“Wha’cha got there?”
Marcy glances up from the envelope she’s holding to find that John has entered the living room. He’s staring at her. His gentle smile, the expression he wears more often than not, is firmly in place.
“It’s a letter.” Another letter, she mentally corrected.
“Who’s it from?” His question is casual. He’s not even looking at her as he asks, but rather grabbing a fishing magazine from the pile of mail on the back of the couch. She’s just returned from the box. Each day, she goes out as soon as the carrier pulls away from the curb. She’d tried one more time last week to get Jill to invite her over, to no avail. Now she’s graduated to stalking the mailbox for more incriminating communication. She’s hungry, starving, salivating for more information. And the more she thinks about it, the more she’s convinced that this is more than some silly frat boy prank.
This is real.
The offense is real.
And the threat is real.
“I don’t know. There’s no return address.”
“No?” John, with magazine in hand, crosses the room to her and takes the envelope from her fingers. His eyes scan the addressee. “This isn’t even our mail.”
“I know.”
“So why are you staring at it like it might bite you?”
The twinkle of mischief in John’s ocean blue eyes irks her. Marcy knows that she can sometimes overreact, but she hates it when John doesn’t take her seriously. Of course, she hasn’t told him about the first letter, the one she opened. The ominous one. For whatever reason, she’s withheld that tidbit. She’s not sure why, but even now, she feels she should keep it to herself for the time being.
“I’m not. It just made me think about how they haven’t invited us over. Even though I’ve made a few overtures to Jill, she seems hesitant to let me into her house.”
“Let you into her house? Why do you want to get into her house?”
Marcy shrugs. “Just curious, I guess. What responsible adult doesn’t want to find out as much as they can about their neighbors?”
Marcy relies heavily on the “responsible adult” angle. It’s hard to refute, and she feels that, more often than not, it gives her an ironclad argument.
“Um, smart ones. Our neighbors and their house are none of our business.”
“You can’t really believe that.”
“I absolutely to. You’ve heard the expression ‘familiarity breeds contempt,’ right?”
Marcy nods. “Yes, I have, but have you heard the expression ‘the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t’?”
“How bad could they possibly be? They’re a nice, hardworking couple with a kid. They moved to the ‘burbs for the quiet life. Just like us. It’s as simple as that.”
Marcy bites down on the meaty flesh of her tongue, literally, to keep from making a snide comment to John and shoving the first letter down his smug throat. In the end, she smiles and waves her hand. “You’re probably right. I’ll just return it to them and stop being so nosey.”
After a very long pause, John narrows his eyes on his wife. “That’s it?”
“What’s it?”
“This. You’re giving up?”
“Of course. Why?”
“It’s never that easy.”
“What isn’t?”
“This. Reason. You.”
She balks. “Are you saying I’m unreasonable?”
“I’m saying sometimes you can be hard to reason with.”
Although his comment tweaks an anger nerve in Marcy’s gut, she chooses to let it go this time. She has far more important things to focus on at the moment. “Well, today isn’t one of those times. I’ll take the letter back and keep my nose out of our neighbor’s business.”
She can see the wheels spinning behind her husband’s placid expression. “If you’re going to be that reasonable, you could always just take it down and stick it in their box. Instead of hand delivering it, I mean.”
Marcy’s lips thin. Damn him! She knows what he’s doing, but she’s not going to let John bait her. Or trap her. She forces her mouth to relax into a casual smile. “But that would be tampering with the mail and a mail box, which would be a federal offense. No one needs that kind of attention, do they?”
She doesn’t wait for a reply. Marcy rises onto her toes to peck John’s cheek and walks away. This time her grin is genuine. She’d won that round, hands down.
Not one to let her off the hook too easily, John follows her into the kitchen.
“Want me to take the letter over?”
“No, I can do it later.”
“I’d be happy to.”
“I’m sure you would, but I don’t mind.”
