Four Letter Word, page 6
Bent under the weight of Elizabeth Bell’s embrace, Alberto winced noticeably, as if he’d pulled a muscle in his back. He didn’t respond to the greeting.
“Com’è stato il tuo volo?” Izzy’s mom continued. Her accent was flawless, her voice strong and confident despite not speaking Italian for almost twenty-five years. Had she been practicing too?
“Bene, bene,” Alberto said with an uncomfortable little laugh. “E tu?”
Izzy wasn’t entirely sure, but she thought her mom had just asked Alberto about his flight, to which he’d replied, “Good, and you?”
Her Italian was worse than she thought.
“You must be tired,” her mom said in English, releasing her hold on Alberto. He straightened up and turned his megawatt smile onto Izzy’s mom.
“You are-a Izz-ee’s sister, sì?”
Izzy snorted. “More like my mom.” The words were barely out of her mouth when she felt her mom’s icy, hard stare boring into the side of her head.
“We’re not that far apart in age, Izzy,” her mom said. “Though I suspect Alberto is just being kind.” She shifted her eyes back to him, lids lowered.
He laughed, light and easy, as he gripped Izzy’s mom’s hand. “Signora Bell, you-a tease me.”
The handshake lingered, and Izzy saw her mom shift her feet. She broke away suddenly, gesturing toward Alberto’s small wheelie bag. “Is this all your luggage?”
“Sì, Signora.”
“For three months?”
“We Italians, we-a travel light.” Alberto ran a hand self-consciously through his floppy hair as his eyes darted back and forth around the emptying terminal. “Your house issa far from here? I am, as-a you say, tired.”
Her mom smiled warmly. “Yes, of course.” She gripped the handle of his bag and headed toward the parking lot. “This way!”
Izzy hurried to stay beside Alberto as they followed her mom out into the darkness. A car stenciled with a Holiday Inn emblem waited at the door, probably for the pilots and flight attendants, and though it was too dark to see, the close, damp air that smacked them in the face as they exited meant that the fog had thickened during their short time indoors.
Alberto shivered, hunching his shoulders toward his ears. “Always it is so cold?”
Yes. “Not usually this time of year,” Izzy lied. She suddenly wanted him to like her hometown. “September and October are our nicest months.”
He peeked at her through his hair. “I look-a forward to spending them with you, sì?”
Izzy felt her cheeks heat up and shifted her eyes to the asphalt to hide her confusion. It must have been a translation thing. He couldn’t actually mean that he was looking forward to spending time with her specifically. They’d literally met ninety seconds ago, and though Izzy wasn’t beyond a romantic fantasy, she knew better than to think that she was either beautiful or charming enough for this world-traveling Italian to instantly fall for her. That only happened in the movies.
Right?
“Alberto,” Izzy’s mom said, popping the rear door of the minivan with her key fob. The brake lights blinked red in the night, glinting off Alberto’s teeth. “My daughter has been practicing her Italian all summer. Say something, Izzy.”
They stopped behind the minivan, and all the warmth that had just radiated through Izzy’s body instantly drained away, leaving a debilitating panic in its wake, as cold and damp as the sea air surrounding them. The idea that Izzy had been practicing her Italian for months in anticipation of this moment made what was about to happen all the more horrifying. Once Alberto heard her wide American vowels and stuttering, staccato syllables, that beautiful smile would turn into a derisive sneer.
Her mom raised her eyebrows expectantly as she hit the “close” button. The motor on the mechanical door was the only sound breaking the ominous silence.
“Uh…” Izzy began. All of her memorized phrases and vocabulary abandoned her. “I…”
“No, no,” Alberto jumped in, waving his hands before him as if in surrender. “No italiano tonight, sì? We in America! I practice my English first, sì?”
Her mom shrugged. “It can wait until tomorrow!” She opened the front door of the van for him. “Shall we?”
Izzy let out a breath through pursed lips. A stay of execution. Though the firing squad would be back in the morning, locked and loaded, and there was literally zero chance she’d go from Italian hack to fluent speaker by then.
Alberto bounced lightly in his seat as he fastened his safety belt. “The American minivan!” He sounded genuinely excited by the aging car. “I am-a exciting.”
Izzy’s mom smiled at him. “I am excited,” she said gently, correcting his tense.
“Ah! Mi dispiace.”
“Your English will be flawless by the time I’m done with you.”
“Grazie tante, Signora.”
She started the engine. “Please, call me Elizabeth.”
