Chapter 19 Andrea Kendal
Andrea Kendal
“Their house is stunning. It’s at the end of Kingsmere, overlooks the tee box on hole six.
I look at the back of it a lot when I golf, but I don’t ever see the husband there.
Guess the heart-surgeon shtick keeps him busy.
His new wife, she’s just like the old one.
They both liked to lay out by the pool on a nice day, and I gotta say, it’s one of the best parts of the round, seeing a beautiful woman in a bikini.
And the new wife, she’s a ten. Last one . . . about a six.”
Eric didn’t notice Andrea’s new nails, not that she had expected him to. Her husband was a rarity of the male species—uncommonly generous, protective, and thoughtful—but not one who observed the little things. Especially not on evenings such as tonight, after days such as this.
Their meal was almost silent, the long gaps in speech only interrupted for functional reasons.
Please pass the corn.
The lamb is delicious.
Would you like more wine?
Eric rarely drank, but tonight he finished off two bottles of Kistler, then poured a brandy and took it up to the widow’s walk to see if they were still searching for the body.
Kisi was right: The sooner they found the body, the better. Roxanne would be eliminated, and everything could just return to normal.
Andrea had stopped at the guard gate on the way back in and asked for the paperwork to update their list of trusted contacts. Patrizia needed to be off the list immediately. She couldn’t take another interaction like today. It wasn’t safe, especially not if Ryder and Cameron were with her.
She stood at the kitchen counter and rinsed their plates, stacking them and the pots in the sink for the housekeeper to take care of in the morning. After finishing the task, she wiped down the counters, then picked up Ryder and carried him into his big brother’s room.
The little boy was on a stool in his bathroom, staring into the mirror while he brushed his teeth.
He had already changed into his pajamas, a matching yellow set that had green aliens all over it.
Aliens, right now, were Cameron’s favorite thing.
Last year it had been race cars; prior to that, bats.
Thank God the bats phase was over. Cameron had campaigned hard for a pet bat, and had pitched a mini–temper tantrum every time he was told no.
Eric had started to say maybe, and had even reached out to the homeowners association to ask about the rules regarding unorthodox pets.
Before they could respond, Cameron had discovered model sets, and Andrea breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Now aliens were everywhere. As soon as he finished his bedtime routine, he’d watch an episode of Ancient Aliens—a show Andrea thought was too old for him, but that Eric considered educational—then go to bed.
Cameron had already seen every episode in existence, most of them two or three times, but that didn’t dampen his love for the docuseries.
If anything, he had started repeating some of the lines along with the narrator, deepening his voice to match the serious pitch.
Eric found it charming, and Andrea couldn’t help but agree.
She placed Ryder in the center of Cameron’s bed, then flipped on the night-light and closed his closet door. From inside the bathroom, he rinsed, then loudly gargled and leaned forward to spit in the sink.
“Why are your boobs so big?”
Andrea paused, then leaned against the doorframe and met her son’s eyes in the mirror. “Cameron. It’s rude to ask about someone’s body. Where did you even learn that word?”
He fisted the hand towel and pressed it to his mouth, then shoved it onto the counter. “Mason said that you have the biggest boobs in the country.” He stepped carefully down from his stool, and Andrea reached forward to help.
“In the country?” She laughed. “I’m not sure mine are the biggest on this street, sweetie. But you shouldn’t talk about people’s boobs. They are private.”
“Dad shows his boobs all the time.” He lifted his own T-shirt, examining his nipples in the mirror and swiveling to the left and then the right, admiring them.
“Well, it’s different for daddies and little boys.” Andrea swung the door open farther and gestured toward the room with her head. “Come on, let’s get you in bed.”
“They are really big.” He dropped his own shirt and spun around so he was facing Andrea and stared at her chest. The worn T-shirt Andrea was wearing didn’t do a great job of hiding her double E’s, which she thought were too big but Eric had asserted were the right size.
All he had cared about was that they would attract attention, and they certainly did that.
No one looked at her face, not with the best implants money could buy.
“Yeah, well, you have big elbows.” She ushered him out of the bathroom and flipped off the light.
“I do not!” he said indignantly, then examined his left one to be sure.
“You do. They’re enormous. I was telling Daddy that we might need to expand your bedroom into Ryder’s just to make room for them.” From the bed, Ryder giggled at the sound of his name, and Cameron sprinted over and gave him a messy kiss on the top of the head.
“If we expand my room, I want to add an RC track inside of it. With a monster-truck jump for my Bigfoot crawler.” He pantomimed his truck soaring over Ryder and then crashing, the fake explosion loud and dramatic.
And just like that, Andrea’s surgically enhanced breasts were forgotten, at least until his friends brought them up again.
Hopefully, that wouldn’t happen for another decade or so, and by then the internet would have taken over their sexual education to the point where Andrea’s then-saggy breasts would be uninteresting.
She picked up the remote on his bedside table and pressed the top button, raising the television out of the base frame of the bed.
“Now, I’m going to put Ryder down. One episode, then go to sleep, okay? ”
“Which episode is it?” He crawled under the gray-striped blanket and kicked his feet, giving them room under the cover.
“Let’s see . . . ‘The Mystery of Puma Punku.’ Are you good with that?”
“Yep.”
“Okay. I’m setting the sleep timer for thirty minutes.” Andrea kissed his forehead, and he wiggled away from the affection. “Sleep tight.”
He didn’t respond, his focus already on the opening credits.
She scooped up Ryder and hugged the baby to her chest, backing slowly out of Cameron’s room and closing the door.
In the dark, less than a hundred yards behind their house, a shovel hit another human bone.