ERIC GOLDEN
After the detectives left, Eric couldn’t sit still. He should start cooking dinner, but food felt unimportant with a neighbor’s life at stake. He kept thinking about his interview with the detectives. Why didn’t he relay Asher’s comment that he had messed up? He didn’t really think Asher did anything to Iris, did he?
He walked upstairs and stood in the cramped hallway between the kids’ bedrooms, listening to the normal sounds of their after-school life. Marc’s computer spewed bedlam, and Morgan sang into the microphone plugged into her tablet. He thought about talking with Morgan about sneaking visits to Aggie, but what would he say? Bea would be furious, but he kind of liked the idea of Morgan sneaking out and making her own friends, even if the folks in Number Six were a bit odd.
If he was being honest with himself, part of what he liked was Morgan defying her mother. Things with Bea were pretty bad. Sometimes, thinking about Asher and Iris and their long marriage, he suspected that he and Bea would never make it. Even though he got that things weren’t perfect next door, he wished for some of what the Blums had.
He should go try to talk to Asher, even though the last attempt had been unsuccessful. The old guy seemed to want to unload something onto his shoulders. But Eric didn’t want to leave the kids alone. And he really wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the details of whatever Asher meant when he said he messed up.
No, on this issue he was going to listen to Bea and keep his distance from Asher. Not entirely, of course. As soon as the detectives gave the green light, he’d organize a search party. It was practically part of his job as Azalea Court caretaker. He knew the cottages better than anyone else, and Iris wasn’t likely to have traveled very far from home. For now, he’d start some homemade mac and cheese for dinner.
Comfort food was just what they all needed on a gloomy day that was about to erupt into a dark rain. On a sad day, when one of their small group of neighbors could be in big trouble.