Fifteen Months Ago #2
“If you need a babysitter, let me know. My daughter, Rachel, is very good with kids,” Caren said.
“That’s kind of you,” Tori said. “But I have a nanny.”
“Legal, I hope,” Kenya said. “Shawn over here wouldn’t let me hire anyone illegal. Not with his job. Do you remember Zoe Baird?”
Tori blinked twice. Was this a test? “No worries there. My nanny is legal.” Tori had known the moment the girl walked into her house that she would be perfect. Round-faced with pink cheeks, wearing her dark auburn hair in two long braids wrapped around her head in cottagecore style.
Tori took a few sips of her drink. Parts of her life were less than perfect—her controlling ex, her anxiety, her debt from overspending in order to cope with that anxiety, the panic that swelled within her at three in the morning that she was going to blow this whole motherhood thing.
But one thing that didn’t cause her any grief was her nanny.
No, hiring Autumn had been the smartest move she could make.
“So, is your husband lurking around here somewhere?” Kenya asked.
Tori guffawed before she could stop herself.
“Sorry. I certainly hope he’s not lurking around.
” Kenya’s flawlessly contoured face froze in a mask of confusion.
Shawn’s slice of a mouth turned down at the corners.
She looked quickly at Caren and Miguel. Neither would meet her eye.
“What I mean is,” Tori continued, “I’m not married. We’re divorced.”
“Oh! Of course.” Kenya took a big gulp of her drink and then added in a low voice, “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Tori hated it when people said that. As if divorce were a terminal illness or a natural disaster that must be survived.
“Well, oh my gosh, you’ll have to excuse us.” Kenya grabbed Caren’s arm. “We have to go say hi to a friend of ours who, like, never comes to these things. Yumi! Oh, Yumi!”
“Nice to meet you,” Caren called as she was pulled away.
Shawn and Miguel drifted off as well, leaving Tori alone by the table.
She stood there, unsure of what to do now.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, the little monsters in her head shouted.
The urge to pull out her phone and ask Cyrus to tell her she was lovable was almost overwhelming.
There were ways of slipping uncomfortable truths into the conversation, but she had to blurt it out and make a joke about “lurking.” She hadn’t read the room; she was never good at reading the room.
It’s one of the reasons she became a therapist, to try and understand how people communicated.
What they really thought. Now she had alienated her potential new friends.
“So, what’s good?” She looked up to see her landlord, a middle-aged man in a short-sleeved linen shirt and sunglasses, smiling at her.
Even though he lived in the house behind her, they’d had very little interaction since she moved in, although she often spotted him jogging, red-faced, through the neighborhood early in the morning as she left for work.
“Oh, I’m not sure,” she said, feeling flustered by her interaction with the two couples. “I mean, I like this one.” She gestured to the Bangs pitcher. “Kind of Kool-Aid with a kick?”
“Kool-Aid?”
“Fruit punch?” She smiled at his slight French accent, and she wanted to ask him about it, but she wasn’t sure if she was allowed.
She wasn’t sure of her social standing with him.
Being his renter made her feel below him, lesser, but on the other hand, she was a resident of the same neighborhood, so did that make them equals?
“How do you like the house?” he asked.
“I love it. I love the heated floors especially.”
“You have Jo to thank for that.” He pointed to his wife, who was in a four-way conversation with Caren and Kenya and a woman wearing a medical mask. “That house was her project. She designed every square inch.”
“But you didn’t want to move into it yourself?”
“Oh no. Our kids are too settled. Plus, we had just done a big reno on the house. The next move we make will be somewhere with a view of the Mediterranean.”
She laughed, but she wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.
“Anyway, there’s not much yard and we have a dog.”
“You have that cute little goldendoodle.”
He nodded. “Muffinhead. Van, that’s my son, named him that a long time ago. He’s getting up in years.”
“Your son or Muffinhead?”
“Both.” Daniel laughed—an open, easy laugh.
He was the opposite of Shawn, whose fitted sports shirt accentuated his bulging muscles.
Daniel was a big guy, muscular yes, but soft.
She bet he was a great cuddler. “My son is a senior in high school, and Muffinhead is about to turn ten.” Daniel looked like he wanted to add something else but stopped.
She liked his face. He wasn’t conventionally handsome, but he had kind-looking brown eyes and a distinguished nose.
He was the kind of guy who’d only get better with age.
“Well, glad you like the house,” he said. “You have my number, but don’t hesitate to knock on our door if you need anything. There’s a little cut-through from our backyard to yours, where there’s a gap in the hedge.”
“I hadn’t noticed that.”
“It was there when we moved in almost twenty years ago. The previous owners said all the neighborhood kids use it to cut through to school, so when we tore down the house and built the new one our kids begged us to keep the hedge. Kids still use it. You’ve probably seen them.”
Tori smiled, but she hadn’t. She wasn’t home during school’s opening and closing hours. Besides, she knew nothing about landscaping and hadn’t spent any time in the backyard. But this decades-old tradition sounded sweet to her.
Tori watched Daniel make his way across the lawn and put his arm around Jo’s waist. A moment later, Shawn and Miguel joined their wives.
It couldn’t be clearer—the happily marrieds, the landowners, all in a cozy little circle.
And the divorced renter on the outside. An intense wave of alienation washed over her.
Tori downed the last of her Should I Get Bangs? and poured herself one more. She hated when she felt this way. The little monsters who lived in the attic of her brain would have a field day with this humiliation. She must not open the attic door and let them out. She needed to talk to Cyrus, bad.
Moving to Eastbrook was supposed to be a fresh start. If she let those little monsters out, even for a bit, there was no telling the damage they might do.