Chapter 3

Darth Vader made me do it.

No, not the mind-bending, evil Sith overlord. It was a missing action figure that lured me to the dark side. The “dark side” in this case was Dad’s latest pet project, the hotly debated comic book room, still under construction.

Kohl favored the space. Amanda suggested that perhaps her teenage son found the dimly lit area calming, that it gave him a retreat from the sound and lights and commotion of the shop that his autism sometimes rendered over-stimulating. The electrician, due next week, had canceled twice, and none of us had the heart to hurry up the process.

I found Vader on the table, next to a few sketches of the figure. Kohl’s colors were vibrant but well balanced and his lines bold and confident. The private art classes Amanda had found were doing wonders to hone his natural ability.

His timing, however, was all wrong.

In just a few days, the walls would have been more soundproof. As they were now, only drywall on one side of the new wall separated the comic book room from the old barber shop. After a savvy business deal—at least on the part of the barber—Dad had acquired their underutilized storage room and added three hundred square feet to our floor space.

“Got a great deal,” Dad had bragged around town, but our bank account balances still kept me up at night.

And as I picked up the stray Darth action figure, the voice I heard through the wall made my skin crawl more than James Earl Jones’s ever had.

It was Marya.

I wasn’t exactly trying to overhear, at least not at first. “Were you checking up on me?” she screeched.

A male voice rumbled, but I couldn’t quite make it out. I stayed stock-still and closed my eyes. When that proved inadequate—not that I’m proud of it—I found the largest gap in the drywall and put my ear up against it.

“I wasn’t checking up on you,” Ken said, the frustration in his voice mounting. “All I did was poke my head in the library when you said you’d be there—”

“Did you look in the whole library? How do you know I wasn’t in one of the study areas? Or back in the stacks somewhere? Did you check everywhere?”

“Trust me, I looked.”

“A-ha! Then you were checking up on me.”

“This isn’t about me,” Ken countered. “This is about you. About you not being where you told me you would be.”

“Okay, Mister High-and-Mighty, this has nothing to do with whether I was at the library or not. This is about control and why you feel you have to check up on me. I’m not a criminal. I’m not on probation.”

“You very well could be.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

“Don’t play games. You know exactly what I’m talking about.” Ken said. “And if you think I’m going to allow you to start pulling the same …”

Right about the time the expletives started flying on the other side of the wall, a hand grasped my upper arm. I whirled around to see Cathy. Somehow I managed to stifle a gasp.

She brushed her index finger in the universal sign of “shame on you,” but I let out a quiet breath of relief that Cathy—and not Dad—had caught me eavesdropping.

I followed her back to the main part of the shop. “What in the world?” she said.

I put my hands up, still holding the action figure. “Not something I’d intended to do. I went to get Darth and I heard them arguing.”

“Who?” This is why I was glad Cathy had caught me. Any scorn she might have felt for my nosiness would soon be buried under her own curiosity.

“Ken and Marya.”

Cathy worried her lip but didn’t reply.

“I thought you’d be curious,” I said.

Her brow crinkled. “A little curious, but mostly concerned.”

“Yeah, they were really going at it.”

“No, hun.” She took a step closer. “Concerned about you.”

“This has nothing to do with me.”

“I know that. Just not sure that you know that. Do you think you can be an adult and work with Marya?”

“I can be an adult,” I said, but I practically had to push my lower lip back into alignment.

“Liz, it’s not healthy for you to keep pining over what might have been.”

“You think I’m pining?” I repeated. “That ship has sailed.”

“Glad to hear it. But maybe it’s time to put the binoculars away and leave the docks.” Her eyes widened, as if she surprised herself. “That’s a good metaphor. I need to write that down. Someone in my writing group said I was getting too literal. Let’s see them try to write anything figurative on three hours of sleep. I’m lucky I remember my alphabet.” She sighed. “Then again, I now sing it about twenty times a day.”

“I thought Drew was sleeping better.” I mentally crossed my fingers, hoping she wouldn’t notice the subject change.

“Oh, he does good most nights,” she said. “But he’s been fussing a little. The pediatrician thinks he might be teething.”

“Already?”

“It’s a little early but not unheard of at four months.”

With that topic off the table, we finished out the rest of the day easy enough. It wasn’t until I’d made my way upstairs and weaved around the boxes of comic books stacked in our apartment that I thought again about what I had overheard.

Cathy had been right to caution me. Ken was no longer my boyfriend. But from what I’d just heard, his marriage with Marya wasn’t likely to survive much longer. Had it been a sham from the beginning? And if they did break up, would I want him back?

I pushed the thought from my mind. It was way too early to consider that question. And, truly, whatever they were arguing about was none of my business.

With Dad spending the evening with Parker and Cathy, I had the apartment to myself, which meant grabbing a bowl of cereal for dinner, turning on a Hallmark Christmas movie, and herding literal cats, who seemed to think having boxes of comic books stacked from floor to ceiling in the apartment was incredible fun. They treated it as their own private jungle gym.

I put Ken and Marya out of my mind until about eleven at night when the colored flashes from the police lights started reflecting against the glittered popcorn on my bedroom ceiling. I rushed to the window and peered outside to see a couple of patrol cars, an ambulance, and just about all of East Aurora’s finest in front of the barber shop. And I’d bet two bits they weren’t there for a shave and a haircut.