Want to Know a Secret? (72)

“You know, she thinks you’re her best friend.”

“She doesn’t really think that.”

Sean has been doing some work out in the backyard and he comes into the living room with his fingers still slightly embedded with dirt. “Hey,” he says. “I’m going to get the grill going in the backyard. Julie, you staying for dinner?”

“Um…” I glance at the stairs. Leo and Tristan will want to stay for sure.

He holds up his hands and grins at me. “Don’t worry, I swear I’ll wash my hands before I get started.”

Sean and I got off to a bit of a rocky start. He was pissed off about some notes I left on their door about how they were parking their car incorrectly. But I explained to him that the parking rules were there for a reason. Two years ago, a fire truck couldn’t get through our narrow street because of the way people were parked. I’m not going to be responsible for somebody dying. So I organized the rules about how to park the cars, and we haven’t had any issues since.

Sean understood after I explained it to him. Now we’re good friends. Although he’s not going to be happy when I send him the rules about dogs. After one of our neighbors kept half the block awake with his dog barking all night for months on end, I’ve done what I can to keep that situation from happening again.

I return his smile. “Okay, sure.”

“And Keith?” Maria asks.

I wince. “No, just me. Keith won’t be joining us.”

I don’t have to ask my husband to know he’ll be staying late at work. And even if he weren’t, he wouldn’t want to have dinner with the Coopers. They aren’t his kind of people.

“Now, Julie,” Sean says, “before I get started, you gotta tell me if there are any specific block related grill rules that I need to know. Like do I have to get you to individually approve every piece of meat I use…?”

He’s still grinning at me though. Teasing me. Sean is a good guy. You can see it all over his face and in everything he does. And he loves his family.

As promised, Sean washes his hands and then goes out to the backyard to get started on the food. Soon enough, the tantalizing smell of ground meat wafts into the house. Keith was never interested in grilling.

“Do you guys grill a lot?” I ask Maria.

“Constantly.” Maria rolls her eyes. “I think there might be pure ground beef flowing through my veins right now. But Sean loves it. And so does Owen. If your boys weren’t here, they’d be grilling together.”

“He’s so great with Owen,” I say. “I’m surprised you don’t have six or seven children.”

“Yeah.” Maria takes a sip of wine. “The truth is, I can’t have children. I had these horrible fibroids and one of them ruptured. They had to do a hysterectomy to save my life.”

I cover my mouth. “Oh my God, I’m sorry. That was after Owen was born?”

She shakes her head. “Owen is … He’s Sean’s son from another marriage. His first wife… She died of breast cancer when Owen was a baby.”

I don’t know what to say. “That’s terrible. So much tragedy.”

“It was a long time ago.” She smiles distantly. “Actually, it’s how Sean and I met. He had all these hospital bills to pay, even though his wife died, and he had to drive an Uber to make extra money. He was the one who drove me to the hospital when I started having pain from my fibroids, and he kept so calm when I started bleeding halfway through the ride. He made sure I got to the right place and waited with me until the doctor came. He was a complete stranger, but he was so kind.” She takes another sip of wine. “And then a couple of weeks later, he called me to check on me. We got to talking and… well, you know.”

Maria’s story makes me think of when I went into labor with Tristan. Keith started freaking out about the possibility of my water breaking in his precious BMW. He put down a tarp on the backseat before he would let me get in.

There’s no doubt that Sean Cooper is a good guy. But even good guys sometimes do bad things.

_____



The only reason I ever go over to April’s house anymore is to talk about PTA stuff. Years ago, I used to be there all the time. We used to have coffee together almost every morning. Now I do whatever I can to avoid her.

Today I need to talk about a few details about the upcoming fall festival. Admittedly, she has been invaluable in getting things set up. Everything I have asked her to do, she has done without question.

But when I come in through her back door, I find her in the living room, but she’s not alone. And she’s not with Mark either. I haven’t seen Mark skulking around here in months—maybe she ditched him after that mess with Mrs. Kirkland. Maybe she thought it was too risky. Or maybe she just got sick of him and figured she had taught Kathy Tanner her lesson.

No, the person in April’s living room is Sean Cooper.

I’m not going to lie. Sean is a very attractive man. Attractive in that sort of hot blue-collar laborer way, with the beard and the muscles—the kind of guy who doesn’t even know or care that half the women on the block are slobbering over him. Not that I personally find him attractive. I never liked that type particularly. Also, I might be dead inside after so many years of plotting to get out of my wifely duties with Keith.