The Neighbors Are Watching Read Online Free PDF

before he went to work was among the little domestic things Allison didn’t do anymore, along with any kind of cooking, cleaning, or sex.
    Joe gave up on the tie, folded it, and put it in his jacket pocket. As embarrassing as it would be, he would have to get one of the waitresses to help him with it when he got in since his own wife wouldn’t. But he was going to have to do something about Allison, Joe thought, because despite her relative calm, she was spiraling down and she was taking him with her. Exactly what to do, however, was a question whose answer eluded him. And there were more pressing issues to deal with, all of which had to do with Diana: How long was she going to stay, where was she going to have the baby, and what was she going to do with it once it was born? He wished that Allison could bury her anger long enough to help him—and help Diana for that matter—work it out. Allison had married him, hadn’t she? Those vows—richer, poorer, et cetera—were supposed to mean something.
    It wasn’t that he was totally insensitive. Obviously Diana’s sudden appearance was more of a shock for Allison than for him. But the reason he’d never told Allison that he’d fathered a child years before he’d even met her wasn’t because he wanted to keep it a secret; it was because he had managed to convince
himself
that Diana, Yvonne, and that whole chapter of his lifewere just done with and gone. And this wasn’t purely magical thinking on his part.
    He and Yvonne had already broken up by the time she informed him she was pregnant, and he was astounded that she planned to keep the baby even after he told her he wanted nothing to do with it. She threatened and pleaded and then he moved—got out of Los Angeles and came down here to San Diego—and didn’t hear anything from her until after the baby was born when some cut-rate lawyer she’d hired sent him a letter demanding child support. After the whole drama with the paternity test, Joe persuaded Yvonne to get rid of the lawyer and promised to send her some money when he could. But he hadn’t, nor had he responded to her sporadic letters and the photos of a kid he felt less connection with than his toothbrush. Finally, when Diana must have been about four or five, there was no more communication at all.
    He hadn’t heard one word from Yvonne for ten years—not a letter, a phone call, or any kind of request for child support. For a couple of years, he’d waited for the other shoe to drop, but there was only silence. He hadn’t even known that Yvonne had moved to Las Vegas until Diana told him. By the time he and Allison married, Joe had come to believe that Yvonne had taken responsibility for her own actions—because it was unequivocally
her
decision to get pregnant and have a baby—and was leaving him out of it as he’d asked her to from the minute the second pink line appeared on the pregnancy test.
    Joe told Allison all of this the day Diana arrived. After what was surely one of the most awkward family reunions of all time—forget about ratatouille or a “nap,” Joe just ordered a pizza for dinner—with the three of them sitting at the dining room table exchanging basic information like when Diana was due and what grade she was in at school, Diana got settled in the guest bedroom, and he and Allison went upstairs to talk.
    “I never hid anything from you, Allie,” he said. “It was so long over by the time I even met you. I wasn’t ever part of her life. Never.”
    “A child is a big deal, Joe. Not something you omit to tell your wife.”
    “You have to believe me,” he said, “if I thought it would have made any difference … and it hasn’t made a difference in how I feel about you.”
    “Of course it makes a difference! It’s made all the difference in the world how you feel. If I’d known about her … Joe, when I was pregnant …” She couldn’t finish the sentence and looked away from him. His stomach did a flip then