Perfect Nightmare

Chapter Thirteen

“Please?” Lindsay pleaded. “I went with you last weekend and it was awful. And I was awful! I was rude to that real estate lady, and I hated everything, and I almost threw up in the lobby of that one building. Why would you even want me to go?” She saw her father glance uncertainly at her mother, and decided to play another card. “Besides, I have cheerleading practice.”

Kara shook her head. “We want to make sure we buy something we can all live with, honey. That’s why we want you with us when we look — you need to help us decide.”

“But it was all so awful last week,” Lindsay repeated.

“I know it was, but today it will be better, and we really want you to spend the day with us in the city.”

“With you and the Raven.”

“C'mon, kitten,” Steve said. “It’ll be fun.” He wrapped his toast around two pieces of bacon and bit off half of it, washing it down with coffee.

“You think that’s fun?” Lindsay asked incredulously. “Well, it isn’t. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking at in those places — all they look like to me is a bunch of empty rooms that don’t seem like anyone could ever live in them. Can’t you guys choose?”

Kara shook her head again. “We are not going to buy a place without you seeing it first. We’re a family, remember? And I’m afraid I don’t really see the point of you going to practice, either, since you’re not going to be on the squad here next year.”

“You don’t know that,” Lindsay said, a note of desperation coming into her voice. “I mean — not for sure. Maybe the house won’t sell, and I’ll at least get to graduate with my friends. Or maybe you can move to the city right away, and I’ll move in with Dawn or something.”

Kara looked at Steve, and he could see that she was wavering. “What about that nightmare you had the other night?” he said to his daughter. “I’m not sure what time we’ll be back, and you don’t want to come home to an empty house this afternoon, do you?”

“I’ll go to Dawn’s after practice and hang out until you get home,” Lindsay said, speaking so quickly that her parents both knew it wasn’t an idea she’d come up with on the spur of the moment.

Simultaneously, both Steve and Kara sighed in surrender, neither willing to have the argument expand into a full-fledged fight that would ruin the day for all of them. “I guess that works,” Kara finally said.

“If it’s okay with your mom, it’s okay with me,” Steve agreed, shrugging. “But I still wish—”

“The open house here is from one to four,” Kara interjected, cutting Steve off before he could rekindle the argument. “We should be back by five — six at the latest.”

Not if we find a place and decide to write an offer, Steve thought, but refrained from saying it, certain that the idea of buying a place today would only upset Lindsay even more. “If we’re going to be later than that, we’ll call. Okay?”

Lindsay nodded, feeling better now that she realized she’d won the argument. But then she saw her mother’s eyes cloud.

“Oh, Lord,” Kara groaned. “I forgot — we’re having dinner with the Bennetts.”

Steve’s brows arched as he turned to Lindsay, seizing the dinner as one last chance to convince her to change her mind. “C'mon, kitten. We’re having dinner at Café des Artistes. You’ll love it — come with us.”

For a moment she seemed to waver. “Who else is going to be there?” she asked.

“Mitch Bennett and his wife.”

Lindsay’s eyes rolled. “Ooh, that sounds like a lot of fun. A whole evening of watching an old man grope his trophy wife. I think I’ll pass.”

“Lindsay!” Kara said, even though she didn’t disagree with her daughter. Mitch Bennett had dumped JoAnne — and there was no other word but “dumped”—for a girl scarcely ten years older than Lindsay. And since Mitch Bennett was also third in seniority in Steve’s firm, no one could say a word about it. All any of them could do was pretend that the new wife was faintly interesting, which she wasn’t.

Steve, thankfully, didn’t argue, either. “Okay, then. You stay at Dawn's,” he said. “Can you spend the night there?”

“I’ll be fine!” Lindsay insisted. She rose from her chair, picked up the milk and her dirty dishes and took them to the dishwasher.

“Then we’re going to take off,” Kara said, glancing at her watch. “We’re meeting Rita Goldman at eleven-thirty. Mark will be here soon to go through the house and get himself set up — I told him we’d all be gone by ten. Do you want to stay here until practice?”

Lindsay’s brow furrowed. “With that real estate guy? No way. How about if you just drop me at Dawn's?”

“How about if you say ‘please’ and offer me a smile with that request?” Kara countered.

Lindsay pasted a hugely exaggerated smile onto her face and drawled an equally exaggerated “Puh-leeeeeze?” and suddenly all three of them were laughing.

Maybe the day was going to work out for all of them after all.

Fifteen minutes later Steve stood in the kitchen, waiting — as he always did — for the two females in his life to come downstairs and get in the car. It was already ten after ten, and they would have to hurry if they were going to meet Rita Goldman on schedule. He opened his mouth to yell up the stairs, thought better of it, and decided to kill whatever time they took by taking a swipe at the countertop, adjusting the coffeepot and putting the dishcloth into the laundry. As he came back into the kitchen, he realized just how much he was going to miss this house. He and Kara had designed it themselves, and supervised almost every moment of its construction, and now that it had that perfect lived-in look, and the landscaping had matured into the vision they’d only been able to see in their minds for the first fifteen years, they were leaving it.

For just a moment he was almost tempted to skip the meeting with Rita Goldman, take the house off the market, and figure out some other way to solve their problems. But even as the thought came to mind, he knew there was no other way. The die was cast, and it was time to move on. But if only—

The doorbell jerked him out of his reverie.

“Mr. Marshall!” Mark Acton said, coming through the front door as Steve entered the living room. “I didn’t expect you to be home.”

Steve uttered a hollow chuckle. “We’re trying to get out of here,” he said, offering the other man his hand. “You know women.”

Mark Acton’s hand felt limp in Steve's. “Don’t I know it!” he said. “Can’t live with ’em, and can’t live without ’em!” As the tired cliché lay quivering between them like a dying fish, Steve understood exactly why Lindsay hadn’t wanted to be here when the agent arrived. Acton seemed not to notice his reaction. “I just thought I’d get things arranged in the house,” he said, “get my signs up and then come back about twelve-thirty.”

“That’s fine,” Steve said. He turned and called up the stairs. “Ladies? Time to go!”

Seconds later Kara and Lindsay came downstairs, Kara carrying her purse and the portfolio she’d been keeping of Manhattan real estate, Lindsay with her gym bag slung over her shoulder.

Steve watched as Acton greeted them. While Kara shook the agent’s hand warmly and gave him a few last minute instructions, Lindsay avoided him completely, walking around behind Steve so she wouldn’t have to touch Mark Acton’s hand or even say hello to him. And he realized he felt more sympathy for his daughter’s open dislike of the man than for his wife’s apparent warmth.

Not that he didn’t understand what Kara was doing. For years he’d watched her treat people he knew she despised as if they were her closest friends.

And as a lawyer, he was even better at it than she was.

“Well, we’re in your capable hands now,” he said, slapping Acton jovially on the shoulder. “I’ve got a feeling you’re going to sell this place today!”

“I’ve got that feeling, too,” he replied as Steve followed his wife and daughter toward the kitchen and the garage beyond. “I think we’ve got a good chance of doing just that.”

“Excellent,” Steve said. And if you do, he added silently to himself, I’ll never have to see you again.

Then he was out the garage door and put Mark Acton — and his open house — out of his mind, focusing instead on finding his family a new home. But as he drove away and glanced at the house in the rearview mirror, he knew that no matter where they went, it wouldn’t be as wonderful as the house they were leaving.

After all, despite the problems they’d had lately, it was a house that had no bad memories.