Ana and I'd been close since we were eighteen—which was when my Aunt Rosetta left my Uncle Sal after she caught Uncle Sal playing more than Marco Polo with the pool boy. She'd packed up Ana and my cousin Victor and moved them out of California, back to Ohio, and in with us.
That summer still conjured up nightmares on occasion.
To escape the madhouse, I'd snagged an off-campus apartment and Ana moved in with me. I like to think that move saved my sanity. Ana's, however, was still in question.
I winced as I punched in her cell phone number. She wasn't going to be happy.
She answered on the first ring. "Ana Bertoli, glorified babysitter."
"One of those days, huh?"
"Nina, my life is one of those days. What's up?"
I bit my bottom lip, talked around it. "I need to cancel breakfast."
"What? Huh?" She made static noises. "Don't think I heard you right." More fake static. Her phone was going to be a slobbery mess. Hope she didn't get electrocuted.
When she paused for breath, I said, "I'm sorry. Bridget Sandowski called, said she needs to see me. She sounded weird."
"As in, she's-hitting-the-bottle-at-eight-in-the-morning weird, or just-plain-strange weird?"
"Plain strange weird, unlike you. Tell me you're drinking coffee."
"I'm not saying a word." She laughed, sort of an evil sounding
moo-ha-ha
. "Self-incrimination and all."
I heard a buzz of voices in the background, lots of phones ringing. Ana's a probation officer. Her desk sat smack-dab in the middle of the county's municipal building between four courtrooms and the local lockup. On a quiet day it was a madhouse. Today it sounded like a nightmare.
I picked a chunk of Kevin's cheating smile from the sink, tossed it in the trash. "Let's just hope they're not drug testing today."
Ana ignored me and said, "Who am I going to whine about my love life to?"
"
Your
love life? What about mine?"
"Me. Me. Me," she mocked, but I heard the smile in her voice.
I laughed at how pathetic I must've sounded these last few days. The details of the Big Boxer Blowout could wait until later.
"Lunch tomorrow?" I offered.
"I won't hold my breath."
"Smart a—"
She cut in. "Buh-bye."
I hung up, smiling. Neuroses aside, Ana always knew how to cheer me up.
I supposed I should plunge. Get it over with. But the sway of the tail on the cat clock Riley had given me years ago reminded me that I had yet to see him this morning. At this rate he was going to miss his bus.
Ignoring the sink for the time being, I yelled, "Riley!" at the top of my lungs. Anything less was ignored.
"Ri-ley!"
I took a peek out the window, and sure enough my neighbor Mr. Cabrera had craned his head in the direction of our house. The walls of our house were notoriously thin, and what was heard during any given week usually provided Mr. Cabrera with enough gossip to get him through the neighborhood's weekly cribbage game.
My house sat in an established nook of Freedom, Ohio, affectionately nicknamed "the Mill." As in gossip mill. Unlike its booming surroundings, this neighborhood had been settled decades ago, and most of its occupants regularly received AARP mailings and insurance pamphlets with Alex Trebek on the envelope. I'd inherited the house from my aunt Chi-Chi just after Kevin and I married, which was why I was able to start up my own landscaping business without falling too seriously into debt.
Gossip here was a way of life. The Mill, located smack dab between Cincinnati and Dayton, was a throwback to a simpler way of life. A place where people sat on their stoops every night, took their neighborhood watch duties seriously, and jumped at every opportunity to pass on information gathered in over-the-fence chats.
At times, it was endearing. But knowing the whole neighborhood would soon hear of my marriage woes . . . Well, that was just annoying.
I started up the stairs armed with a dish towel. In my maternal cache of weapons, this one meant business. "Riley Michael . . ."
I paused outside his room. Bass thumped, vibrating the floor beneath my bare feet, but no music sounded through the closed door. I knocked. No answer.
My hand trembled as I set it on the knob and I cursed my cowardice six ways to Sunday. I'm not big on confrontations, not with surly teenagers and not with the state of his room—which I'm quite sure must have at least five health code violations.
