The Other Side - J. D. Robb [148]
And why was that? she wondered suddenly, looking up when he withdrew his cell from his pocket. His gaze was warm and encouraging. “Want to give me yours so I can call you for our date next weekend, or are you going to make me work for it?”
Well . . .
“Da-aaad! C’mon.” Saved by the boy.
She grinned, backing away from Ryan, the challenge implied. “Have a good week.”
He laughed, undaunted. “You, too, Maribelle,” he said, then skipped down the steps to join his son. She stood in the doorway and watched them walk away.
“How much do you think a computer person like him would make a year?” Her mother was an educated woman who couldn’t even spell subtle.
M.J. stepped inside quickly and closed the door. “Mother!” She stood frowning at the sisters, hands on her hips.
“Isn’t Jimmy a sweetie pie?” Odelia asked, turning to go back to her pies in the kitchen. “I could just eat him up without a fork.”
“Hold it right there, Odelia.” She waited for her aunt’s attention. “Remember what you promised me. If you want my help, you have to make yourselves scarce when I’m not here. No more apple fetching in the orchard until after Jimmy’s gone to bed. No more watching him from the upstairs window, Imogene. Promise me.”
“I didn’t know he could see me.” She looked so sad M.J. wanted to put her arms around her, hold her until the ache in her heart dried up. “I didn’t mean to scare him.”
“But you don’t scare him. Don’t you understand? He can see you. He believes you’re real. And he feels bad for you.”
“Darling,” her mother said in a tone she’d heard a thousand times—a once-again-you-haven’t-thought-this-through-to-the-end tenor that jangled her nerves and annoyed her because it was sometimes true . . . Not always, but often enough to be irritating. “You can see us. You know we’re real.”
“Yeah, well, I’m an adult. I have a conversational filter that keeps me from broadcasting the fact that I’m in here talking to my ghostly relatives. That kid will tell you anything that floats through his brain.”
“Not everything.” Her mother smiled wisely. “I don’t think he bought our disappearing act.”
“He could probably still smell us.” Imogene agreed.
“All the more reason for him to not see you from now on. Next weekend I’ll bring my laptop and a copy of The Sixth Sense so you can see what happens to kids who can see and talk to dead people. People think they’re crazy.” She bobbed her head. “I don’t think Ryan does yet, but I think he’s worried.”
Her mother grinned and then teased her. “Maybe we should keep him worried for a little while longer. . . . We don’t want him to stop coming around, do we?”
M.J. made a face. “Why would I want him to keep coming around? To see you, maybe? Haven’t we already been there, done that, with Elvis Parker when I was in high school?”
“We are not going down that road again, Maribelle Joy. I’ve told you a million times I did nothing”—she waved a vaporous finger at her daughter—“nothing to encourage that boy.”
“You didn’t have to. You’d just walk through the room, and he’d just about fall off his chair watching you leave. He couldn’t take his eyes off you.”
“That’s not my fault.”
“You couldn’t have locked yourself in the bathroom until he was gone?”
“Certainly. I could have worn a basket over my head, too. Would that have made you happy?”
It was a preposterous question, and one that didn’t matter now anyway. But she did hate losing, so she said, “Maybe.”
“Listen. I couldn’t help being beautiful.” Her sisters—both of whom were just as pretty as she in their own way—groaned and turned away. Odelia put a finger in the air and muttered “Pies,” then followed her finger down the hall. Imogene simply sighed and started up the stairs. “No, really. It wasn’t as easy as you think to look this way.”
Now this was not a familiar topic of conversation for her mother. Granted, she’d never made any secret of the lengths she’d go to, to keep up her physical appearance, but she’d never actually bragged about