This wouldn’t do at all.
I will have to kill her. If I don’t, she will be the flame that lights the first torch.
22
Natalie
Natalie was in a good mood when she walked in the house at quarter to five. The dogs met her at the door, their tails wagging wildly, and she gave them some cursory pats as she kicked off her shoes. She dropped her purse on the hall table and went downstairs in search of her oldest child.
J.J. was parked in front of the TV, mashing buttons on his Atari controller as multicolored lightning streaks blazed across the screen.
“Did you feed the dogs?”
J.J. kept his eyes on the game. “Not yet.”
“It’s almost five.”
“I’ll do it as soon as I finish this level.”
Natalie noticed a crumb-dusted plate and an empty cup on the coffee table. They were probably J.J.’s lunch plates, which he hadn’t bothered to clean up because she hadn’t been home to nag him.
It was always like this when Jimmy was in charge of the kids. He fed them, refereed their fights, and occasionally made them do a chore, but that was the extent of his interaction.They’d watch TV in the basement for hours on end while he watched sports in the living room.
He was there now, stretched out on the sofa with a beer in his hand.
“How was your day?” she asked him.
“All quiet on the Western Front. How’d it go with the Arabs?”
Natalie sank into a chair and kicked off her shoes. “They’reveryinterested in the McCreedy house.”
Jimmy arched his brows. “They are?”
“Yep. It fits their budget, and they love the neighborhood. Sure, it needs a little TLC, but—”
“TLC?” Jimmy scoffed, his attention returning to the baseball game. “In the form of a nuclear bomb?”
Natalie felt her good mood slipping away. “Can you make me a drink while I change?”
Jimmy sprang off the sofa and took her in his arms. “Don’t go changing.” Then, in his best Billy Joel voice, he started singing the opening lines of “Just the Way You Are.”
She rewarded him with a kiss for making her laugh. “If you keep singing, the dogs will howl.”
Jimmy sang louder.
Heading down the hall, Natalie poked her head into Jill’s room. She saw a pile of library books on the bureau and a plastic bag stuffed with used paper towels.
She moved deeper into the room and took a closer look inside the bag. The paper towels were stained black.
If she got ink on the carpet, I’m going to kill her.
Natalie hadn’t sighed all day, but she sighed now. When Jimmy came home from work, the house was always in order. Why couldn’t she come home to that, too?
Satisfied that the carpet hadn’t been stained, she went into Justin’s room. She’d been hoping for a hug, but Justin wasn’tthere. In her room, she walked to the window overlooking the backyard and saw Jill and Justin sitting on the seawall, playing with Justin’s army men and what appeared to be the shells of two horseshoe crabs.
When Justin’s laughter floated up to the window, Natalie smiled. She was happy to see her kids playing outside.
Watching them, she felt an unexpected rush of gratitude for her daughter. Jill had always been a good sister to Justin. She played games with him and read him stories. She comforted him when he was upset and protected him when J.J. was in one of his tempestuous moods.