The smell was the first thing to assault my senses as I slowly pushed open Riley's door. The pungency of teenagemale sweat, mixed with a slight odor of musk, hung over the room.
The utter chaos was the next thing to knock me down a notch. But this time only my sense of style was wounded. Decorated in what could only be called by interior designers as "early adolescence," the room was strewn with clothes from wall to wall. I couldn't be sure, because it had been so long since I had seen it, but I thought the rug was shaggy green. I looked down to check, but saw a cup with what I hoped had dried chocolate milk in it and decided I really didn't need to know.
Posters hung on every available inch of wall space. His art tastes varied: half-naked women, ball players, rock stars. But it seemed, at least to my quick perusal, that the babes outnumbered the others. Not really surprising, considering his age.
I refused to look at the glass tank gracing the wall to the right of his bed. What was in that tank was scarier than the cup on the floor. A chill danced up my spine as heebiejeebies made me want to run for the door.
I had met Riley eight years ago, when he was seven. Back then, he was a four-foot-odd pudge, his blue eyes rounded with hurt and a healthy dose of scorn. I'd like to say our bond had grown over the years, but another one of my commandments was not to delude myself. I had no trouble with out-and-out lying, but self-delusion was a definite no-no.
"Ry!" I shouted. No response.
His long lean body stretched facedown across the twin bed, his feet dangling over the edge. There was a hole in the toe of his left sock, I noticed, as his foot tapped a furious beat through the air.
Gone now was his pudge, replaced with sinewy muscle. In another year or so girls would be tripping over their feet to get his attention.
I
thwapped
him on the back of his thigh with my dish towel.
When he spotted me, he hastily shoved the magazine he'd been reading under his pillow.
Hmmm.
I saw nothing new in the blue depths of his eyes as he looked at me. Just scorn, an emotion I thought I had steeled myself against years ago. Today, however, it brought a fresh slice of pain. I had kicked Kevin out of the house. Eventually Riley would join his father. Swallowing a sudden lump in my throat, I pushed that thought out of my mind. One thing at a time.
Slowly he reached up and lowered his left earphone. "Yeah?" He ran a hand over his hair to smooth it into place.
His hair was normally a wavy brown. This week it was black with bleached stripes. A sign of maturation, in his opinion. A sign of idiocy, in mine.
"School. You need to eat." When addressing a teenager, you needed to speak in short concise sentences. Anything less was not absorbed.
"Not hungry," he mumbled.
I
thwapped
him again with the dish towel. He raised his gaze to meet mine. Anger replaced scorn. I was actually grateful for the change, but his behavior grated on my already stretched-to-the-point-of-no-return nerves.
I will not
fight. I will not fight
, I repeated until I felt my anger turn from boil to simmer.
Reaching up, he slid the headphones down around his neck.
I crossed my arms over my chest. "A banana?"
"I'm not a damn baby, Nina."
I dismissed the urge to tighten the headphone cord around his throat. What wo
uld
Child Services say? "I didn't say I was going to mash it and spoonfeed you."
"I told you: I'm. Not. Hungry."
"Fine!"
"Fine."
"Fine!"
His dark lashes lowered. "You think I'm stupid."
I sighed. It was going to be one of
those
days, not just for Ana but for me too. "I do not think you're stupid, Riley."
"Yes, Nina, you do. You think I don't know what's going on with you and Dad?"
My stomach twisted, nausea coming sudden and swift. He was definitely smarter than I had given him credit for, but I had
never
thought him dumb. Kevin and I had tried to disguise his absence with a lame-o story of him being under cover. Riley had obviously seen right through our little sham.
"That's our business."
"No, it isn't."
He had mastered the art of condescension. I looked deep
into his unreadable eyes. "Your father and I are having some problems," I admitted.
"Did he cheat?"
The words hit me with force. I stumbled backward, a knot of something sour eating away at my stomach. My voice had gone AWOL, leaving me with nothing to reiterate that it was none of his fifteen-year-old business.
His lower lip jutted out. "Thought so."
I realized with a start that I'd been played. Riley'd been on a fishing expedition and I'd wriggled right up to the hook and impaled myself. Damn, I hated when that happened.