“Ah, sì. Eleeza—”
He was in the middle of elongating the second syllable in her mom’s name when the car stereo connected to Izzy’s phone, picking up the episode of Murder Will Speak she’d started earlier that day. The two hostesses, Mags and Amelia, were bickering lightheartedly about the nickname of the West Coast’s newest serial killer.
“I think it’s a terrible name,” Amelia said with a groan. “Like, what octogenarian came up with it?”
Mags snorted. “It’s not that bad.”
“Lies.”
“It could be worse.”
“You’re bananas.”
“Only at breakfast.”
The lightning banter was one of Izzy’s favorite aspects of the podcast, like two friends shooting the shit about famous murderers. Her mom didn’t share her love.
“Izzy, can you switch it off?”
“Yeah.” Izzy fumbled with her phone. “Sorry.”
“I’m just saying,” Mags continued, “you could do a lot worse than ‘Casanova Killer.’”
Alberto jolted in the passenger seat.
“Izzy!” her mom snapped. She hit the brakes abruptly in the middle of the dark road and reached down to turn off the stereo before Izzy could get her app open. “You’ve upset our guest.”
“I’m sorry?” she said, not sounding or feeling the least bit apologetic. Alberto wasn’t a child, and the clip hadn’t contained any of the salacious details that Izzy knew would be discussed later in the episode.
“No, no. No need to apologize. I have heard of this Casanova.” He said the name in perfect Italian, and Izzy suddenly remembered that the original Casanova had been Venetian, a fact Izzy’s mom seemed to realize at the same time.
“Alberto, I hope you’re not offended by the name,” her mom said quickly, car still idling in the middle of the road. “It has no bearing on how we Americans view Italy or Italians. I doubt most people even know who Casanova really was.”
If his Italian pride had been wounded, Alberto didn’t show it. “Please, Signora. I have no offense.”
“I take no offense,” she corrected.
“Ah, grazie.” He flashed Izzy’s mom his beguiling smile. “Shall we go to the house?”
Izzy’s mom eased the car into drive. “While you’re with us, consider it your home.”
“Grazie, grazie,” Alberto said. “I think I shall like-a that very much.”
ALBERTO’S CHIPPER MOOD HAD FADED BY THE TIME THEY reached the Bell house that night, and it was clear that he couldn’t keep his eyes open. After meeting Parker and Riley, he politely declined the shepherd’s pie Izzy’s mom had prepared and merely requested a glass of water before being shown to his room.
When Izzy descended to the bathroom early the next morning, the door to Riley’s room was still closed. And again when she passed by on her way to grab breakfast half an hour later. Her mom had laid out a tray of bagels, cream cheese, fresh local lox, capers, and sliced red onion on the kitchen island, and Izzy wondered with a pang of guilt if Peyton had dropped the bagels off last night or if her mom had raced out this morning to pick up another box. Whichever the case, Izzy’s mom didn’t seem to care. She kept glancing at the doorway every few seconds, and it was clear from her worried expression that Alberto hadn’t yet emerged from his room.
“Do you think he’s okay?” she asked as Izzy slipped two halves of an everything bagel into the toaster oven.
“It’s not even eight o’clock,” her dad said, sipping heavily sugared black coffee from the window seat, his work boots kicked up on the bench. “He’s probably jet-lagged. Let him sleep.”
“He’s been in San Francisco for almost a week,” her mom said. “He should have acclimated by now.” She stared up at the ceiling as if she could see through the hundred-year-old floorboards into Riley’s room.
“College kid alone in San Fran?” Her dad laughed. “He hasn’t slept in days.”
Riley, who sat on a stool at the kitchen island with an empty coffee mug in front of him, looked up from his phone long enough to smile sympathetically at his mom. “Not all of us keep business hours.”
Izzy rolled her eyes. “And what time did you get home last night?”
Parker poked his head in from the laundry room. He still wore leggings from his morning run. “One thirty.”
“You had a second hookup last night?” Izzy asked, disgusted.
“Kylie. Again.” Riley grinned from ear to ear like a satisfied cat after polishing off a bowl of cream.
Parker arched an eyebrow. “Does she know how young you are?”
“Nope!” Riley held out his fist for a bump from his older brother, who pointedly avoided it.
“I don’t know where that thing’s been.”
“Gross,” Izzy groaned, eyeing her mom. This was normally about the time she’d lay into Riley for dating Kylie. Riley even braced for impact, tightening his muscles as he waited for the onslaught of “bad reputation” and “dangerous ex-boyfriend” lectures, but the Italian student asleep upstairs seemed to occupy all her maternal anxieties.
