More Than Neighbors (2 page)

If the new people tried to intrude... Well, he’d have no trouble setting them straight. He knew what signals to give to hold people at a comfortable distance. He could be pleasant and still be read just fine.

He took a beer from the refrigerator and decided he wouldn’t waste any worry on problems that probably wouldn’t arise. Maybe he’d trailer Hoodoo up toward Calispell for a good ride come morning. He often took a few hours off work after finishing a major job.

Sleep came easily.

* * *

“
M
OM,
I
’M BORED.”

Ciara had been standing on tiptoes to set the empty case that had held her sewing machine on the shelf in the closet. Nudging it as far back as it would go, she sighed and turned to face her son, who was gazing at her expectantly. Lately she’d been disconcerted every time she looked at him. She swore he’d shot up three inches this year, and was now, at twelve years old and not far from his thirteenth birthday, lanky and several inches taller than she was.

“How can you be bored?” she asked. “You can’t possibly have put your own stuff away yet.”

He grimaced. “No, but that’s boring.”

She leveled a look at him. “You know how irritated you get when something isn’t where it belongs.”

“But nothing belongs anywhere yet,” he complained. “I don’t know where things should go.”

Hiding her exasperation, she escorted him to the bedroom he’d chosen and discovered that he’d barely begun to unpack. Apparently, it had been obvious to him that clothes did belong in dresser drawers, because most of what had been in his suitcase had made it that far. Otherwise, he’d opened boxes but not taken anything out. She should have realized he’d be paralyzed by so many decisions. He liked things to stay the same.

“We brought all your furniture,” she pointed out. The moving truck had arrived midmorning, as promised, and the movers had unloaded with astonishing haste. Furniture had all gone into the rooms she’d designated, but not necessarily in exactly the ideal spot. Maybe that was the problem for Mark. “Do you like where the bed is?”

He was strong enough to move his own furniture around, but dithered so much over where each piece went, an hour passed before he seemed to be satisfied. Then, of course, he was hungry.

Well, okay, she was, too. And really, what was the hurry? They could take their time unpacking. This move was their new start, and she wanted it to be a happy one.

As she dumped a can of soup into a saucepan on the stove, Mark gazed wistfully out the window toward the neighboring pasture. “I want to pet that horse. She’s real pretty.”

“What’s the rule?” Ciara pulled cold cuts out of the refrigerator. How did he know the horse was a she? Was it obvious even from a distance?

“I can’t go near the horse until the owner says it’s okay,” he repeated by rote. “But he can’t say it’s okay until we go talk to him.”

“Even then, I don’t want you to go into the pasture,” she said with a spurt of alarm. “You’ll have to wait until the horse comes to the fence.”

“Mo-om. Most horses are friendly.”

“They bite. They kick.”

He rolled his eyes, which she probably deserved. The truth was, she didn’t know anything about horses. The closest she’d come was to pat the neck of whatever pony Mark had been able to ride at the zoo or fair when he was much smaller. He was the one obsessed with animals in general and horses in particular. He read about them; he drew them; he talked about them. And now, a real, live specimen grazed in the pasture a bare stone’s throw away from his own house.

She eyed him suspiciously as she put together sandwiches, stirred the soup and poured it into bowls. Usually he was good at following the rules, as long as she made them specific enough. But the temptation this time...

“Sit down and eat,” she said.

He did as she asked, but paused between bites to inform her that horses liked carrots. “And sugar cubes. We could buy some, couldn’t we?”

She didn’t know if grocery stores stocked sugar cubes. They had never made an appearance on her list before.

Somehow or other, she’d have to work horses into the lesson plan. How, she couldn’t imagine. As had become her habit, she put off worrying about it to another day. Truthfully, she was apprehensive about the whole homeschooling deal. She’d graduated from high school what seemed like an awfully long time ago. Mark was particularly advanced in math, a subject she’d been weak in. Given his insistence on precision, that went with his personality.

She’d bought ready-made materials to meet state requirements for a seventh grader, though, so how hard could it be? And once the internet was hooked up, limitless resources would become available.

