Page 73 of Whistle

“Returning the favor,” she said, and held out her bottle for a clink, which he weakly accepted. “It’s too hot for this.”

“Can’t exactly leave it till September,” he said. “Don’t want the neighbors reporting me.” He tipped back the beer bottle. “This’ll be my one for the day, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.” He let out a long breath. “Need to get off my feet.”

Daniel walked over to his porch steps, sat, and held out a hand, inviting Annie to join him.

“I’ve been meaning to come over and apologize,” he said.

“No apology necessary.”

He shook his head strongly. “Nope, it is. Sorry about Dolores coming over and giving you a piece of her mind. That was uncalled-for.”

“It’s okay,” Annie said. “I understand.”

“Do you?”

That caught her off guard. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to presume or—”

He raised a hand. “I just, I don’t know how anyone else can understand when I don’t, and I live with her twenty-four hours a day.”

Annie went quiet.

Daniel looked across the road and grinned. “Look who just ran out of gas.”

Charlie had let his bike drop in front of the porch steps and run into the house. “He’ll probably drink a gallon of lemonade,” Annie said. “I don’t know what’s got into him. He’s either riding that bike like a maniac or upstairs playing with those trains.”

Daniel turned his head. “That so.”

“I wish there were more kids around. I hadn’t really thought about that when I took the place. So far, Charlie seems to be entertaininghimself okay, and I like it just being the two of us, but maybe I’m being selfish.”

“He’s riding that bike hard enough to be training for the Olympics,” Daniel said, picking at the beer bottle label with his thumb. “If you don’t mind my asking, what was it Dolores was saying to you?”

“I hardly remember. It doesn’t matter.’

“Well, maybe not to you, but I’d like to know.”

Annie took a breath. “She asked us what we were thinking. A few times.”

“Anything else?”

Annie shook her head. “That’s all. And, you know, the rain was coming down, and there was thunder, so if she said anything else I might have missed it.”

“Okay.”

“I’d wondered if she’s upset with us taking the place for the summer. Because—I don’t know—because of what happened to her there? That she thinks anyone living there is making a mistake?”

“Could be,” Daniel said. “You know, when we were talking the other day, I said that this thing what happened to her, that it was like this time bomb in her head, it was gonna go off one day, and it happened to go off when she was over there. Could’ve been anyplace, but that was where it happened.”

“I remember.”

“I might not have been totally frank with you about that.”

Even with the temperature in the eighties, Annie felt a slight chill.

“I mean, maybe she did have some sort of disposition to something bad happening, but I believe it was triggered by something in that house.”

“Christ, what are you saying?” She managed a sardonic chuckle. “That the place ishaunted?”

“No, no, I’m not saying that. I strike you as the kind of person who’d believe in that nonsense?”

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