The Woman Next Door Read Free

none as large or as handsome, none in as upscale a community, and none that excited them as this one did. The asking price was definitely areach. But Graham’s work as a landscape architect had grown enough for him to hire a full-time assistant, and Amanda had just been appointed school psychologist in the same town as the house.
    That town was Woodley. Prosperous and pristine, it lay in a cluster of rolling hills in western Connecticut, ninety-some minutes by car from New York, and counted among its fourteen thousand residents half a dozen CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, innumerable lawyers and doctors, and a growing list of the Internet-riche. The population was increasingly young. As new, large homes sprang up on wooded lots, or older residents retired and moved south, the town’s streets were seeing a growing parade of Expeditions.
    The house itself, barely ten years old, was the first in a circle of four Victorians that had been built around a wooded cul-de-sac. With its generous yellow body and white trim, wide wraparound porch, quaint picket fence and gaslights, it was as picturesque as its neighbors—and the beauty didn’t end at the front door. The entry hall was open and bright, flanked on either side by living and dining rooms with carved moldings, mahogany built-ins, and high windows. At the back of the house was a large kitchen with granite counters, wood floors, and a glassed-in breakfast area. A winding staircase, replete with window seats at each of two landings, led to four bedrooms on the second floor, one of which was a lavish master suite. As if all that weren’t enough, the real estate agent led them to a pair of rooms over the garage.
    “Offices,” Amanda whispered excitedly when the woman turned away to take a cell call.
    Graham whispered back, “Could you counsel people here?” “In a minute. Could you draw landscape plans here?” “Big time.” The whispering went on. “Look at the woods. Smell the lilacs. If not here, where? Did you see the bedrooms?”
    “They’re huge.”
    “Except for the one right next to ours. It could be a nursery.”
    “No, no.” Amanda envisioned something else. “I’d put the cradle in our room and make the little room into a den. It’d be perfect for reading goodnight stories.”
    “Then we’ll give Zoe and Emma the room across the hall, and put Tyler and Hal at the end.”
    “Not Hal,” Amanda begged. It was a long-standing debate. “Graham, Jr. And if they’re anything like you and your brothers, they’ll be into mischief, so they should be closer.”
    “Hal,” Graham insisted, “and I want them farther off. Boys make more noise. Trust me on this.” Slipping an arm around her waist, he drew her lower body close. His eyes grew heavier, the color on his cheekbones warmer, his voice deeper, a whisper. “Diaphragm put away?”
    Amanda could barely breathe, the moment was so ripe. “Put away.”
    “We’re makin’ a baby?”
    “Tonight.” They had deliberately waited the year, so that they could have each other for an uninterrupted time before their lives inevitably changed.
    “If this house was ours”—his whisper was more hoarse—“where would you . . . ?”
    “In the breakfast nook in the kitchen,” she whispered back. “Then, years from now, we’d look at each other over the heads of the kids and have our little secret. What about you?”
    “The backyard. Out in the woods, away from the neighbors. It’ll be like our first time all over again.”
    But it wasn’t their first time. They had been married a year, and they had pressing dreams. “This house is perfect, Gray. This neighborhood is perfect. Did you see the tree houses and swing sets? These are nice people with kids. Can we afford to live here?” “No. But we will.”
    ***
    They celebrated their second anniversary by seeing Amanda’s gynecologist. They had been making love without benefit of birth control for a year, and no baby had come of it. After months of