I can do this.

Her mantra usually calmed her. She
had
to do this, for Mark’s sake. The whole move was about Mark, reducing the stress that had had him coming home from school in tears half the time. She was still enraged when she thought about her last meeting with the middle-school principal, who had made it plain he thought Mark, the victim, was to blame for being bullied. If he’d respond differently to the little creeps who were taunting and beating him, they’d leave him alone, the principal had explained despite her mounting outrage.

She had risen to her feet and glared at him. “My son is kind, smart and gentle. And you’re saying
he’s
the one who should change? The boys who trip him, steal his lunch, rip up his schoolwork and beat him up, they’re just boys being boys?”

He’d stuttered and fumbled, but clearly the answer was yes. That was what he thought.

She had marched out, her mind made up in that instant. Not only would she homeschool, but she and Mark would move, too. Start over, where he wouldn’t already be pigeonholed. As it happened, she had been considering quitting her front counter job at a medical clinic and focusing full-time on a hobby that had somehow been transforming into a business.

Now was good.

It wouldn’t hurt to put more distance between Mark and his father, too. Mark’s constant disappointment at the excuses and cancellations could be moderated by the fact that regular weekends with his dad were clearly no longer possible, and obviously Jeff
couldn’t
come to sports games or any special happenings. Better than for Mark to be hammered by the knowledge that his dad didn’t want to see him.

She’d intended to give Mark a few days off before they started with the schoolwork—at the very least, she had to get her sewing room/studio unpacked before she could return to work. Orders for her custom pillows wouldn’t magically be filled unless she applied herself.

Reading and applying himself to worksheets and projects would keep Mark occupied so she could go back to work, though.

“We need to grocery shop,” she said. “We can stop at the neighbor’s going or coming, introduce ourselves and ask about the horse. Okay?”

“Yes!” her son said with satisfaction.

Once they had finished eating, she insisted he unpack at least one of his collections before they went anywhere.

If it hadn’t been for that blasted horse wandering so close to the property line, she’d have expected Mark to go for his rocks and minerals. He liked all the sciences, but especially biology and geology, including paleontology. He’d been excited about doing some fossil hunting in Eastern Washington. After a session on the internet, he’d informed her that trilobites could be found in Pend Oreille County a little to the north, fossil plants in Spokane County and graptolites—whatever those were—right here in Stevens County. Something else that could be worked into his science curriculum in the form of field trips. Ciara had been trying very hard not to let him guess how unenthusiastic she was about prowling dry, rocky ground or fresh road cuts in the hot sun. As excited as
he
was, he probably wouldn’t notice if she whined nonstop, though, or if they encountered a rattlesnake. Caught up in one of his interests, Mark tended to be oblivious to anything and everyone else.

Oh, God—
were
there rattlesnakes locally?

A number of Mark’s teachers had hinted that his intense focus was somehow abnormal, that he needed to learn to “moderate” his enthusiasms, to respond appropriately to his classmates rather than shutting them out or being astonished that they weren’t as captivated as he was by whatever currently interested him.

Gee, had it ever occurred to those teachers that his behavior meant he was exceptionally bright? And that those interests should be encouraged, not
dis
couraged? Apparently not.

Her blood pressure rose just thinking about it. She found herself not folding fabrics as carefully as she should before piling them onto shelves.

New start. Who cared what those teachers had implied?

Once she felt calmer, she took a break to see how Mark was coming along, and found that he had chosen, big surprise, to get his animal figurines and books displayed rather than the rocks and minerals and his few precious fossils. The figurines had to be anatomically correct to join his collection, of course. He could and did pick any one up and talk endlessly about it. Only a few days ago, while he was carefully wrapping each before setting it in a box, he’d lectured her about what made an emu different from an ostrich.

Answer: emus were native to Australia, ostriches to Africa, the coloring was different, an ostrich was larger and faster. In fact, it was the world’s fastest two-legged animal, clocking in at forty miles an hour while emus trailed at only thirty miles an hour. And, he had added earnestly, just as he had the last time she heard the same lecture, ostriches only have two toes on each foot, while emus have three.

