Perfect Nightmare (4 page)

Chapter Seven

“
T
his is the last place I have to show you,” Rita Goldman said, and Lindsay silently sighed in relief. The morning, which had started off badly with the traffic jam, just seemed to be getting worse, and even before she looked at her watch, her stomach told her it was at least an hour past lunchtime. But her hunger was only part of it.

The worst of it was that as the morning had worn on, and they’d gone from one awful apartment to another—each of them seeming worse to Lindsay than the last—she’d slowly come to the conclusion that despite her brave words the other night, moving was going to be a lot harder than she’d dreamed, even in her worst nightmares. She hated everything about the city—the crowds, the noise, the traffic—everything.

And now she was starting to get a headache.

As if in response to her mood, a dark cloud had formed over the city and the wind was blowing cold. Still, there was just one more place, and then they could get to the good part of the day.

Lunch and shopping.

It was an open house on the Upper West Side.

Lindsay followed her parents and Rita Goldman into the building. The elevator opened, half a dozen people got out, and even more got in with them.

Crowded.

Lindsay hated that about elevators. People you didn’t even know were always touching you, even when they didn’t mean to. She pulled her shoulders in, pressed her arms against her sides and herself against the wall of the elevator, but even so, the man next to her brushed against her and she felt a chill pass through her. The knowledge that this would be happening every day after they moved to the city only made the chill worse.

The apartment was on the sixteenth floor, actually had a good view and a big kitchen—big enough to hold a breakfast table. Not so bad.

A nondescript man with greasy hair was the hosting agent, and he had a plate of cookies and a stack of color flyers, which he pushed into the hands of anyone who would take them. There were at least a dozen people standing in the living room in groups of two or three, whispering among themselves and examining every detail of the room.

Lindsay headed for the bedrooms, leaving her parents to listen to Rita Goldman’s sales pitch, which by now she was pretty sure she knew by heart: “. . . close to the subway . . . good school . . . great restaurants . . . fan
tas
tic view . . . blah blah blah . . .”

She edged past a young couple coming out of one of the bedrooms. It was a girl’s room, with posters on the wall and a pink bedspread. She looked at the jewelry box on the dresser and the cluster of framed photographs that could only be family pictures. A bunch of high school photos were stuck around the edges of the mirror over the dresser, and Lindsay wondered if one of the cute guys was the girl’s boyfriend.

She felt a sudden urge to look through the girl’s CDs to see what kind of music she liked, but just as she was about to flip through them, she realized there was going to be an open house at her house next week.

An open house just like this one.

With strangers looking through her things.

She jerked her hand away from the CDs almost as if her fingers had been scorched.

She suddenly felt creepy about even having looked at the pictures and wondering if one of them was the boyfriend, and silently apologized.

The thought of this happening in her own room, with anybody at all going through her stuff, made her queasy. Having an agent show people through apartments and houses that belonged to other people was bad enough, but open houses, where anybody—
anybody—
could just walk in and look through her underwear . . .

Lindsay felt her queasiness turn to nausea, and knew that if she didn’t get out, she was going to throw up. She hurried back through the rooms and found her parents in the kitchen discussing the apartment with Rita Goldman, who looked just like a raven cawing over a prize piece of garbage.

“Mom?” she whispered, trying to pull her mother aside. But her mother, still listening to the cawing of the raven, put her arm around her shoulders and tried to draw her into the conversation.

“It’s only a block to the subway,” she heard her father telling her. “That’s really terrific, kitten!”

“Did you look at the bedrooms, sweetheart?” her mother asked. “What do you think?”

“I think I’ve got to get out of here,” Lindsay managed, bile rising up in her gorge.

Her mother’s smile faded into a look of concern. “Honey, what’s wrong? You look a little pale.”

“I just need to get out of here.”

Kara’s motherly instincts came to the fore and she nodded. “Okay.” She turned to Steve. “I’m going to take Lindsay out for some air.” She looked at her watch. “Oh, good Lord, she must be starving—look how late it is!”

“Why don’t we find a little place for some lunch?” the raven clattered. “I can make a few phone calls—maybe find something even better than this—and we can all get a bite.”

Lindsay tugged at her mother. She didn’t want to have lunch with this woman. All she wanted was the Thai cabbage salad she’d been promised. Then she wanted to go shopping and to forget moving to the city. She struggled against the tears now threatening to overwhelm her. “Mom, please?”

As if she’d read her daughter’s thoughts, Kara nodded, then glanced at Steve. “We’ll see you downstairs.”

The elevator was crowded again, and Lindsay’s queasy stomach began to escalate into an anxiety attack. She felt hot and clammy at the same time, and steel bands seemed to be tightening around her chest, making it hard to breathe. As the elevator crept downward, she felt the strange heat rise up through her chest and her neck and into her face, and when the doors finally opened on the ground level, she was unsteady on her feet.

