His Princess (A Royal Romance)(112)

“He seemed nice.”

“They usually do.”

“He said something weird when he was leaving.”

I look up at her. “What?”

“Something about how being nice to us doesn’t make up for ‘it’, but he didn’t say what ‘it’ was.”

She shrugs. “He was just being mysterious, I guess. Boys like to be mysterious. They think we like it.”

I quirk my eyebrow and stare at her. She shrugs and goes back to scrubbing the dishes.

“I can handle cleaning up. Lay down, Mom.”

“Thanks, honey. You don’t have to.”

“I want to. You don’t get any time,” she sighs. “Except when we’re not here. What do you do while we’re gone?”

Drink and cry, mostly.

“Just putter around the house.”

She can read my lie, they always can.

“Go lay down.”

I rise from the table and carry my plate to her, but that is the limit of the help she will accept. I feel better, at least enough to take an orange soda up with me. I lie back on my bed, turn on my TV and fall asleep to a Storage Wars marathon.

That show has to be rigged. Nobody just leaves a Matisse in a storage locker.

I wake a few times in the middle of the night and look out my windows. There are lights on in Quentin’s house, on the top floor, the garage, and in the basement. I see a brief flicker of a shadow cast across the backyard. Somebody is still in there.

In the distance I hear a faint sound, almost a voice, but it must be my imagination.

I roll back on the bed and sleep through until morning. When I wake up and go to the window I’m confronted by the earliest stages of the block party. At the end of the street there’s music equipment and a disk jockey setting up. Farther down the street there’s a bouncy castle and portable basketball hoops.

I haven’t prepared anything or done anything.

I lie back on the bed sideways and yawn. I just want to sleep. Is that so wrong?

There’s a knock at the door.

I open it and Karen is standing outside, already dressed.

“Mom, can we go?”

“Yeah, honey. Let me get dressed.”

I throw on shorts and sneakers and a loose t-shirt, snap on my sunglasses, and follow them outside.

I start to follow my girls into the street but step back. I sit on the porch while they run with the other kids. I wonder if Karen realizes why at least two of the neighborhood boys are following her around. It fills me with a subtle dread at the same time that I can’t help but smile.

She’s still in that weird phase between the end of childhood innocence and the awakening of adult feelings, and I don’t want her getting dragged into it too fast. The boys seem innocent enough, the same way. They know they should pay attention to girls now but they’re a little clueless as to why, and when they get together they still act like kids, running and playing, excited.

Kelly dives into the bouncy castle. She’ll probably devour an entire cow tonight to replace all those calories.

I’m not the only parent hanging back. We sort of fade into a collective responsibility, giving our kids a little freedom from afar. I sit on the porch and watch, sipping water as the day slides by and starts to get hot, too hot for September. It’s almost October now. It should be cool in the day but it’ll hit eighty, I’m sure of it.

Sweat trickles down my back and I glance over at Quentin’s house.

No signs of life.

What did Kelly mean, about what he said? Being nice to us couldn’t make up for something?

What does he need to make up for?

Here I am again, mooning over him like a ditzy teenager with a crush. I wanted to think it was more than that, more than just physical attraction. I’m sort of past my prime anyway.I can’t believe somebody would be into me just for my looks anymore.

I down the rest of the water and head over to his house, looking back at Kelly and Karen to make sure they’re okay. They’re just fine. I can relax a little. The music is starting up. There will be hot dogs soon. I hope Kelly leaves some for the rest of the block.

There’s no answer when I knock at the door. Typical. I just want to talk to him. I want an answer. I don’t want to be brushed off.

I stand there as long as I dare, before somebody might notice, then start back.

I stop at the end of the front walk and glance at the backyard. Past the garage, I walk around the back as my heart beats a little faster. The house is the same pattern as mine, so I’m familiar with the layout. There are two sliding windows on either side of a basement door with its own set of steps.

You shouldn’t be doing this, Rose.

I check the basement door. Locked.

I check one of the windows. Locked.

The other window slides open silently.

I look at it for a half minute, my heart pounding in my chest. What do I do? Quentin probably didn’t bother checking or locking it, figuring that no one could get in through it.

Well, a grown man couldn’t, but I can if I skinny through.

God, this is stupid, Rose. What the hell are you doing?

I sit in the grass, poke my feet through, and start shimmying my way into the opening. I have to put my hands on my chest and press myself flat and suck in a breath to fit, and dangle in space with my feet kicking in empty air before I feel something cool and metal with my toes. The dryer, probably. I grab the windowsill and slip in, and end up falling on my butt on top of his dryer with a squeak.