The Neighbor's Secret(10)

“Yes, please,” Jen said, a little too desperately, and the women laughed. The desperate need for alcohol was a running joke with this group.

When she returned to the living room, giant mason jar in hand, Jen settled into an empty spot on the piano bench next to Annie Perley, who pointed at the Lolita Lemondrop and mouthed, Lethal.

Jen smiled, nodded, took a gingery sip. It was delicious, actually, with a warm heat that lingered in the back of her throat.

Janine was explaining excitedly that they would start with introductions! Everyone had to say their favorite book or genre and then something fun and unexpected about herself!

“For instance,” she said. “I’m Janine!” She stabbed her index finger into her chest with surprising torque. “And my favorite book is The Giving Tree! My something unexpected is that I have a tattoo”—she winked exaggeratedly—“but I’m not telling you ladies where.”

Through the years, Jen had developed a little game where she imagined how other people might handle raising Abe. The women of book club—there had been a man in the group last year, but he was notably absent tonight, scared off, perhaps, by last spring’s startlingly passionate discussion of that menopause book—had such canned and untested beliefs about “parenting,” namely that any and all behavioral issues should yield to Respectful Discussion and/or Diminished Screen Time and/or Organic Diets.

Janine was a bragger, especially about her daughter Katie. Would she be putting a spin on whatever material Abe gave her?

He’s not quite Lizzie Borden yet, but the ER doctor said his blade skills were very advanced. And you should see his work with blasting agents!

Abe offered plenty of legitimate opportunities for bragging, Jen reminded herself. He was smart, he was creative, he had goals—currently to program an entire video game from scratch. He could be thoughtful, too. He’d reminded her about tonight’s meeting.

And he had never tortured their cat. At least so far as she knew.

“Someone’s communing with her Lolita Lemondrop,” Janine sang out, and Jen realized that all of those politely inquiring faces had turned toward her.

“Jen,” Janine said, “surprise us! Tell us your secret!”

None of them, Jen was certain, could even begin to handle her secret.

“I’m Jen Chun-Pagano,” she managed to say. “And I love Regency fiction. Bodice rippers. The steamier the better. I’m hoping that’s embarrassing enough to also qualify as my something unexpected.”

Jen’s chest melted into liquid warmth at the group’s kind laughter.

“Last but not least,” Janine trilled, “our hostess with the mostest. What’s your favorite book, Harriet?”

Harriet, another book club mainstay, had lived in Cottonwood Estates longer than anyone else in the club. She had a severe gray crop, a perpetual frown, and the belief that every book had one correct interpretation, which it was her job to understand. Ostensibly to further this goal, she brought a yellow legal pad to every book club meeting and spent the entire discussion filling the thing with furiously handwritten notes, as though she were anticipating a test.

“One favorite book?” Harriet said with skepticism. “That’s impossible to answer.”

“Genre then? You love your mysteries.”

“I suppose any amateur sleuth story,” Harriet said. “Or the classics. Can that be our segue, Ms. President, to get on with this month’s selection?”

Jen largely ignored the Lolita discussion. She had studied the book in high school and college and was already familiar with the role of games, the metacommentary about how Nabokov played with the reader.

As per usual with Lolita, there were two camps: those who couldn’t get past the molestation and murder and those who thought the ugliness was exactly the point—that the book was a master class in unreliable narration and satire.

Jen had probably argued both sides in her life, but who cared?

It had been a mistake to call Scofield. Jen already regretted it.

She wasn’t even sure that Abe had smiled in the car; he had been subdued all afternoon. And he seemed so relieved to not have to go back to Foothills.

School must have been even worse for him than Jen had realized.

Jen didn’t know what exactly had happened to make Harper turn on Abe, but the aftermath had been awful—whispers on line for PE, shoves in the cafeteria, “not it”s during group projects for school, all perfectly timed for when the teachers’ backs were turned.

Find a new friend, Jen had urged, but Abe explained with resignation that everyone had already heard he was a freak. If only he smiled more, Abe had said, but he was always nervous there and could never remember to do so.

Jen had tried to tell the school, but they were over Abe at that point. When Abe found a note in his drawing kit that said “Satan’s Minion,” Jen brought it up to the art teacher. Are you sure he didn’t draw it himself, Mr. Marley had said in his infuriating stoner’s drawl, Abe can get pretty dark.

What her son needed, more than anything else, was protection. Foothills had not provided it.

Jen’s career ambitions were not the cause of Abe’s issues—linking the two was misogynist draconian nonsense—but part of Jen had always wondered deep down, oh so very deep down because she knew it was crazy, plenty of parents worked, but—