He waved a hand toward the door, dismissing me. "You can go."
Grrr.
Replacing the headphones, he turned his back to me. Carefully, I backtracked out of the room, supremely proud of myself for not slamming the door.
I paused outside his room. The notion that I should apologize nagged at me.
Why? F
or caring if he starved? For wanting to keep his father's and my business to ourselves? The floor stopped vibrating, and I pushed away from the wall before Riley could come out and accuse me of spying on him.
Since I tended to clean when stressed, I headed for the laundry room to throw in a quick load of wash. As I stepped over the threshold, I stopped short. This was where it had all begun two days ago—the beginning to the end of my marriage.
Lipstick on his boxers—a shade that wasn't mine, seeing as how I hadn't worn lipstick since the seventh grade. His betrayal was so cliché I wanted to laugh. But I couldn't. It still hurt.
I left the laundry in the hamper.
Back in the kitchen, I broke a cardinal commandment by calling the office on my day off.
My secretary, Tamara Oliver, answered on the first ring. "Taken by Surprise, this is Tam."
Despite the mess my life was in, I couldn't help the shimmer of pride I felt. My company, Taken by Surprise, Garden Designs, had started as a lark and spread like wildfire. It was just about the only thing going well in my world right now. "It's Nina."
"It's your day off," Tam reminded, humor lacing her words.
I ignored her unsubtle dig. "How are things?" When I didn't get an immediate answer, I got nervous. "Tam?"
Her heavy sigh echoed across the line. "A hoe is missing."
"Another one?!" This was the third in two weeks.
"And a shovel. And a rake." I heard the wince in her voice as she continued. "And a wheelbarrow."
"What! From the storage unit?"
"No. From Kit's truck."
Kit was my head landscaping contractor and site foreman, and he was one of my closest friends.
"But he doesn't know when the things were taken. Last he saw them was at the Johansen site on Sunday. I hate to repeat it, but he said the truck hadn't been broken into."
I read between the lines: One of my employees had sticky fingers. Not really surprising, since I tended to hire people with questionable backgrounds. I was a sucker for the wellexecuted sob story.
"Should I file a report with the police?"
I drummed my fingertips on the counter. "No. I want to look into it first."
"All-righty."
I heard Riley on the stairs and told Tam I'd check in later.
As I hung up the phone, Riley came in wearing a red shirt with baggy, oversized army green pants, but I said nothing. I learned a long time ago not to argue with his choice in clothes. He had his father's fashion sense, and there was little I could do about it.
"Sink's full up."
I glanced at the water and caught one of Kevin's eyes staring back at me. Dashing to the sink, I blocked Riley's view as I picked the piece of photo out of the water and shoved it in the pocket of my robe.
"Disposal's blocked."
"Want me to plunge it?"
Shocked at this altruistic side of Riley I'd never seen before, I think I gaped at him. Finally, I found my voice. "Naw. I can do it."
"Fine." He plopped his backpack on the counter and grabbed his lunch money off the top of the microwave. Crossing over to the fridge, he removed the orange juice carton from the top shelf. He raised it to his lips.
"Don't you—"
He took a swig, replaced the carton, and turned to give me a sly "what're you going to do about it" smile. I fought the urge to scream at him. It was what he wanted—to get a rise out of me. He lived to taunt me. To him I was the embodiment of evil stepmothers—someone to be hated at all costs.
I smiled oh-so sweetly. "Have a nice day."
He swung his backpack over his shoulder. "Oh, Nina?"
"Yes, Ry?" This situation demanded my best behavior.
"Xena's missing."
I jumped onto the nearest chair and said, "Please tell me you're talking about the TV character."
"Sorry."
Funny, he didn't sound sorry at all.
"Then tell me you're joking," I seethed through clenched teeth.
"Nope. Been gone since last night."
"Dammit, Riley, why didn't you tell me last night?" My voice slowly rose to a pitch only dogs could hear.
He scrunched his nose in a manner that would be charming if he wasn't purposely making me suffer. "Didn't want to worry you."