The Neighbor - Lisa Gardner [119]
He reached into his back pocket, working on his wallet before he grew so angry he could no longer function. Buy the food, get in the car. Buy the food, get in the car.
Drive to your house, where you can be harassed all over again.
He got out his credit card, handed it to the cashier. Her fingers were trembling so hard it took her three tries to take the plastic. Was she that afraid of him? Certain she was completing a transaction with a psycho killer who’d most likely strangled his wife, then dismembered her body and tossed it into the harbor?
He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it, but the sound would come out all wrong. Too chilling, too disaffected. His life had gone cockeyed, and he didn’t know how to get it back.
“Can I have Pop-Tarts in the car?” Ree was saying. “Can I, can I, can I?”
The woman finally had the card back to him, as well as his receipt. “Yes, yes, yes,” he murmured, signing the slip, pocketing his credit card, desperate to make his getaway.
“I love you, Daddy!” Ree sang out in triumph.
He hoped the whole damn store heard that.
| CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT |
By the time Jason and Ree made it home and he’d run the major news gauntlet half a dozen times to bring in the groceries, Jason was beat. He stuck in a movie for Ree, ignoring the guilty twinge that so much TV couldn’t be good for her, that he should be making more of an effort to engage his daughter during this challenging time, yada, yada, yada.
They had food to eat. The cat was back. He hadn’t been arrested yet.
It was the most he could manage at the moment.
Jason was unloading the eggs when the phone rang. He picked it up absently, without checking caller ID.
“What happened to your face, son?” Maxwell Black’s Southern drawl stretched out the sentence and sent Jason back to a place he didn’t want to go.
“Think you’re the boss, boy? I own you, boy. Lock, stock, and barrel. You belong to me.”
“I fell down the stairs,” Jason replied lightly, forcing the images back into a small box in the corner of his mind. He pictured himself shutting the lid, inserting the key in the lock, turning it just so.
Max laughed. It was a low, warm chuckle, the kind he probably used when making jokes from the bench, or holding court at neighborhood cocktail parties. Maybe he’d even used it the first time a schoolteacher had hesitantly approached him about Sandy. You know, sir, I’ve been worried about how … accident prone … your daughter Sandy seems to be. And Max had laughed that charming little laugh. Oh, no need to worry about my little girl. Don’t even bother your pretty self. My girl is just fine.
Jason disliked Sandra’s father all over again.
“Well, son, we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot yesterday afternoon,” Max drawled.
Jason didn’t answer. The silence dragged on. After another moment, Max moved to fill the gap, adding lightly, “So I called to make amends.”
“No need,” Jason assured him. “Returning to Georgia is good enough for me.”
“Now, Jason, seems to me if anyone should be bearing a grudge, I would have the right. You swept my only daughter off her feet, spirited her away to the God-awful North, then didn’t even invite me to the wedding, let alone the birth of my grandbaby. That’s no way to treat family, son.”
“You’re right. If I were you, I’d never speak to us again.”
That warm molasses chuckle again. “Fortunately for you, son,” Max continued expansively, “I have determined to take the high ground. This is my only daughter and grandchild we’re talking about here. It would be foolish to let the past stand in the way of our future.”
“I’ll tell you what: When Sandra returns, I’ll give her the message.”
“When?” Max’s voice sharpened. “Don’t you mean if?”
“I mean when,” Jason said firmly.
“Your wife run off with another man, son?”
“That