The Woman Next Door Read Free Page A

sculptor named Gears. Gears lived in it until June 1922, when he boarded a train for New York City and was never heard from again. The house became the property of Gears's only living relative, his sister, Elizabeth O'Donahue , who used it as an income property. She rented it, variously, to newlyweds and transients and artists who, like her brother, found its plainness oddly appealing.
    But, because Elizabeth O'Donahue was a woman to whom the responsibilities of being a landlady were not as important as the meager financial rewards, the house slowly fell into decay. In March 1950, with a week's worth of snowfall on it, the back section of the roof of 26 Longview Terrace collapsed, killing a young mother and severely injuring her five-year-old son.
    Elizabeth O'Donahue was successfully prosecuted for negligence, and eventually the house reverted to the city, became a burden, a file number, an eyesore—only one of several hundred such houses in what had then become, and would remain for another decade, the slum district known as Cornhill.
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    T im Bennet didn't know how to deal with his wife's silence, because he didn't know the reason for it. If it was a "tactic," it was one he hadn't expected from her and had never before encountered.
    He leaned over and looked past her at the small red brick house. "Well," he said, "it's nothing if not ugly."
    Christine remained silent, her head still turned, her hands flat in her lap.
    "They're going to bulldoze it," Tim said, straining to sound casual, "unless some poor slob buys it pretty soon."
    He waited. Still nothing.
    "Okay," he said. "Okay." He straightened, put his band on the gearshift.
    Christine looked at him.
    "I'm sorry," Tim said, without knowing why, suddenly needing to say something, anything, to soften whatever it was—anger? hatred?—that had tightened her face, transformed it. "I'm sorry," he repeated, putting the car in gear, his hands shaking, his eyes still on her, disbelieving, uncertain.
    "No," she said, "I like the house. Can we go inside?" Tim couldn't believe what he was hearing.
    It looks just right, doesn't it, Tim? Not too big or too small. It's not expensive, I imagine."
    "Three hundred."
    "Is that all?"
    And it struck Tim that what he was seeing was an impossibility, that Christine couldn't speak so enthusiastically, so hopefully, without showing it around the lips and eyes, that only venom could some from that face. "It's beyond repair, darling," he said.
    She laughed. Lightly. Pleasantly. Laughter that had, so many times before, made him reply spontaneously—without reason—with his own laughter. But now it stopped his breathing momentarily. "Nothing is beyond repair, Tim. It's always just a matter of time. And money."
    "Money we don't have, Christine. Money we'd have to borrow. And I don't even know if I have the expertise to—"
    "Buy it for me, Tim. I really do like it. I'd like to live in it." Tim said nothing. He stared incredulously at her. Her face was a mask of pleading and insistence. And then, at once, he knew what his answer would be, and why: Because he loved her. And because she had asked.
    "Yes," he said. He took his foot off the brake, touched the accelerator. "For you, Christine."
    "You will ? Oh, thank you, Tim. Thank you!"
    He turned onto Briar Street, then onto Selbourne Avenue. Within minutes, they were on the expressway and heading for their apartment.

Chapter 2
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    Six months later
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    M arilyn Courtney pushed at her husband's chest. "Okay," she said, "are you finished?"
    Brett Courtney rolled off her and onto his back. "Yes," he sighed, "I'm finished." He inhaled deeply, let it out slowly, and sat up on the twin bed. "It's cold in here, Marilyn." He leaned over, picked his pajama bottoms up from the floor, stood, put them on. "What have you got the thermostat set at, anyway?"
    "Sixty-eight."
    "I've told you time and again, Marilyn—seventy-two."
    She pushed herself up to a sitting position. "You