She dropped onto a bench in the foyer and leaned against her mother, who sat down next to her.

“What’s the matter, darling?” Kara asked, her brow creased with worry. “Are you sick?”

“I’m hot,” Lindsay said. She picked up her mother’s hand and pressed it to her face.

“You’re burning up,” Kara said.

But already the flush was starting to pass. “No, I’m going to be okay,” Lindsay assured her. “I just needed to get out of there.”

“Then we’ll just relax here for a few minutes and wait for Dad. Okay?”

Lindsay nodded, closed her eyes and silently prayed for some kind of miracle that would mean they could just stay in their house and never have to go through this again.

“Did you like this place?” Kara asked. “It certainly seems to be the best thing we’ve seen—close to the subway, and close to a very good school, and not too far from your father’s office.” She paused, then added, “And we can afford it. Barely, but we can make it.”

Lindsay hardly heard the words, a single thought filling her mind: “Are people going to be going through our house like this?”

Her mother looked puzzled. “Well, of course they are. At the open houses next week. Why?”

Lindsay’s eyes widened and she paled. “I don’t want anybody in my room,” she whispered. “And I don’t want to move. Can’t we just forget about all this and go home?”

Kara hugged her close. “I wish we could,” she said. “But you know we can’t! Come on, sweetheart.” Turning so she could face Lindsay, she tipped her daughter’s head up and looked into her eyes. “It’s a new chapter, Lindsay. A new adventure. I know it’s scary, but you’ll get through it! We’ve had a wonderful life out on the Island, but we’ll have a wonderful one here, too.”

“But I hate all these places,” Lindsay whispered, her voice breaking. “I hate the city.”

“You’ll grow to love it. Trust me.”

But as the elevator dinged and her father came out with Rita Goldman and a flood of other people, Lindsay knew it wasn’t true. She hated the city now, and she always would. “Someone already made an offer on this place,” she heard her father say, sounding disappointed. “And it’s been accepted.” Lindsay immediately felt better.

“Timing is everything,” she heard the agent say. “I’ll do a little more research, and now that I’ve got a better idea of what appeals to you, I can zero in. We’ll keep looking until we find the place that’s just right.”

“Thai salad,” Lindsay whispered to her mother.

“Thank you so much for your time,” her mother said as her father shook the agent’s hand. Rita Goldman swirled her black coat like a pair of wings, turned and swooped out of the building with a promise to be in touch soon.

“We’ll find something we all like,” her father said, but Lindsay knew the truth.

Her parents would find something
they
liked.

The best
she
could do was cope.

But she would do it. Somehow, she would do it.

Chapter Eight

K
ara was just fastening the last button on her blouse when she heard the doorbell. Damn. Was he early? A glance at the bedside clock told her he was right on time—
she
was late. “Lindsay?” she called. “Are you about ready?”

The only response was the sound of the toilet flushing in Lindsay’s bathroom, which meant that she was still a while away from being ready.

Kara slipped into her shoes and hurried down the stairs, tucking the blouse into her skirt. “Coming,” she breathed, hating, as always, to make anybody wait, and wondering why even the few seconds it took to get to the door made her feel guilty.

Mark Acton stood at the door, briefcase in hand, his agent’s smile covering his face like a mask. “Good morning!”

Kara pulled the door wide. “Hi, Mark. Come on in. We’re running a little late this morning.”

“No problem. You take your time, and I’ll just get started setting up.”

Kara put Steve’s breakfast dishes in the dishwasher and turned off the coffeepot. “Coffee before I throw it away?”

“No, thanks.”

She took a final swipe at the countertops, then looked around to make certain the kitchen looked clean and appealing. Suddenly the yellow paint she’d decided on two years ago didn’t seem like such a good choice. Too late now. “Lindsay!” she called up the stairs. “Time to go!” She turned back to the real-estate agent. “How’s the response so far?”

“I’m expecting twenty or so agents to caravan through.”

“Twenty! I didn’t know there were that many agents in town.” She wished she’d researched it more thoroughly and chosen a listing agent she liked a little better. Her thoughts were abruptly interrupted by Lindsay’s voice.

“Mom?”

“Hi, honey,” Kara said, glancing up at her daughter, who had paused halfway down the stairs. “Time to go.” Lindsay didn’t move, and it wasn’t until she spoke that Kara realized her gaze was fixed on Mark Acton.

“Is he showing the house today?”

“It’s the agents’ open house,” Kara said. “Are you ready? I’m already late.”

“Where are you going?”

Kara frowned. “I told you last night—I’m going into the city to see some more apartments and have lunch with your father.”

