Newton Neighbors (New England Trilogy) (9 page)

Ricky had gotten a terrific job in a large marketing firm in Boston and worked his way up to head of his department in Internet marketing. She had paid little attention to his work at that stage, although she did know he’d secured a generous share option in the company during his last bout of employment contract negotiations. This meant as the company grew so did their nest egg, but it also meant he was tied to the company for the foreseeable future. Michael, Ricky’s best friend, worked there, too. Cathi’s husband wasn’t quite as senior, but the men liked working together. She knew from listening to her husband that his work life was fun. Lucky him.

Maria cleaned Alice’s face, unstrapped her out of the high chair and let her down on the kitchen floor. The baby couldn’t walk yet, but she was a fast little crawler. Maria had tried to encourage her onto her feet, but Alice would give one of her piercing screams, pull herself back down onto her backside, and then speed crawl away. Today Maria was in no mood to fight, so she let the girl do what she wanted. It was dangerous to let Alice out of her eyesight for even a minute, because she could head for the front door, or worse—the back. It would be difficult but not impossible for her to get to the lake if she was determined. Maria needed to speak to Ricky about enclosing the backyard for the baby’s safety. There hadn’t been the money to do it when Cody had been small, but now she felt the need.

It was Cathi who had told her to put up a fence. “You wouldn’t believe how many domestic accidents there are each year in the United States—just with babies crawling into danger, Maria. I’m telling you, don’t leave it to chance.”

Maria believed her. Cathi was a great mom with two little girls, Stacy and Katie, nine and ten years old. Michael called the three women in his life
his girls
. He doted on them and with good reason.
 

Cathi was the consummate corporate wife. She ran an oh-so-smooth house. The children were always immaculately dressed and had perfect manners. Maria knew their grades were excellent, and both excelled at ice hockey and tennis. Meanwhile, Cody was always filthy, and despite her trying to buy his clothes to coordinate, they never did. She even bought ensembles so he could wear them together, but Cody wouldn’t do that. Nothing he wore ever matched. The more expensive the outfit, the quicker it seemed to get ripped, trashed, or lost. If she didn’t know better, Maria would have thought he was doing it on purpose.
 

Alice was a different matter. Anything she wore only lasted a nanosecond before it got filthy with food, but at least she’d wear whatever Maria put on her, and dressing a little girl was pure heaven. Her entire wardrobe was full of cerise pinks and raspberry reds. Like her parents, Alice had saucer-size, dark brown eyes, but her hair was still baby fluff. Maria knew soon enough it would be as dark as her own, but for the time being, Alice’s hair was a light fluffy brown. Maria’s mother took huge pleasure in buying little dresses that had matching headbands and shoes. Thousands of photographs had already been taken of her little girl. These days, the dresses weren’t very practical, because Alice wanted to crawl everywhere and her knees kept catching in the folds of her skirts. Maria knew she should start to buy her daughter leggings soon, but she was delaying it because she liked the girlie stuff so much. Maybe as soon as Alice started to walk she could get her back into dresses. The leggings could be just for the crawling stage.
 

Maria thought about Cathi’s perfect children and wanted Alice to follow in their footsteps. Cody was so different. He rarely obeyed her. Both she and Ricky had enormous Latin spirit, and it looked like Cody did, too. He was a little wild, but that was what gave life such excitement and passion. She didn’t want him to lose that—ever. Ricky still had it. He ran with passion, worked with passion. The only place the passion seemed to be petering out was in the bedroom.
 

It wasn’t like they’d stopped having sex—it just happened so rarely these days. Even after Cody was born, she had been happy to get romantic two or maybe three times a week. The older he’d gotten, the more nervous Maria had become that Cody might walk in on them. Then when she got pregnant with Alice, she was so tired. Since her little girl had arrived, she seemed permanently exhausted. If they made love twice a month it was an achievement. He still kissed her in the morning, but it was all so rushed. They didn’t seem to hug for no reason anymore. When had that crept into their lives?
 

Could she get back to the way they once had been? Maybe that was where she should be focusing her energies. Instead of worrying about nonexistent affairs between Ricky and Jessie, perhaps she should be scheming up ways to get her husband’s attention back on her.
 

Alice had reached the back door and was trying to pull herself up to a standing position, but Maria knew Cody would barge in from school through that same door pretty soon. She went over to the baby and pulled her back to the leg of the table. It was no surprise when Alice ramped up to a full-scale tantrum.

“Suck it up,” Maria said, knowing there was no way she could soothe her child. She went back to wiping down the countertop. Perhaps she should join a gym. After all, Alice was turning one two days before Christmas. But why wait that long? If she got cracking now, maybe she would even be in great shape for her baby’s first birthday. Not to mention her own fortieth birthday was looming on the horizon later that spring. How cool would that be?

She knew Cathi was a good person for fitness advice—she went to the gym almost every day—but Maria wouldn’t share this decision with her friend. She wouldn’t even tell Ricky. She would do this by herself, and then her magnificent new figure could be a surprise. She wondered how much she could improve in two months.
 

But what would she do with Alice while she went to the gym? Maria knew her baby would go crazy if she tried to drop her off at one of those baby daycares they had in some gyms. It would be better to get a sitter to come take care of the baby at home.
 

Maria thought about Jessie. She really was an amazing babysitter, and Alice loved her. The last few girls she’d hired had been disasters, more interested in texting, tweeting, or doing whatever the latest craze was. They had all spent their time with their noses in their cell phones and not focusing on her precious children. Jessie was so much better than that.
 

Maria remembered what Cathi had said about keeping pretty women away from her husband. Yes, Ricky seemed to have noticed how pretty Jessie was, but if it was to be just a few mornings a week when he wasn’t even around, what harm could it do? In fact, in a perverse sort of way it might motivate Maria. Seeing Jessie, her beautiful, young competition, would push Maria to work out even harder.
 