Marcy’s name on John’s lips is a sigh of exasperation. “Marcy, don’t pry. They’re our neighbors. We need to be on good terms with them. That benefits everyone.”
“I’m not going to pry. I’m going to return their mail. It’s called being kind.”
“Kind with a side of motive?”
“Kind with a side of efficiency.”
“Efficiency?”
“Yes, it’s called killing two birds with one stone.”
“I knew you weren’t going to let that go so easily.”
Marcy shrugs. She has no defense. “So?”
“I love you. You know that, right?” John asks as he moves to pull his wife into a hug.
“I know.”
He stares down into her eyes. He starts shaking his head slowly from side to side.
Marcy wonders what he’s thinking. Probably that she’s crazy. And today, she might be.
Crazy like a fox.
John volunteers to go on a grocery store run for Marcy, to pick up her prescriptions and a few other things. Somehow he talks Caroline into going. It’s with a heavy heart that Marcy watches them pull out of the driveway. She tries not to be hurt, but it’s getting harder and harder.
As they disappear down the street, Marcy’s eye is drawn to the house next door. The hurt disappears in favor of the excitement of a new opportunity. Rather than dwelling on how their daughter seems to be much more agreeable with her father, Marcy takes full advantage of their absence to further her plan. She’s going to the Halpern house, and she’ll feel better about it if John isn’t around keeping an eye on her every move.
On impulse, Marcy grabs a couple of fresh rose stems from the vase in the kitchen. John brought her flowers and she doubts he’ll notice a few buds missing.
She quickly pats the stems dry and snips the ends. Regardless of who answers the door—Jill or Mark or the nanny—she has every intention of craftily bulldozing her way inside. The roses just give her another card to play. Reaching for the letter, she tucks it under her arm and heads for the door.
She’s getting into that house. One way or another.
Normally when Marcy is outside, she makes a point of inhaling the fresh air, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her face, being in the moment, all that jazz. In recent months, she’s tried hard to focus on the present rather than staying stuck in the past or hiding from the future. Although the past and the future are both terrifying and devastating in their own ways, her mind tends to stray there. She has to fight to keep all the emotion at bay, but on this particular jaunt, she has no trouble. She’s about as in the moment as she’s ever likely to be. In fact, she’s relishing it. There’s a hint of delicious tension in the air, in her muscles. Tension born of exhilaration. She hasn’t felt so alive in quite some time, it seems.
On the Halpern’s stoop, Marcy schools her expression into one of casual ease and raises her finger to depress the doorbell. She waits for what feels like an age before she hears the click of locks releasing. The door is opened a crack and a face appears.
It belongs to none other than Mark Halpern. And he looks less than pleased by Marcy’s appearance.
Marcy beams at him through the slit. “Hi, neighbor. I come bearing gifts.” She holds up the roses and the envelope. Mark’s pale eyes flick from one to the other and then back to Marcy’s.
When she makes no move to hand them over, he lets out a barely-contained huff of frustration and steps back to open the door wider. “Come in.”
“Oh, thank you.”
Victorious, Marcy steps inside the foyer and shimmies to one side so Mark can shut the door. However, he does no such thing. He merely backs away from her and crosses his arms over his chest.
It’s not lost on Marcy that he’s more like the man who first entered her house that first day. Aloof, strange. Offputting. Almost creepy.
Funny how he doesn’t even try to be polite when Jill isn’t around.
Marcy takes a few seconds to survey her surroundings. It’s a perfectly normal, and even polite, thing to do when you enter someone’s home. You look at it, appreciate it, compliment it. And, in this instance, you case the joint.
Green eyes scan the vaulted foyer and the warm stone-colored walls. She takes in the grand staircase sweeping around the entrance to the living room in a graceful arc. She also notes the absence of both a little girl and little girl things. Before Caroline’s condition deteriorated so drastically, there were always toys strewn throughout Marcy and John’s living room. And it wasn’t because Marcy was a poor housekeeper. At first, she tried to keep the toys put away, but she learned quickly enough that her daughter had a more constant flow of energy than Marcy did. Caroline could provide a more constant flow of toys in than Marcy could provide out.
