Page 66 of The Attic on Queen Street
“Earlier—upstairs in the bedroom. That might have been almost kiss number six.”
“It would be. If you believed in do-overs.”
“If I believed in do-overs.” His phone buzzed again. “Maybe I’m starting to.”
He turned around with the phone to his ear while I stared at his back and felt the old and new versions of myself play tug-of-war. Melanie Version 107 must have won, because I found myself marching down the stairs toward Jack. I reached up and pulled his head down to mine, cutting him off in midsentence, and kissed him the way I used to kiss him, the way I still did in my dreams. Jack pulled me closer, kissing me back, and I knew he was remembering, too.
I pulled away and looked into his startled eyes. “Maybe I do.”
I turned around and climbed the steps in as dramatic an exit as I could muster wearing a fluffy robe and slippers.
CHAPTER 19
I staggered from my car toward the house after work the following day, in desperate need of sweet hugs and kisses from my children and a long, hot soak in the tub. Even the Tupperware container of homemade lemon bars I’d brought back from the office didn’t make up for the two lucrative listings Catherine Jimenez had secured the previous day while I’d been stuck in bed. She’d managed this while also coaching her daughter’s volleyball team and packing care packages for our troops with her DAR chapter. And, apparently, baking homemade lemon bars. I needed to attach a surveillance camera to her perfectly ironed lapel to see how she did it, although I was now fairly certain that she’d managed to clone herself.
I stopped in front of my house, sure I was at the right place only by the sight of Harvey’s red Ferrari once again parked partially in the street and blocking the sidewalk and driveway. The yard had the appearance of a circus. People moved about furiously, shouting and talking over one another while the sprinklers spurted water and all the house lights turned on and off in sync with the loud music pulsing from somewhere inside the house. I paused a moment to appreciate the familiar chorus to ABBA’s“Dancing Queen” before returning my gaze to the front yard and trying to make sense of the pandemonium.
My attention was caught by a flash of Ashley Hall plaid near the red Ferrari. I spotted an apoplectic Harvey Beckner, his face the same shade as his car, screaming expletives at Nola and her two friends, Alston and Lindsey. Nola stood slightly in front of the other girls, taking the brunt and not just a little spittle flying from Harvey’s mouth.
I ran toward them, the Tupperware acting as a possible battering ram as I approached.
“What are you doing?” I said, the lemon bars and I stepping in between Harvey and the girls.
“They vandalized my car!”
“We didn’t do anything,” Nola said, trying very hard to hold back tears. She wasn’t a crier, nor was she used to being screamed at. “We were just watching the filming and he started screaming.” The last word caught in her throat.
“Hold these, please.” I handed Nola the container of lemon bars while giving her a sympathetic look so she’d understood that I believed her. Then I turned to Harvey so I could play nice. “Show me what you think they did.”
With an accusing glare at the girls, he led me to the front of the car, then pointed at the windshield. Even though the temperature now hovered in the low sixties, starbursts of snowflake-shaped ice spread across the glass. Scratched into the frost were what I thought at first to be random letters.
I moved to the side of the car so I could get a better look at the windshield. I leaned forward to touch it, then jerked back at the burning sensation of frostbite and the sudden realization that the frost was on the inside.
Rubbing my hand, I looked at Harvey. “Don’t you keep your car locked with the alarm on?”
“Of course I do! Do you think I’m an idiot?”
I raised my eyebrow but didn’t comment. I returned to the front ofthe car so I could study the letters again, and I realized that they weren’t gibberish but backward. “This was written in the frost from the inside of the car.”
“Well, then, these three gangbangers must be experts at breaking into cars.” He looked at me smugly. “And I have proof.”
I was barely aware of Harvey marching to the driver’s-side door and the sound of beeping as he unlocked it, as I was too busy deciphering the backward words etched across the windshield.
The girl is in danger. Watch for the tall man.
I jerked back, breath held, watching the words slowly vanish as the temperature inside the car returned to normal, each letter disappearing like vapor.
“See?” Harvey yanked open the driver’s door. “I have proof!”
I hurried toward him, pausing at a loud crack from under the heel of my boot. I lifted my foot and looked down to see a large china button split into three parts and surrounded by a dozen other antique buttons. Harvey didn’t seem to notice, as he was too busy cursing and pointing at something in his driver’s seat.
I smelled the waft of smoke and knew what I would see before I even reached the door. Frozen Charlotte lay supine in her iron coffin, her sightless eyes staring up through the small window of the lid. Swooping down, I picked up the offending object and threw it in my tote, having no doubt who’d put it there, and it wasn’t Nola or her friends.
“Was your door locked?”
He looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Of course it was. Do you think I’d leave a three-hundred-thousand-dollar car unlocked, especially in this neighborhood? They must have picked my pocket and taken my key and then put it back.”
I let the slight about my South of Broad location pass, as well as the insinuation that my daughter and her friends were a pickpocket gang, because I was too intent on smoothing his ruffled feathers. “Look, Harvey. No harm done, see? Not even a single fingerprint or speck of dustor any damage. Maybe if you didn’t park this way and block the sidewalk as well as the driveway, your car wouldn’t be such a target.”
