The New Husband(15)
At the edge of the property, somebody, presumably Simon, had spray-painted a jagged orange line from the curb well past the oak tree. Upon second viewing, it became apparent to Nina that some of the limbs from the neighbor’s tree had unwittingly grown across the orange boundary line.
“What is going on?” Nina asked Simon from the base of the ladder. On a nearby table, Simon had rolled out an architectural drawing of their property. Nina guessed the spray-painted orange line corresponded to the property’s defined boundary.
“Is that permanent?” she asked, pointing at the line.
Simon beamed at Nina from his perch up high before directing his gaze to where she indicated. “Oh, hey, honey, good morning. No, not to worry. It’s marking chalk, comes off easily.”
“Good. What are you doing?”
At that moment, Maggie and Daisy appeared from the back of the house.
Climbing down from the ladder, Simon wiped his hands on his faded jeans after reaching the ground. He planted a gentle kiss on Nina’s forehead. “Did you get enough beauty rest?”
“Plenty,” Nina said. “What’s going on here?”
“Oh, this tree.” He patted the thick trunk lovingly. “Some of these limbs, they’re crossing into our property. Gotta come down.”
“Yeah?” Nina folded her arms across her chest. “And the neighbors think so, too?”
“It’s not their property,” Simon said. “People have to respect ownership. There are laws for that.”
Maggie, with Daisy following off-leash, came to the tree. She looked up and then over at Simon. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Nina didn’t answer her daughter, instead speaking directly to Simon.
“You can’t cut those down without asking permission,” she said sternly.
“But I have asked.”
From the table with those drawings on it, Simon produced copies of letters he had sent the neighbors. Nina had not seen the Greens since they’d brought over cookies after she and Simon moved in. The letters Simon had sent announced his intention to trim the tree to his property line on this given date unless the Greens took it upon themselves to do the job. Simon then produced a copy of the law that made it legal for him to trim branches that extended onto his property line as long as he did not destroy the tree. He even got into a bit of the history of property law, not that anyone was interested.
“I’ve got these documents with me in case the Greens raise objections. It’s clear the law is on my side.”
“I don’t care,” said Nina, taking more of a tone. “I’m not going to have the Greens over here screaming about their mutilated tree.”
“Well, what do you want me to do about it? Just leave it be? This is our property.”
Maggie tilted at the waist. Is this normal? her eyes were asking. Would Dad have freaked out about some dumb branches?
“Unless you think those branches are going to fall on somebody’s head, keep them on that tree where they belong,” Nina said sharply. “I happen to like how it looks.”
Simon’s posture straightened at the rebuke. His shoulders went back as his neck seemed to lengthen. His stance grew rigid and Nina could see the muscles of his jaw tightening, while the corners of his eyes twitched several times as if dust had gotten in them. And then she saw something catch in Simon’s eyes, a spark igniting in a brief flash before it dimmed, a look she’d never seen before. Was that what Maggie had seen—a fleeting darkness that bordered on anger, or something worse? Whatever it was, Nina found it unsettling.
But what came on quickly soon was gone. Simon’s expression cleared and he returned to his normal self. A smile brightened his countenance and warmed his whole appearance.
“Of course,” he said. “We’ve got to live next door to them. And if you like the tree as is, then I like it too.”
He leaned in to again kiss Nina on the forehead, while Maggie looked on with a hopeful expression. The moment, though brief, had been illuminating for Nina on many levels. There were aspects to Simon’s personality that would only be revealed with time. This, she understood, should be expected and embraced. She did not know he had a hang-up about property lines, but it fit with his personality (fastidious, far more rigid than Glen, a lot neater, too), so it made sense to her that he’d be somewhat obsessed with rules and order.
The incident with Maggie and the television remote suddenly took on new vividness for her. It better explained why rule-following Simon had been so insistent on shutting the TV off at six, ignoring common sense, while claiming a mandate she may or may not have issued. As for Maggie, a young girl without much life experience who missed her dad tremendously, who desperately wanted to get her life back to the way it had been, it was certainly conceivable she had misinterpreted Simon’s angry expression as something more sinister. In some ways, it was a relief for Nina to see Simon’s frustration, because now she saw what her daughter had seen, and it no longer concerned her.
CHAPTER 9
Summer turned to fall as Nina began her job search in earnest. In that time, she did a dozen drafts of her résumé, with Susanna’s help. She updated her LinkedIn profile, reconnected with former colleagues and friends, all while sending inquiry after inquiry into the black hole of the internet, receiving no return responses. Somehow this was not supposed to dampen her spirits; after all, she was just beginning the process. Hadn’t she taught her children that patience was a virtue and not to expect instant gratification? But in this day and age of social media and continuous feedback, she expected a certain degree of immediacy and tried not to take radio silence as a portent of things to come.