Page 3 of The Neighbor
When I finally pulled my hands off her, I collapsed back onto the grass and stared at her lifeless body almost as if I expected her to roll over and look at me with confusion about what I’d done filling her eyes. She had no warning that today was her last day on earth. No hint that anything she could say would make me do this to her.
She woke up like she had every other day of her life and went about with her plans, never knowing that someone had entirely different plans for her. One minute she was alive and saying thoughtless words, and the next she was lying face down in the tall grass gone from the world.
I don’t know how long I sat there with her body just inches away from me. I should have been worried that someone would find me lounging out next to a dead girl, but the thought never entered my head. No thoughts came to me as I stared at her for what felt like hours. I had no feelings either.
For a second or two, I thought I might throw up right after the deed was done, but that never happened either. Nothing happened. It wasn’t like in the movies when someone kills another person and then runs away or instantly regrets what they did, scrambling to hide all the evidence so they don’t get caught.
I simply killed her and then sat down. Then later, I stood up, walked back down the same path she and I had taken, and strolled out of those woods. There was no one waiting for me. No one with questions about where Amanda was. Nothing. Just a beautiful summer afternoon fading into evening.
The police and their questions for all of us in the neighborhood came later the next morning when her body was found. Did you know her? Were you friends? When was the last time you saw her? Did you see anyone suspicious walk into the woods yesterday?
My answer to all their questions was the same shrug and forced sad expression I knew they expected from someone who may have known Amanda Michaels as a neighbor. My mother spoke more to the police than I did, expressing her utter disbelief that something so heinous could happen in our beautiful small town with such a low crime rate.
And then the police left after a few days, and I heard from my mother that they had no leads in the case. It appeared as a news story for a week or so on the local TV stations. Nothing makes the news gods happier, it seems, than a beautiful blond who’s had something terrible happen to her. Then the story faded from the limelight, and I was left as the only person in the worldwho truly knew what had happened to sixteen-year-old Amanda Michaels that hot summer day in late July.
1
Present Day
My new housesits in a development surrounded by various homes of different colors inhabited by a range of suburbanites who’ve chosen to live just a few miles outside of Philly. The town, Raven Terrace, boasts good schools, low crime rates, and a good tax base.
All of that means little to me. I chose this house two months ago for one reason.
Nobody knows me here.
As is typical in suburbia, the people around me seem to find it necessary to mingle as often as possible. They have block parties and holiday festivals every chance they get. That’s never been my style, but as they say, when in Rome do as the Romans do.
Not that agreeing to join their little events means they get to know anything about me.
I know about them, though. They make it so easy. Well, most of them, but even the ones who seem to want to keep their lives private can’t succeed in hiding from me.
Since I work from home as a human resources consultant in my house at the center of this cul-de-sac, I have a panoramic view of what goes on with my neighbors. The house to the right of mine, a blue one with a small front porch and a picture window in the front that looks exactly like every other house in this development, is the home to Jared and Suzanne Meyers. Every morning, rain or shine, he goes for a run. More than once when an early morning summer storm rolled through, I wondered as I watched him take off down the street in his yellow running shorts and bright green and black running shoes if he’ll be running when the weather turns and it snows. This part of Pennsylvania doesn’t tend to get too many inches in the winter, but big storms can happen.
I suspect he will because his running partner is the woman he’s cheating on his wife with. The blond-haired, blue-eyed, handsome athletic store manager has a thing going with a woman from two streets over who meets him every morning at the corner. Also blond, she wears running clothes that seem more for tantalizing than exercising.
Every day, I watch him meet her and then immediately look back toward his house to see if his wife is watching. I suspect Suzanne doesn’t know what Jared’s up to since she’s gone from the house in her business suit and high heels less than five minutes after he leaves on his daily run. A lawyer at a firm in the city, she’s attractive in a barracuda kind of way and reminds me of every female attorney I’ve ever seen on TV. Driven and focused, she’s smart but distracted from her marriage by her job.
But I have a feeling she’s going to find out about her cheating husband soon.
Sitting up at my desk, I stretch my arms above my head as my mid-morning break starts. Out my front window I see the man who lives in the white house to the left of me. Hunched over, he picks something that looks like a child’s toy off his slightly yellowgrass. He’s dressed like he always is—faded jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers—but there’s nothing casual about Aaron.
I think he may have been a fun-loving kind of person at some point, but those days are long gone. Right after I moved into this house, Jared told me that Aaron had lost his wife less than a year ago after she suffered for three years with cancer. He didn’t say what kind of cancer and I didn’t ask, but it’s clear by looking at Aaron that he hasn’t gotten over the loss of her.
They had two children, but I’ve noticed they don’t seem to be around much anymore. Aaron rarely leaves the house, other than to walk around his yard and pick things up off the grass that’s slowly dying. He never attends the neighborhood functions that are so integral to nearly everyone around me.
In that, I can respect him. In everything else, he simply seems lost. We’ve never spoken a single word to one another, but I have a feeling if he ever does talk to me, it won’t be about anything happy. The man wears sadness like a coat he can’t take off.
I step behind the curtain to avoid his next-door neighbor from seeing me this morning. Now there’s a chatty one. Well, the wife. The husband doesn’t seem to care about anything but fishing. Both retired, they appear to have chosen very different paths in their early sixties. She putters around that yard of theirs tending to her roses, which are many and in a variety of different colors. I have to give her this. She seems to have a green thumb.
The husband, on the other hand, is rarely home. Like Jared with his running, rain or shine Harold Kittner drives off in his RAM truck every morning with his fishing poles and tackle box in the truck bed. His face is always sunburnt, and from what I’ve seen from the few interactions with him, he must spend a good portion of his fishing time drinking since he’s often drunk when he comes home.
It seems that doesn’t bother Marilyn Kittner because whenever he rolls up the driveway, she’s there with a smile waiting for him. He never seems happy to be home, always surly looking when he gathers up his poles and equipment and trudges toward her to give her a peck on the cheek. Then after fulfilling his husbandly duty, he walks into the house, and she returns to cruising around their yard to prune one of her rose bushes.
More than once, I’ve watched her tend to her prized possessions and thought she was probably a beautiful woman when he was younger. Now, she’s a gray-haired woman who wears a bun all the time but never seems able to get all her hair into it. The effect is something I’ve termed not unappealing dishevelment. I sense she doesn’t see a need to focus on her appearance anymore, so she pays more attention to her plants than anything else.
She and the wife from the tan house on the corner across from her are the ringleaders for the neighborhood events. In her mid-thirties, I guess, with four children and light brown hair that’s always in a ponytail, Kimmy Marshall is just as chatty as Marilyn, so they get on great.
And yes, it’s Kimmy. Not Kim. Not Kimberly. Kimmy. That seems like an odd name for a woman her age, especially considering the only part of her that looks bright and cheery like her name is her face. Always wearing a smile, even when it’s forced, she spends her time wrangling those kids of hers in her wrinkled clothes.