice. “And we should go downtown and get you something else to wear. Something that fits.”

  “You’re the boss,” he said, and she knew that was his way of trying to say he was sorry for snapping at her the night before. She wasn’t going to tell him that she could never hold it against him. Not after all he had suffered. He was entitled to his anger, she thought. Even if he took it out on her.

  THEY completed their business for the day and drove out to Old Hoffman, the part of town studded with fields and horse barns, where its wealthiest citizens resided. On their way they passed the entrance to the country club.

  “Is Patrick a member?” Duncan asked.

  Nina was caught off guard by his question. When Patrick moved to this neighborhood he learned that he was permanently blackballed from the club because of his father’s crime. And Patrick had been furious—not at the country club members for their narrow-mindedness, but at Duncan, for causing him further deprivation.

  “Nina?”

  “Uh … no.”

  “No? Does he still play golf ?” asked Duncan.

  “Yes … but … I think … Gemma was uncomfortable there. She’s not really the country club type,” Nina said quickly. That certainly wasn’t a lie, Nina thought.

  As they rounded the curve to Patrick’s house they passed the driveway leading to the house where Lindsay Farrell’s parents lived. It was a little odd, she thought, that Patrick had bought the next property over from theirs. Had Lindsay moved back in with her family when she returned to town? Was she now living right next door to Patrick?

  “This is it,” said Nina. “The next one on the left. It’s hard to see it through the trees.” Patrick’s house was covered in fieldstone and blended into the gray bark of the surrounding trees in the November landscape. In front of the house was a large pond with mallards gliding on its silvery surface.

  Duncan peered out the window. “Wow,” he said. “How much money does your brother make, anyway?”

  “A lot. He mints the stuff,” said Nina, as she pulled to the side of the road and let the car idle. “It’s beautiful inside, too. Patrick picked out everything.”

  “What about his wife?” Duncan asked. “Isn’t that usually the wife’s job …?”

  “Oh, come on, Dad,” Nina teased him. “Times have changed. It’s whoever wants to do it these days. Anyway, Patrick’s very particular. He has very … exacting taste. He likes everything to … look … a certain way.”

  “Are they a good couple? Are they happy together?” Duncan asked.

  “Patrick and Gemma …?” Nina thought about her brother and his wife. When Marsha was killed and Lindsay dumped him, Patrick’s self-confidence faltered. He leaned on his tutor and their relationship seemed to become much closer. Despite her coolness and reserve, Gemma had proved loyal. She had stuck by him through the trial, through college, when everyone else abandoned him. Nina used to think their marriage was kind of romantic. She imagined that Patrick had been won over by Gemma’s loyalty and realized finally that Gemma’s indifference to fashion concealed her natural attractiveness. But Nina’s illusions had faded. Once Patrick had been proud of Gemma’s exceptional intelligence. Now he always seemed to find fault with her. And Nina knew they argued a lot. On her rare overnight visits she had heard them, and realized that they sounded distressingly like her parents used to sound. But all couples argued, she told herself, trying to think positively. “I guess they manage,” she said.

  “There they are!” Duncan cried.

  Nina looked where he was pointing and saw a pair of chubby little boys chasing one another across the immaculate yard.

  Before she could tell him to stop, Duncan had jumped out of the car and rushed toward the ornate wrought-iron fence that surrounded the property. He leaned against it and peered through the trees at the twins.

  Nina got out of the car. “Dad, you shouldn’t let them see you.”

  “Which one is which?” he asked. “Can you tell them apart?”

  Nina squinted at the two boys and then nodded. “The one in the dark green sweatshirt is Cody. He’s a little bit smaller than Simon.”

  Duncan shook his head. “My grandsons,” he breathed, as if he could hardly believe they were real.

  Shadows were beginning to fall across the yard and Nina looked at her watch. It was late in the day, and she didn’t want to be there when Patrick returned.

  “We better not hang around here, Dad,” she said. Duncan looked wistful leaning against the fence, drinking in the sight of the twins at play.

  The boys ran shrieking after one another in the direction of the house and then Simon put on a burst of speed and caught up with Cody, grabbing the hood of his sweatshirt and pulling him down to the ground. They began snarling and tumbling over one another like pudgy bear cubs, shouting insults. Simon sat down on Cody’s stomach and they had a brief, inadudible conference. Then Simon freed his twin and they raced in the direction of the pond.

