Her Better Half. C.J. Carmichael

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СКАЧАТЬ but hard-looking young woman and a little girl stood on the front porch.

      “Hi, I’m Erin Karmeli and this is my kid, Shelley. Welcome to the neighborhood.” She slapped the wall that divided our two houses. “I’m your new neighbor.”

      I supplied her with my name and a smile that, despite my best efforts, must have looked hesitant.

      Six months later, I would look back on this moment, on this first impression, and see Erin in a completely different light. Right now, though, I took in only a tall, thin woman with an improbably large bust displayed to advantage in a bright red tank top. Erin had striking, angular features, and wild, curly dark hair. Add in the miniskirt and high heels and there was no disputing what she looked like.

      Just my luck. I’ve moved next door to a prostitute.

      But there was the child to consider, a little girl about six years old, holding Erin’s hand and gazing curiously down the hall at the stacked cardboard boxes. The girl had neat blond hair, wore clean denim overalls, and smelled—when I crouched to say hello—of toothpaste and sunscreen.

      My mothering instincts approved on all counts.

      “Are you in grade one, Shelley?”

      She nodded, then said, “We made cookies.”

      Erin brushed a hand over the little girl’s shoulder. “That’s right. We did. We thought you might like to take a break and come for some iced tea on our porch.”

      She watched as I brushed my bangs from my forehead. My fingers came away tacky with sweat. No air-conditioning in this house.

      Erin looked sympathetic. “Moving days are a bitch, aren’t they?”

      “Yes. They really are. And I’d love a break. Thanks, that’s very hospitable of you.”

      “So you’ll come?” Erin had a broad smile, not without charm, despite crowded front teeth. “Great. Your kids are welcome, too.”

      “Actually, I’m pretty sure they’re busy.” Devin was organizing CDs in her new room, and Jamie was on the phone with an old friend.

      Two years ago they would have dropped whatever they were doing to come with me. They’d still been girls then, not adolescents transformed—by what? Peer pressure and hormones?—into strangers.

      I was reeling from more than just the divorce this year. My entire family had undergone a metamorphosis and I’d been too busy folding laundry to notice.

      I felt like Sleeping Beauty. Only I’d fallen asleep in a castle and woken up in attached housing on the wrong side of the tracks next door to a…

      Maybe Erin was a drug addict. She was awfully thin.

      “I’ll just be a minute while I tell the girls where I’m going.” I paused, wondering if I should invite Erin and her daughter in to wait. But Erin solved my dilemma.

      “We’ll go home and get things organized. Meet us on the front porch?”

      “Okay.”

      I headed upstairs, thinking that at least I’d been able to afford a place where the girls didn’t need to share a room. It would be bad enough having them fight over the bathroom. In Rosedale, they’d each had their own, as well as a walk-in closet. I tapped on the first closed door, then opened it.

      Boxes were piled everywhere—only a few had been opened. Jamie, dark hair twisted on her head, wearing baggy pajama bottoms and a tight, short tank top, sat in the middle of her bare mattress, talking on her cell phone. Jamie was always on that phone—she was going to have a fit when I had it disconnected. According to my new budget, I couldn’t afford it.

      “Jamie? I’m going next door to the neighbor’s.”

      “Yeah, whatever, Mom.”

      “Also, could you please get off the cell phone. The landline is free, remember.”

      Jamie rolled her vivid blue eyes, outlined in dark liner and mascara.

      Devin, in the next room, was crouched on the floor stacking her CDs in alphabetical piles. She was a quieter girl, more of a pleaser, a little more introverted. It was amazing to me that birth order could matter when you had twins, but in my daughters’ case it really had. Devin had been born only two minutes after her sister, yet she seemed fated to forever be just so slightly in Jamie’s shadow.

      “I’ve been invited to the neighbor’s for iced tea. Would you like to come, too? She has a little daughter—could be some babysitting jobs in your future.”

      “I’d like to finish this, Mom. Then I need to make lesson plans for next week.”

      Instead of sending the girls to their summer camp in the Muskokas this year—they would have been junior counselors—I had suggested they teach swimming at the country club where Gary and I had once been members. That way they could earn pocket money for the upcoming school year. I was proud of them for not complaining too much about the arrangement. Basically, it seemed Gary had been right.

      The girls were okay. They were dealing with the divorce and all the changes to their lives better than I could have hoped.

      I closed Devin’s door gently, then headed to Erin’s by myself.

      Outside, I took stock of my new neighborhood. Just three months ago my real-estate agent had called with the news. “I’ve found a place within the budget. It’s on Carbon Road, in Dovercourt Village.”

      What a quaint name, I’d thought, Dovercourt Village.

      Of course many things, in theory, were quaint. Wheelbarrows, country roads, watering cans, to name a few. In reality though, wheelbarrows were used to haul dirt and country roads were dusty in hot weather and impassable after rain. As for watering cans, well fine. Maybe they truly did qualify as quaint.

      But Carbon Road was just an L-shaped street lined with World War I vintage homes in pairs like mine and Erin’s.

      A short hedge, about two feet high, separated our properties, and after a brief hesitation, I decided to step over it rather than walk around.

      Erin and Shelley were sitting out on the white porch. Shelley waved shyly. Heavens but she was cute with her chubby cheeks and baby-toothed smile. I remembered my daughters at that age. The three of us had had so much fun together. Trips to the zoo and the playground, baking cookies, reading books at night.

      When did kids stop wanting to do those things?

      I stopped at the bottom of the porch steps. A small wicker table held a pitcher of iced tea and a stack of plastic glasses. On one of the steps, exposed to the hot summer sun, perched a clay pot of snapdragons.

      Why did I feel reluctant to go farther? Erin was so different from the kind of neighbors I’d been used to. So different from me. Despite the fact that I probably had about fifteen years on her, I was sure she was far more experienced in the ways of the world.

      I felt, as ridiculous as it sounds to say it—shy.

      Erin waved me closer. “Grab a chair and relax. It’s too hot to unpack boxes today, СКАЧАТЬ