The Neighbors Are Watching Read Online Free PDF Page A

with his Mediterranean coloring he wasn’t much lighter than she was. It was that she was so obviously young and so very pregnant, not at all like someone he’d even know, let alone someone who was related to him. And yet, in that moment, when he turned the wheel, pulled into the driveway, and saw her standing there, he knew exactly who she was.
    He and Allison were just coming back from the movies. They’d gone to see
Ratatouille
in an actual theater, rather than waiting for it to come out on DVD like they usually did. He couldn’t remember now why they’d chosen that movie, a cartoon of all things, to break from their usual pattern. They’d enjoyed it, though, he remembered that. Allison was smiling. “Do you think it would be possible to make the ratatouille in the movie?” she asked him. “There had to have been a real-life model for it. I want to tryit—it looked so delicious.” Joe was always happy to sample Allison’s culinary experiments. Once in a while, she pulled out something really spectacular, like that heirloom tomato tart with the cornmeal crust, and even her least exotic attempts were pretty good. Joe cooked most of the time—he had always fancied himself a bit of a closet chef—but he loved it when she took over the kitchen. That day in the car, he’d encouraged her to go for the ratatouille, even suggested they shop for the ingredients later in the day, after, he said, winking, “we take a little nap.” Allison laughed and put her hand on his knee. There was no need for such a silly euphemism but he used it, like he had before, because Allison thought it was sweet and it always amused her. They laughed, both of them pleased and turned on, the air between them heating up nicely. And then he turned the corner and pulled into the driveway. He couldn’t tell exactly when Allison removed her hand from his thigh and the smile from her face, but they were both gone by the time he turned off the engine. There was that one terrible moment of silence between the two of them—the kind that comes between the step outward and the fall off the cliff—and then they were three.
    Allison couldn’t have known who Diana was at that moment, but she must have sensed it same as he did. Still, he didn’t see himself in her then, not even when he looked into her eyes and heard her say she was his daughter. It was the shock, Joe decided. Her showing up like that so suddenly and creating that quiet explosion between him and Allison had prevented him from seeing the resemblance then. Not that he’d tried to deny her. Not then, despite the look of naked dismay on Allison’s face, and not now.
    Joe had always known that he was Diana’s father. He’d made sure of it when she was born, requesting a paternity test and paying for it when it came back positive that he was the father. Yvonne had been extremely pissed off that he’d asked for the test in the first place, but she’d taken it willingly. She was only in her twenties then, but Yvonne already had quite a past with men, and even though they’d been almost attached at the hip for the duration of their brief relationship, you never knew. Certainly no need for a paternity test now, was there? All you had to do was look at thetwo of them together—and Joe was sure every one of his nosy neighbors had—and you could see that they were father and daughter.
    The damn tie still didn’t look right and Joe was losing his patience. The restaurant was close, but he was going to be late if he didn’t get out the door in the next five minutes. The traffic through Del Mar was an absolute bitch these days, no matter what time of day you were traveling. Allison always helped him with his tie when he got frustrated like this. She knew how to tweak it so that the knot looked sharp. He debated going into the den where she was deep into CNN and whatever drink she was nursing and asking her to help him fix it, but it took only a second to remember that adjusting his tie