Love, Suburban Style Read Online Free PDF Page A

daughter’s sake.
    “They’ve got two girls, Dad!” she announced excitedly. “And they’re around my age, and really nice!”
    Poor Katie is starved for female companionship. She lives with her father and brother, their only local relatives are Sheryl’s widowed dad down in Larchmont and Sam’s bachelor brother in Manhattan, and the neighborhood is full of boys.
    “What, exactly, happened in there?” he asks Lori Delgado.
    She shudders and describes, in her thick accent, how she was removing a switchplate in the kitchen when the light started turning on and off.
    “You probably just did something to the wiring,” Sam informs her. “Do you want me to take a look at it?”
    “No,” she says sharply. “It wasn’t just that. The room got really cold, and I could feel that I wasn’t alone. And when I turned around, I saw… something.”
    “What was it?”
    “A person. Just standing there in the doorway, watching me.”
    “Was it a tiny, wrinkled woman with a pitch-black bun?” Sam asks with a grin, remembering his sporadic childhood glimpses of old Agnes Duckworth—
    “Are you laughing at me?”
    “No, of course not.” He carefully straightens his mouth.
    “I have no idea what the ghost looked like. I didn’t stay long enough to see.”
    She shudders and hugs herself.
    Sam refrains from telling her that it was probably her imagination. At this point, he doubts she’s capable of glibly shaking off the trepidation and going back up the sagging steps on her merry way.
    She turns to him. “Um… Sam, is it?”
    When he nods, she asks, “Do you mind if I use your telephone to call Joey on his cell? Mine is in the house, and I’m not setting foot back in there. Ever!”
    “
Ever?
” Sam echoes, and adds hopefully, “But… what about when you move in?”
    “We aren’t moving into a haunted house. I told Joey that this deal was too good to be true. I knew there was a reason this house cost over a couple hundred grand less than anything else in this neighborhood.”
    “Well, it’s a fixer-upper,” he points out, and she snorts.
    Sam wonders if she’s aware how many owners it’s had since Agnes Duckworth died. No need to mention that now.
    He has a feeling it won’t make a difference, anyway. Lori’s mind is obviously made up.
    “Sure, you can use my phone.”
    Sam leads the way toward his own ramshackle Victorian next door.
    So much for the nice new neighbors with daughters Katie’s age.
    Boy, is she going to be bummed when she finds out.

Chapter
2
    I t just sold again for
how
much?” Meg asks, thinking she must have heard wrong.
    “The asking price was one point one. It went for one point two.”
    “Million.”
    “Right.”
    Meg curses under her breath, knowing Cosette can’t hear her anyway. She’s in the backseat, plugged into her iPod and not even pretending to be interested in Krissy’s impromptu tour of Glenhaven Park.
    Krissy turns her silver Lexus down North Street en route to Meg’s childhood home, newly occupied by a married couple with a teenaged daughter.
    “Did somebody add on to the house or something?” she asks, trying to fathom who would pay that kind of money for a very nice, but certainly not lavish, suburban home.
    “No, it’s pretty much the same as it was when you lived there, actually. There’s a new patio out back. But the kitchen really needs to be updated. I think they said they were going to gut it.”
    “One point two million, and it needs a new kitchen? I can’t wait to call my parents and tell them.”
    “Are you sure you want to do that?”
    “You’re right. Why frustrate them?” Meg decides her parents are better off oblivious to the fact that, had they waited another decade or so to sell their house and move south, they’d have gotten five times the money for their retirement nest egg.
    “So basically”—Meg casts a glance over her shoulder to make sure Cosette isn’t listening—“you’re saying that I can’t touch a house in my