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By Root 1148 0

worked at Florida Testing and Assessment, and her mother, right now anyway, was a stay-at-home mom; and Nance nodded approvingly. For some reason Suzi kept talking, revealing things she’d never tell most people, had told only Mykaila before, that both Ava and Otis had what is called Asperger’s syndrome, which was bad enough in itself, but what made it worse was that Ava took up all her mother’s time. Got more pity than anyone ever had in the history of time. Their mother was always taking Ava to counseling and different therapies, trying to turn her into a normal person who was going to go off to college and get a job and get married, which was never going to happen in a million years but her mother refused to admit it.

“I see,” said Nance, and nodded as if she did see. She didn’t ask what Asperger’s syndrome was, thank God, because it was nearly impossible to describe. “What about your brother?”

And Suzi told her how Otis was a science geek who did experiments in his shed out in the backyard and nobody ever paid any attention to him except Granddad, who gave him advice and things to read about science.

Granddad seemed to be the one Nance was really interested in.

Nance asked how long Granddad had been living with them—two years—and where he’d lived before that—Iowa, until his wife, Suzi’s stepgrandma, died.

Oh, Nance seemed puzzled, knocked off balance. Where did he live before Iowa?

Memphis, Suzi said, wondering why she cared.

“Oh,” Nance said, now in a totally different way. “Memphis!” She seemed thrilled, and then revealed why. “I lived in Memphis for a long time myself.” She looked at Suzi expectantly. “I’d love to meet your granddad and talk about Memphis sometime.”

“You should stop by. He’s always home.” Suzi wanted to howl with laughter. The poor woman had a crush on Granddad! It was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. Should she tell Nance that Granddad was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s? Three people in her house had some kind of official label, given to them by doctors, but Suzi could label the others, too. Her mother was a helicopter parent, hovering around Ava. Her father had turned into a workaholic; and when he was home, all he did was watch for hurricanes on the Internet. He was also a soccerholic. He went to all Suzi’s games and gave her advice on how to be a good goalie, and most embarrassing of all he coached her from the sidelines. Like he knew anything about soccer. Sometimes it seemed like he cared more about Suzi being a soccer star than she cared herself. Everyone expected her to be the perfect one, the one with no problems, the athletic one, since Otis and Ava were so uncoordinated they couldn’t tie their own shoes.

Suddenly Suzi realized—oh my God—they were standing on the corner of Squire’s Drive and Cook’s Circle right in front of the sexual predator’s house—a boxlike brick ranch house with a boring flat yard. His white van wasn’t there, but Parson was sitting in the perv’s yard, next to the perv’s fire ants. She gave Parson’s leash a little jerk and pulled her into the street, where she sat down next to a tuft of Spanish moss, which was probably full of chiggers and ticks, but oh, well. Suzi’d never actually seen the pervert, but she’d seen his picture on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Web site, and he was just a normal-looking dark-haired dude—didn’t have squinty eyes or tattoos or a cauliflower ear like the bad guys in the old Nancy Drew books that Suzi read and reread. But it gave Suzi a thrill to stare at his house, where the shades were always drawn, and give it the stink eye.

Just then, on the road behind them, a black SUV—whew, not the white van—came roaring down the hill on Squire’s Drive and then slammed on the brakes like the stop sign had jumped out in front of it, and then peeled out like the driver was pissed off about having to stop for two seconds. What was the big fricking hurry?

“That’s my neighbor. Reverend Coffey. They call him Buff,” Nance said, waving at the person in the SUV, who was already long gone. “He’s a minister, but he drives like