Lindsay’s eyes followed Mark Acton as he moved around the living room, making tiny adjustments to the furniture and carefully leveling the pictures on the walls. “What time is this open house going to be finished?”

Kara frowned as she watched Lindsay stare at the agent with open hostility. “Honey, where are your manners?” She shrugged apologetically to the agent, but he waved it off.

“I just don’t want to come home and have a bunch of strange people here,” Lindsay said, her tone annoying Kara.

“Not a problem,” Mark assured her, exaggeratedly ignoring the teenager’s hostility. “I’ll be finished by early afternoon.”

“And I should be home by five,” Kara said, her voice tightening as Lindsay’s expression only darkened further. “Mark will be gone and I’ll be home. Will that suit Your Highness?”

Stung by her mother’s words, Lindsay turned and fled back up the stairs.

Kara sighed, knowing she’d handled Lindsay badly. But she was late and still had a lot to do, and for once Lindsay would just have to take care of herself. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, more to herself and the departed Lindsay than to the real-estate agent.

“Moving is hard on kids,” Mark said. “I know.”

“It’s hard on everybody,” Kara said.

Then Lindsay came running down the stairs again, purse slung over her shoulder, book bag in hand. She stopped short and turned to face Mark Acton without a trace of the hostility she’d shown only a moment before. “I’m sorry,” she said, almost shyly. “I didn’t mean to be rude—I just don’t like people in my room.”

“It’s all right,” he replied. “Nobody likes having strangers in their house. Unfortunately, it’s just part of the game. No way out of it if we’re going to sell this place.”

“Nobody’s going to go through my stuff, are they?” Lindsay asked, her voice anxious.

“Lindsay!” Kara said.

But once again Mark Acton appeared unoffended. “It’s okay,” he told Kara. “It’s a fair question.” He turned back to the girl whose prettiness was now marred by a worried frown. “The only people who will be here are professional Realtors. Wednesdays are the traditional days for Realtor open houses. There will be a caravan coming through from each real estate office, and they’ll be in and out very fast. They probably have fifteen listings to look at today. Believe me, nobody is going to touch anything.”

“You’re sure?” Lindsay fretted.

“I’m positive.”

“And you’ll be gone by five?”

He nodded. “Definitely. Probably by noon—one at the latest.”

Kara picked up her purse from the hutch and steered her daughter toward the door. “And I’ll be home by five, too. Then we can work on your social skills,” she added pointedly, earning herself a glare from Lindsay.

“Have a good day,” Mark said.

“It’ll be a good day when you bring us an offer,” Kara replied. As they walked out into a clear cool morning, she squeezed Lindsay’s arm. “It’s going to be okay,” she said.

“I know,” Lindsay sighed. “And I’m sorry. I’m trying—I really am.”

“I know you are, sweetheart.”

“How about if I go to Dawn’s after practice?” Lindsay suggested as she got into the car. “Could you pick me up?”

Kara opened her door and got in, too. “Oh, Lord, do I have to?” she pleaded. “Even after I get back from the city, I’ve got to get groceries and go to the cleaners and half a dozen other things. Can’t you just come home after practice?”

Lindsay hesitated, then decided further argument would be useless. “I guess,” she mumbled. As her mother backed slowly out of the driveway, she asked, “Are you and Dad going to see the raven again?”

Kara hit the brake and stared at her. “The raven? What on earth are you talking about?”

A grin curled at the corners of Lindsay’s mouth. “You know—that woman we were with on Sunday. Between her voice and that black coat, she seemed just like a great big raven.”

Kara laughed. “Well, thanks a lot for that!” she said. “Now I’ll never be able to look at her again without thinking of a big black screeching bird. And the sad part is, you’re right!”

A few minutes later they pulled up in front of the high school. “Just don’t buy anything ugly, okay?” Lindsay said before getting out, trying to control the tremor in her voice.

Their eyes met, and Kara knew how hard it was for her daughter to put on a brave face. “I promise,” she said, reaching over to squeeze Lindsay’s hand. Then she grinned. “Raven!” she repeated deliberately, before both of them would have dissolved into tears. “Mean, but a perfect description. Wait until I tell Dad.”

A moment later she pulled away, leaving Lindsay standing at the curb, watching her go. In the rearview mirror, Kara could not see the tear running slowly down her daughter’s cheek.

M
ark Acton was feeling great. The open house was over, and now he was at Fishburn's—the pub where half the agents in Camden Green seemed to hang out—with his third stein of beer sweating in front of him.

Around him, people he knew were bragging noisily about the huge deals they’d put together, but Mark knew it was mostly bullshit—three-quarters of the people in Fishburn’s had never sold a house for over a million, and that included him. And the Marshall place wasn’t going to go for anywhere near a million, either, despite the granite countertops in the kitchen and the nice furniture Kara Marshall had filled the place with.