  “They’re awfully close to the water,” said Duncan. “Are they allowed to be out there alone like that?”

  “They’re okay. Dad,” said Nina. “Come on. You’ve seen them. We better go. Patrick will not be happy if he finds you here.”

  But Duncan was not listening. “Nina, look. They’re right at the edge of that pond.”

  Nina looked up and down the road, watching anxiously for Patrick’s silver-blue Jaguar to come racing around the curve.

  “How do you get in here?” Duncan said. He began to search the fence for an opening. He found a latch and lifted it.

  “Dad, don’t go in there. If Patrick comes home and finds you here he’s going to be angry. I know him.”

  A splash and a horrible cry went up from the yard. The ducks squawked and rose from the surface of the pond with a flapping of wings. Duncan was already through the gate and running down the lawn. Nina looked toward the pond and saw Cody in the water, shrieking and gasping. His face was bright red and he was sobbing. Nina hurried down the lawn after her father. Duncan reached the water’s edge and put a hand out to the boy. “Take my hand,” he demanded.

  “Hey,” Simon protested. “Who are you?”

  The back door of the house opened and Gemma burst out, looking alarmed. She was followed by a short, heavyset woman with brown skin and a sullen expression on her round face. Gemma ran toward her sons and reached them just as a muddy Cody, still wailing, spurned Duncan’s offer of a hand and stood up in the knee-high water where he had landed. The other woman reached the edge of the pond and stood with her hands on her ample hips, shaking her head and muttering in Spanish.

  “Cody,” Gemma cried. “Are you all right? What is going on?”

  “He pushed me,” Cody shrieked, pointing at Simon.

  “I did not,” Simon protested. “He fell in. This guy scared him and he fell in.” Simon pointed at Duncan, who stood, pale and trembling, in his gray windbreaker.

  Gemma turned and started as she recognized her father-in-law. “Dr. Avery.”

  “Hello, dear,” Duncan said.

  “Call the cops on him,” Simon insisted.

  The older Spanish-speaking woman sighed and extended a hand to Cody. Grasping her brown hand, Cody clambered out of the pond. The woman began to chatter disapprovingly at him in Spanish.

  Gemma turned on the woman. “Elena, you were supposed to be watching them. I told you I was going to be working. What were you thinking?”

  The older woman frowned at Gemma and shook her head sharply. Clearly angry, Gemma launched into rapid-fire Spanish. She spoke like a native a
fter spending her early years in South America. She questioned the older woman, who glared at her and replied in a wounded tone. Gemma shook her head and pointed toward the house. “Go in the house with Elena, both of you. Cody, change out of those clothes and don’t leave them on the floor of your room.”

  They walked a few steps and then Cody pushed Simon out of the way and took off running. Simon yelped and started after him. Elena, with a withering glance at Gemma, lumbered up the lawn after them.

  Gemma shook her head. “This is why I’m having so much trouble getting the book together,” she said. “Elena was supposed to be watching them.” Gemma watched her sons as they disappeared into the house. The back door of the house slammed and Gemma turned to Nina and Duncan, looking ill at ease. “I didn’t know you were coming for a visit.”

  “It’s not exactly a visit. My father wanted to see the twins,” said Nina.

  “Why didn’t you just come to the door?”

  Patrick, Nina wanted to say, but she didn’t. “Dad just wanted to have a look at them. They’re cute, aren’t they, Dad? He’s been looking forward to this.”

  An awkward silence descended. “Well,” said Gemma. “Shall we all go inside?”

  Nina didn’t want to put Gemma in an impossible position. Obviously, she had her hands full between the twins and her work. Plus Patrick could be home at any minute. “No. We need to go.”

  Gemma smiled tensely, twisting her rings. “All right. If you have to.”

  Nina turned to her father.

  Duncan stood with his hands in his pockets, gazing at the surface of the pond.

  “Dad?” she said.

  Duncan frowned. “It’s dangerous to let those boys play by themselves so close to the water,” he said.

  Gemma’s smile faded. “I didn’t let them,” she protested. “The housekeeper was supposed to be watching them while I was working. That’s her job.”

  “Besides, the water is knee-high on them,” Nina said, exasperated.