Change of Heart Read Free

course, neither of them ever told her that they thought Halloween was a juvenile holiday. Instead of tramping the streets asking for candy, they would go to Chelsea’s house and work on their computers while dripping artificial blood. They sent the butler out to purchase candy that they’d later show to Eli’s mom so she’d think they were “normal” kids.
    Only once had Chelsea dared tell Eli that she thought it was a bit absurd for them to sit at their computers wearing uncomfortable and grotesque costumes while calculating logarithms. Eli had said, “My mother made these for us to wear,” and that had been the final decree. The matter was never mentioned again.

     
    As Eli rode his bike onto the cracked, weedy concrete drive of his mother’s house, he caught a glimpse of the taillights of his father’s car as it scurried out of sight.
    “Deadbeat!” Eli said under his breath, knowing that his father must have been watching for him so he could run away as soon as he saw his son.
    Every time Eli thought of the word father his stomach clenched. Leslie Harcourt had never been a father to him, nor a husband to his wife, Miranda. The man had spent his life trying to make his family believe he was “important.” Too important to talk to his family; too important to go anywhere with his wife and child; too important to give them any time or attention.
    According to Leslie Harcourt, other people were the ones who really counted in life. “My friends need me,” Eli had heard his father say over and over. His mother would say, “But Leslie, I need you too. Eli needs school clothes and there are no groceries in the house and my car has been broken for three weeks. We need food and we need clothes.”
    Eli would watch as his father got that look on his face, as though he were being enormously patient with someone who couldn’t understand the simplest concepts. “My friend has broken up with his girlfriend and he has to have someone to talk to and I’m the only one. Miranda, he’s in pain. Don’t you understand? Pain! I must go to him.”
    Eli had heard his father say this same sort of thing a thousand times. Sometimes his mother would show a little spunk and say, “Maybe if your friends cried on the shoulders of their girlfriends, they wouldn’t be breaking up.”
    But Leslie Harcourt never listened to anyone except himself—and he was a master at figuring out how to manipulate other people so he could get as much out of them as possible. Leslie knew that his wife, Miranda, was softhearted; it was the reason he’d married her. She forgave anyone anything, and all Leslie had to do was say “I love you” every month or so and Miranda forgave him whatever.
    And in return for those few words, Miranda gave Leslie security. She gave him a home that he contributed little or no money to and next to no time; he had no responsibilities either to her or to his son. Most important, she provided him with an excuse to give to all his women as to why he couldn’t marry them. He invariably “forgot” to mention that all these “friends” who “needed” him were women—and mostly young, with lots of hair and long legs.
    When he was very young, Eli had not known what a “father” was, except that it was a word he heard other children use, as in “My father and I worked on the car this weekend.” Eli rarely saw his father, and he never did anything with him.
    But Eli and Chelsea had put an end to Leslie and all his Helpless Hannahs two years ago. It was Chelsea who first saw Eli’s father with the tall, thin blonde as they were slipping into an afternoon matinee at the local mall. And Chelsea, using the invisibility of being a child, sat in front of them, twirling chewing gum (which she hated) and trying to look as young as possible, as she listened avidly to every word Eli’s father said.
    “I would like to marry you, Heather, you know that. I love you more than life itself, but I’m a married man with a