The New Neighbor Read Online Free PDF Page A

back in her body, but sluggish, as if she’s been sedated. “We just need a Heather,” Megan says. “Seventies names.” Jennifer tries a polite chuckle.
    “Where’s Ben?” Milo says. He’s given up on his ice cream, dropping it onto his napkin on the table, where it pools and spreads. He wipes his fingers on his pants, which doesn’t get his fingers clean but does distribute the mess.
    “He’s at school,” Megan says. “He goes to the preschool at the church in Sewanee.”
    “That’s where I go!” Milo says. Understanding dawns in his face. “I know Ben,” he says. “He has Spider-Man shoes.”
    “Oh,” Megan says, glancing at Jennifer, who interprets that glance as question or judgment.
    “Sometimes I get him before nap,” she says. “He doesn’t nap anymore, and it’s hard on him to lie there quietly for two hours.”
    But Megan doesn’t care about naps, or why Milo isn’t in school. “We should get them together,” she says. “Set up a playdate.”
    “Yes,” Milo says, “yes, yes, yes.” He’s bouncing in his seat, chanting the word. Megan laughs again. Jennifer gives herself an inner slap. Be normal, she exhorts herself. Be friendly. She can almost remember how it’s done. “Hmmm,” she says, playacting. “I get the feeling Milo would like that.”
    They exchange numbers and chat for a few minutes, Milo interjecting his desire to have the playdate that day, right now, immediately. Megan is a professor of sociology. She lives in Sewanee. She’s younger than Jennifer, Jennifer thinks, though maybe not by a lot. She looks younger, anyway, with her open, freckled face and her wide, far-apart eyes. She looks younger than Jennifer feels.
    Megan is talking about the necessity of regular escapes from the Mountain, her family’s weekend jaunts to Nashville, the benefits of a membership to the aquarium in Chattanooga, when Milo leans perilously close to Megan’s nice skirt with his disastrous fingers, and Jennifer catches him gently by the wrist. “I’d better clean him up before he slimes you,” she says.
    “Oh, I’m used to it,” Megan says.
    “Still,” Jennifer says, holding up Milo’s hand for the other woman’s inspection. “Chocolate.”
    “True,” Megan says. She smiles at Milo. “Chocolate is very messy, isn’t it?”
    “Mommy can stain it out,” Milo says.
    “Stain it out?” Megan repeats. She flashes Jennifer a conspiratorial grin. Kids and their cutely mangled sayings. Something to post on Facebook.
    “He sometimes says, ‘I smell like’ to mean he smells something,” Jennifer offers. She imitates the way Milo lifts his head, alert as a hound dog, when he catches a scent. “ ‘I smell like garbage.’ ”
    “I smell like chocolate!” Milo shouts gleefully, wanting in on the joke.
    “Yes, you do, bubby,” Jennifer says. She stands, pulling him out of his chair, and at last the other woman releases her, promising a call. “Great!” Jennifer says. She wants to turn to someone afterward, blow out air, share her relief. But there’s only Milo to turn to, and her relief is nothing she can express to him, so instead she proceeds to the bathroom to scrub him clean.
    The someone she wanted to turn to, she realizes as she rubs Milo’s reluctant little hands together under the water, was Tommy. She still misses him, which surprises her. She comes upon the feeling from time to time, like when you step funny and feel that particular twinge in your knee. Back again. No matter what you did to get rid of it.

Horrible Deeds
    O nce a week I go to the library in Monteagle, a brown little institutional box of a building. Sue the librarian expects me. She knows my habits and makes me a stack of books she thinks I’ll like: always five books, always detective novels, waiting for me behind the circulation desk. You might imagine that being an old lady I like the cozy mysteries, but you’d be wrong. Spare me the cats and knitting. It was Sue’s idea to start