Not that the open house had gone badly—it hadn’t. By eleven-thirty three caravans had come through, with Rick Mancuso and the Century 21 crowd as well as the bunch from ReMax.

And it wasn’t just caravans coming through, either—there had been a fairly steady stream of independent brokers and agents as well, and he’d done his best to make sure every one of them left their cards in the rosewood bowl he’d set on the table in the entry hall. He gave out a lot of flyers and talked to as many of them as he could, and more than a few of the drop-ins told him they’d be calling for an appointment to show it to a client. The Marshalls would be very happy with his report.

But mostly he’d done what he liked to do best when he was doing a brokers’ open: wander around, getting the feel of the place. He had figured out years ago that not only did every house have a unique feel to it, but so did almost every room in every house. The trick was to determine which rooms felt best and which worst, and then plan future tours so you got the bad rooms out of the way early and progressed steadily to the best ones. It was a strategy that had kept him at his agency’s Million Dollar Roundtable every year for almost a decade, and it would work perfectly for the Marshall house, because it didn’t have any bad rooms.

It was one of those houses that just felt good, and he’d known almost from the moment Kara and her daughter—Lindsay? Yeah, that was her name, Lindsay—had left him alone and he made his first quick tour, that it wasn’t going to be hard to sell. He’d adjusted Kara’s canisters and then gone into the living room, where he automatically picked a bit of lint from the carpeting and rearranged the pillows on the sofa and wing chairs. And just standing in the living room, he’d known. This was exactly the kind of place he himself wished he lived in.

Nothing in any of the other rooms had changed his mind, especially the kid's—Lindsay's.

He’d stood still in that room for a while, and it seemed he could feel her presence, and it felt good.

Pretty room for a pretty girl.

Then car doors started slamming outside, and he’d straightened the stack of color flyers one more time, checked his tie and his name tag, and put on his professional smile.

He opened the door, and the event began.

The hours had gone by quickly, and he listened to the same comments and answered the same questions, to the point where they almost became meaningless:

“Nice listing, Mark.”

“This place’ll sell in a heartbeat.”

“What’s the asking price?”

Over and over again he had patiently repeated every detail to every agent, all the time keeping an eye on the steady stream of agents who cruised through the downstairs, opening every door and checking the cabinets, then glancing quickly into the garage before heading upstairs to get a feel for the rest of the house.

What was it about garages?
Mark wondered now as he drained half his third stein of beer. But of course he knew—garages were boring. And they were boring because people didn’t live in them.
That’s what everyone wanted to see at an open house. The places where people lived.

After the agents came back downstairs, they’d checked out the kitchen one more time—always the kitchen, because that’s where people spend most of their lives—then dropped their business cards in the rosewood bowl on their way out and picked up flyers.

He knew that the more flyers they picked up, the better they liked the house.

And today they’d taken a lot.

Over and over, in the lull between each caravan, Mark went back through the house, moving things back to the exact places they’d been, doing his best to keep the house as the Marshalls had left it that morning. After all, even though almost everybody loved poking around in strangers’ houses, nobody liked having strangers poke around in their own. So he always did his best to make it look as if no one—not even he himself—had been there at all. When the Marshalls came home, everything should look exactly right.

It had been late in the day when Sam Cousins and Ike North showed up. He knew they’d be there at the end of the event so they could all go to Fishburn’s together. And he’d been especially pleased when they came down from their tour of the second floor and Ike spoke before they even hit the landing at the bottom of the stairs.

“Is this going to be open on Sunday?”

Mark nodded.

“I’ll bring some people by. I wish I could get them in tomorrow, but they’re in the city and won’t be able to make it until the weekend.”

“You’ll be lucky if this place is still available on Sunday,” Sam Cousins put in.

Music to Mark’s ears.

“So,” Ike said, glancing around at the house, empty now except for the three of them. “Fishburn's?”

Mark nodded. “Meet you there. I have to lock up, so order me a cold one.”

Alone, he’d gone through the rooms one last time, turning out all the lights, checking to see that the doors were locked and everything was exactly as it had been that morning. At the top of the stairs, he went first into Kara and Steve’s bedroom, then their bath. Everything looked good. He turned out the lights and closed the door, then did the same with Steve’s study and the guest room.

Then he’d gone to Lindsay’s room and smiled as he turned out the light and closed the door, knowing that this was the room that would sell the house. It was neat and tidy, and you could almost feel the girl who lived in it. A sweet girl—a girl the Marshalls were fortunate to have.

At the front door, he’d picked up his briefcase and the rosewood bowl and looked around one last time. Everything looked perfect, and he felt great.

And now, as he drained the third stein of beer and ordered a fourth, he still felt great.

Great, and lucky that the Marshalls had chosen him to sell their house.