Alice had reached the back door again. “You’re going to get hurt.” The baby looked at her and cooed. “When Cody comes in, he’ll smash that door open and you with it if you stand there.”

Maria picked her up and put her out of harm’s way. Orga began to bark outside, which meant Cody was close. Alice started to wail, annoyed at being taken away from the back door again. So Maria gave her another cracker and took one for herself, as well.
 

“Okay,” she said to Alice. “Soon, I’ll get organized and Operation: Transformation can begin, but it has to be our little secret.”

Chapter Six

A Sectional Seduction

Crystal Lake was the worst kept secret in Newton. Cathi fumed as she tapped the Hello Kitty mouse next to her computer with more force than was necessary. Her platinum-blond bob was swept back from her face with a wide, white headband. She wore a fitted, winter-pink cowl neck sweater with a pair of Not Your Daughter’s Jeans. Cathi always gave a lot of thought to how she looked, and this morning was no different. Today, like every day, she was the picture of a perfect Newton wife—on the outside. On the inside, however, she was a churning mass of frustration.
 

“Fudge and double fudge,” she said with suppressed fury. Her strict Catholic education might have taught her to curb the use of bad language, but it had done nothing to restrain her ambitions in life, and Cathi was certainly ambitious. Her daughters were in the best private school within a twenty-mile radius. She was married to Michael, an amazing man with a glamorous job in marketing, and Cathi knew he was still an attractive man. Tall and thin, he was soft-spoken but smart. He would never be the life and soul of the party, but he was strong and dependable. She was the go-getter in the house. Cathi was head of the New to Newton Society, an organization that dedicated itself to the successful integration of new families in the area. And of course, she had a perfect house. The problem was after eight years in the same home, she felt it was time to trade up.

Cathi had been indulging in her latest obsession—property trawling. It was an addictive pastime, and she liked to do it often because local real estate websites uploaded new properties any time during the day. She was even able to narrow her search so she would be shown just the houses within a three-mile radius of her target—Crystal Lake Lane. Cathi could quote her price per square foot just by knowing their proximity to Newton town center and how close they were to the commuter train, the T.
 

Public transport into Boston meant sellers could hike the price up for commuters. Thankfully, that didn’t bother her. Cathi drove everywhere, and so did Michael. His job downtown in Post Office Square came with a parking space, so they rarely used the T. Much more important than trains, transport, and town to Cathi was the water. The lake. Ever since she’d been a little girl, she’d wanted a house on the water, and now, quite suddenly and with no warning, one had popped up for sale. She couldn’t believe it.

Having just shut down the website, she reopened it again. “Recession, my foot,” she grumbled. Fifi, their shih tzu, sat on the floor next to her swivel chair and watched Cathi with tiny adoring eyes.
 

She clicked the newest listing on the property page and reread the house description.

Newton’s best kept secret
, it promised.
 

“Not anymore,” she said and read a little more.
 

Number sixteen, Crystal Lake is tucked away on Crystal Lake Lane, a cul-de-sac of the most desirable detached residences. Many of these magnificent family homes have direct access to the ever popular Crystal Lake. This waterfront home comes to the market in pristine condition.
 

“Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,” Cathi said to the dog.

She didn’t need to go over it again. It was painful enough to read it once. What galled her was the price tag. Some developer had moved in and renovated number sixteen. It was the last house on the dead-end street, on the right-hand side. Cathi didn’t drive past it on her way to Maria’s, so she’d missed the amount of work that must have been done. Now in immaculate condition, the property was for sale for crazy money.

“I’d have to win the lottery.” She drummed her fingers. “How could they be asking for that much? They don’t even have access to the water.” There was a small lane down the side of number fifteen, so in theory they did—or at least the blurb said they did—but the views couldn’t be nearly as good as Maria’s. What kind of value did that put on her friend’s house? How had Maria managed to get a house there before the last boom?
 

She cast an embittered eye around her own study. The entire room had been fitted with English mahogany bookshelves to give it an old-world-library feel. Cathi had filled it with silver framed photographs of her girls and volumes of everyone from Emily Bronte to Danielle Steel. Ironic now that all the works were available on her e-reader, but still she liked the feel of the room.

An interior decorator had done the entire project for Cathi when Stacy, her younger daughter, had turned five. That had been four years ago already. Where had the time gone? Back then, Cathi had decided the children were done being messy, which meant she could think about a more adult environment. She was thankful the girls were out of the sticky finger stage, but sad that their girlie world still reigned supreme, her hot pink mouse being a good example. How was she ever going to finish the house in a regal and gentrified fashion while all this junk kept arriving?

Birthday parties were the worst. After one of those, there was a tsunami of pink plastic and multicolored trash in the house. It all came in the guise of new presents, but Cathi knew most of it would end up in the town dump or, at best, on their charity pile. Every few months, she dropped off items for charity due to the amount of junk her family accumulated.
 

At least the girls were through the Happy Meal stage. Nobody had told her about that difficulty when she’d been pregnant or when the girls had been small. It was bad enough they ate that stuff at all, but what made it worse were the little bits of pink garbage the girls called toys that hung around the house for weeks after until Cathi managed to dispose of it.
 

She’d always aspired to living a life straight out of
Coastal
Living
. Her first mistake was not living on the coast, but several articles had convinced her not to stop living the dream because she lacked that small detail. She could still decorate her house in a manner the magazine suggested. Cathi had the good sense to avoid the
beach this way
sign because it would look a little stupid in landlocked Newton, but she could certainly use sailor’s stripes on her sofa cushions and shells in the bathroom. Even the master bedroom hadn’t escaped. It was home to an oversized, antique captain’s storage trunk at the foot of their bed.