A Lady Under Siege(25)

In the kitchen she rubbed some skinless chicken thighs with olive oil, slid them into a Pyrex dish, sprayed them with concentrated juice from a plastic lemon, slathered on some honey, and popped it in the oven. Betsy came in and stood watching her sheepishly, but Meghan didn’t pick up on it. “Can you get me some spinach out of the fridge, hon?” she asked.

It was only when Betsy brought the packet to her at the sink that Meghan noticed the clumsily fashioned mass of bandages that encased the girl’s index finger. In alarm she cried, “What did you do to your hand?”

“It got cut,” Betsy said timidly.

“How?”

“I was practicing golf with Derek.”

“Derek.”

“From next door.”

“I know who Derek is, thank you very much. And where exactly were you golfing?”

“In the back,” said Betsy, wincing in anticipation of what was surely to follow.

“In our back? Derek came over to our back lawn?”

Betsy nodded. “Kind of by accident.”

Meghan looked out the kitchen window and with a shock saw that her garden had been violated. A dozen or so heavy slats from the collapsed fence lay scattered in a random pile, crushing her flowerbed. The gaping hole in the fence felt like a breech in her defences. She rushed to the kitchen door, reached for the handle, and stopped dead in her tracks when she saw that a pane of glass had been reduced to a few shards clinging to the frame. She gingerly put a finger through the opening, to confirm what her eyes were telling her.

“I tried to get all the pieces out of it, and got a cut,” Betsy said defensively. “He said I don’t need stitches or anything.”

“You might, by the time I get through with you,” Meghan said. Glancing out onto the floor of the deck she saw splattered drops of dried blood. She looked down at her feet and saw that someone had done a very poor job of wiping up similar dots on the kitchen floor. There were faint smear marks from the door to the sink. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed them before.

“First thing is we’re going to take that bandage off and I’ll decide whether you need stitches or not. Hopefully not, but at least we’ll make sure it’s clean, and dress it properly. That mess looks ridiculous. Did you put any antiseptic on it?”

Betsy shook her head.

“No, he didn’t think of that, did he? Too busy wrecking my fence.” Her anger, slow to build, now made her shake with rage. “First thing is to give that man a piece of my mind,” she seethed. “Or I might just chop his frigging head off!”

She marched out of the kitchen, out of the house, and under a full head of righteousness marched straight toward Derek’s door. Betsy followed her as far as their own front step, then called after her, “He went to get a piece of glass! He measured it and everything!”

Meghan took no heed. She rang the doorbell and pounded on his door obsessively, and when it became abundantly clear he wasn’t home, it only increased the fury she felt toward him.





15





Meghan examined Betsy’s cut and decided it didn’t warrant stitches. She cleaned it and rebandaged it, and they sat down to dinner in strained silence. She poured herself a glass of wine, which she never did unless she had guests, but Betsy was too unnerved to make a comment about it. They were both hyperaware of noises from outside, both straining for any sound that might indicate that Derek had returned next door. It began to get dark outside. When they heard an exploratory shout of “Hello?” from Derek’s back yard they both almost jumped out of their skins. The missing pane in the window amplified his voice, as if permitting it to trespass into their home. Betsy pushed her chair back and stood up, but Meghan grabbed her forearm firmly and said, “Sit down. We’ll finish dinner first. Any repairs he makes will be done on my schedule, not his.” From outside they could hear Derek call out a few more times, quizzically, as if he knew they were in there and couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t come out. This was confirmed when he said, “All right, then. I’ll be at home when you’re ready. See you.” It sounded as if he were talking to an imaginary friend, or a ghost.

“Good,” Meghan said to Betsy. “You’ve got to put them in their place.” She allowed herself a smile. Seeing it, Betsy felt a weight lift from her. It was the first flicker of hope that she might be forgiven. She’d been picking at her chicken, but now she tore into it with relish. “Is your finger hurting?” Meghan asked her. She held it up, now properly disinfected under a neat bandage. “Maybe a little,” she said. “Not too bad.”