The Halperns don’t seem to have that problem.
Also noticeably absent is the nanny.
“Wow, do you have the house all to yourself today?”
“I do.”
He offers no further explanation, which, at this point, doesn’t really surprise Marcy. It’s clear Mark Halpern is a man of secrets. In the future, she won’t make the mistake of expecting him to be anything less than that.
“Your house is beautiful. It’s amazing how different each floor plan is. They did such a great job with this neighborhood.”
“They did.”
“Are you two happy with your decision to move to South Carolina?”
“Extremely. Jill needed this.”
Jill needed this. Not we needed this, but Jill. His phrasing only spawns a dozen more questions in Marcy’s mind. And a dozen more suspicions to go along with them.
Mark falls quiet, making no move to expound or to further the conversation.
But Marcy is not easily daunted. She clears her throat. “So, a piece of mail was mistakenly placed in our box. I wanted to bring it over.” She hands him the envelope. “Actually, I guess it was more mistakenly addressed than mistakenly delivered. Someone must think you live at my house.”
She laughs lightly.
Mark doesn’t.
He takes the envelope, staring at the front before flipping it over. Probably looking for a return address like she’d done. As he stares down at it, a muscle ticks along his jaw line. In Marcy’s mind, she sees the words again, the same words that have marched across her thoughts hundreds of times over the last few days.
I know it was you. You’re going to pay for what you did. 7-2
As usual, she’s as stumped as she is intrigued by the cryptic note. She also feels a sense of urgency, because what if 7-2 is a date. It’s coming up soon. Marcy can’t help but wonder what might happen on that day.
It’s all so puzzling. It’s all so addicting.
“Thanks for bringing it over.” Mark attempts a smile, but it comes across as tight and a bit gruesome. Almost painful. Marcy thinks again of how differently he acts at times—how strange he seemed when he first entered their house that first day, how quickly he seemed to shake that off (or maybe hide it) when his wife showed up. The way he’d stared at them when he’d found them kissing. There was something almost predatory about that look. Or maybe that really is just Marcy’s imagination.
Yet, even now, thinking about it gives Marcy a shiver of unease.
No problem at all.” She holds up the roses. “If you’ll point me toward the kitchen, I’ll stick these in some water. I thought they might cheer Jill up when she walks in and sees them in the kitchen.”
“What makes you think Jill needs cheering?”
“Oh, I…nothing. I just meant they’d be cheerful. Women love flowers. It’s in our DNA.” She tries to laugh it off, but gets the feeling she stepped in something she shouldn’t have. “The kitchen?”
“You can just give them to me. I’ll have to look for a vase. I have no idea where she put them.”
Marcy hikes a thumb in the direction she expects the kitchen to be. “I don’t mind helping you look if—”
“No. I’ll find one. I’ll make sure they’re right where Jill can see them when she comes in tonight.”
Marcy backs off. She doesn’t want to push her luck and spill bad blood with Mark. She’ll never be able to get to the bottom of the letter and its meaning if that’s the case. So she nods and steps back toward the still-open door. “Of course. Thank you. I appreciate it.” She walks out and stops on the stoop, turning back to Mark. “Give Jill my love.”
He nods and without another word, closes the door. Marcy hears the locks snap back into place before she even gets off the porch.
And the plot thickens.
Marcy is lost in thought as she makes her way slowly up the Halpern driveway, along the sidewalk, and then turns into her own. A bright flash in her peripheral vision brings Marcy’s eyes up just in time to catch the back corner of a dark car speeding around the bend in the road. She doesn’t give the receding vehicle another thought as she continues. She’s already putting two and two together by the time she reaches her own front door.
Whether they’re the wrong twos has yet to be determined.