“Ostriches are the only members of the ratite family with two toes, Mom,” he had informed her, as if this was a fact that should make her shake her head in wonderment.

And yes, she already knew that kiwis, rheas and cassowaries also belonged to the family.

Ciara knew, God help her, a whole lot she wished she could forget.

And so what if he was fascinated by two-toed birds instead of who the current NBA leading scorer was? She couldn’t believe the mothers of most twelve-year-old boys shared their sons’ enthusiasms, whatever they were.

“Groceries,” she announced, after admiring the ranks of creatures displayed by species and family on the shelves of a tall bookcase.

“Yeah! But we can stop next door first, right?”

Ciara ruffled his hair. “Right.”

Which meant that, ten minutes later, she turned into the driveway just past the next mailbox on their rural road. Weirdly, it was paved, a blacktop smoother than the road. Hers, two dusty strips separated by a hillock of sturdy wild grasses, was more typical, from what she’d seen. This made for a nice change, though, and didn’t raise a plume of dust behind her Dodge Caravan.

She braked beside the farmhouse, which was in considerably better shape than the one she had just bought. Personally, Ciara thought it could be improved by a more imaginative use of color. Once she got around to having their house painted, it wouldn’t be white, that was for sure.

“We should ring the doorbell,” Mark said.

“It doesn’t look like anyone ever uses the front door,” Ciara said doubtfully.

“I’ll go ring it anyway.” Without waiting for an answer, he loped across the neatly mowed lawn and bounded onto the porch. A minute later, he came back. “No one is here.”

There weren’t any visible vehicles, it was true. The doors on both barns as well as a couple of outbuildings were closed.

“We’ll try again on our way home from town,” she suggested. “Maybe they’re at work.”

“Do you think they have kids?”

She glanced at him, trying to decide whether he sounded wary or hopeful. Given how much trouble he had making friends, she’d expect wary. She hadn’t said to him,
Let’s move somewhere so isolated, you won’t have to interact with other kids your age at all
, but that had been her goal. At least, until she could introduce him to others in a controlled way.

“No idea,” she said. “Mr. Garson didn’t say.” Mr. Garson was the Realtor she’d dealt with. She wished now she’d asked more about the nearest neighbors, but it was a little late. “Come on, let’s go do our shopping.”

Goodwater had a dusty charm and an old-fashioned Main Street with the type of independent businesses that had vanished from larger towns, including hardware, appliance and clothing stores, a pharmacy, a sporting-goods store with a large banner in the window promising Uniforms for All Local Teams and a special on soccer shoes. Ciara stole a look at Mark, who was gazing with interest at the sidewalks, stores and cafés. Would he like to play soccer? She couldn’t imagine. His feet had grown even faster than the rest of him. He literally tripped over them. Maybe something this fall...

The grocery store turned out to be adequate. More expensive than Ciara was used to, but that wasn’t unexpected. It might be smart to plan a trip every few weeks to stock up at a Costco or Sam’s Club or suchlike in Spokane. She could make an outing of it for both of them.

In the frozen-food aisle, a plump woman about Ciara’s age stopped her cart to smile at them. “You must be visitors. We don’t get many strangers here.”

“I just bought a house. I’m Ciara Malloy, and this is my son, Mark.”

“Hello, do you have a horse?” Mark asked.

The woman laughed. “No, but half the people hereabouts do. I’m Audrey Stevens. I live right in town. My husband is an attorney, if you come to need one.”

Ciara smiled. “Not yet, fortunately.”

“Do you have a dog?” Mark asked.

“Yes, a small one. Since our yard isn’t very big,” she explained, probably in response to his expression. Mark thought dogs ought to be large. He couldn’t understand why anyone had bred a perfectly good animal to be purse-size.

Since he tended to be literal, Ciara was pleasantly surprised that he’d held off reminding her that she’d promised they would get a dog as soon as they moved. After all, in his mind, the move had probably been complete the minute they drove up to the house last night.

“Which house did you buy?” the friendly woman asked, reclaiming her attention.