“It’s going to be such a nice day,” Izzy’s mom said, watching the fog retreat toward the ocean. “I hope Alberto doesn’t miss it.”
“Same weather forecast for tomorrow.” Izzy’s dad stood up. His voice was light, but the smile on his weather-lined face looked forced.
His wife wasn’t listening. “I wonder if I should bring up some food.”
“Oh, leave him alone, Beth.” Her dad rounded the island, coffee cup in one hand. “He’s a grown-ass man. He can ask for food when he wants it.”
Izzy tensed as she saw a shift in her mom’s face from concern to distaste as she slowly turned to her husband. “I’m so glad I have you as an expert on grown-ass men,” she said, her voice steely. “Oh, wait.”
He dropped his cup in the sink without rinsing it, ceramic clanging against porcelain. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re about as ‘adult’ as the JV football team.”
Parker had disappeared from the laundry room, and Riley was focused on his phone as if engrossed by the most interesting article ever written. Her brothers had a knack for avoiding their parents’ fights, a luxury not available to Izzy. Someone would have to pick up the pieces if the confrontation escalated, and that someone was always her. Meanwhile her dad, who should have known better by this point in his marriage, refused to back down, planting his hands on his hips like a pouting child.
“I don’t see you paying the bills,” he began, the familiar first blow in all their fights. Izzy wondered if he realized how sexist it was to call out his wife’s lack of earning power after she raised their four children, though pointing that out would only prolong the argument. With Alberto sleeping upstairs, she needed to de-escalate this standoff quickly. She didn’t want his first day in the house to be marred by domestic strife.
Before her mom could respond, Izzy jumped off her stool and pointed to the clock on the wall, a smiling starburst sun whose cheeky grin mocked the tension in the kitchen. “Eight already? Dad, don’t you need to be at the Dickersons to install that bargeboard?”
“Bargeboard,” he said slowly. “Right.” Izzy wasn’t sure if he knew she was trying to distract him and just looking for any excuse to avoid the fight he’d started, or if he was truly clueless about her machinations, but either way, he turned from his wife and patted Izzy on the head. A dutiful puppy. “Thanks, kiddo.”
“No problem, Dad.”
He loped toward the laundry room, his wife staring daggers at the back of his head. “Should be there most of the day. Home by dinner.”
“Okay, Dad!” Izzy said, trying to sound cheerful.
No one else responded.
Even after her dad’s exit, the kitchen was tense. Neither Riley nor her mom said a word: he was still fixated on his phone, while she fretted over the breakfast spread, swathing it liberally in Saran Wrap so it would be fresh whenever Alberto emerged from his bedroom. Before she could be asked her opinion on Alberto’s breakfast needs, Izzy grabbed her coffee and bagel and slipped back upstairs to her attic room.
Alberto’s door was still closed.
The screen on Izzy’s phone was just dimming as she flopped down on her bed, and she picked it up to see a string of missed texts from Peyton.
So? What’s he like?
Is he hotter than his photos?
Don’t make me show up there to see for myself.
What does your mom think? Is she happy?
Did you get the bagels I left on the porch?
One mystery solved.
Izzy started to respond, then paused. She and Peyton hadn’t spoken, even by text, since yesterday’s botched intervention, and though her friend was trying to sound normal, it was difficult not to infuse each message with subtext.
So? What’s he like? Maybe if he’s a douche you’ll rethink the whole Italian Scheme.
Is he hotter than his photos? If he’s hot, I might forgive you.
Don’t make me show up there to see for myself. I know you’re still mad at me, but I’m trying, okay?
What does your mom think? Is she happy? I know you desperately want her to be.
Did you get the bagels I left on the porch? I’m sorry.
Izzy sighed. She felt trapped up in her attic. Downstairs, her mom fretted and her brothers bickered. She couldn’t text Peyton for advice or comfort without the fear of reopening yesterday’s arguments, but as she held her phone in her hand, her thumb lingered over her messaging app.
A few weeks ago, this is when she would have texted Jake for some witty banter laced with sage advice, and once again, the weight of his loss crashed down upon her. She would have told him everything, held nothing back, and he would have responded kindly, thoughtfully, but with humor that would have diffused her anxiety and lessened the burden of her worries. She had no idea why Jake was the one person in her life who held this power, but he did.
Was she in love with Jake? She’d thought maybe she was, but then again, the way her stomach dropped out of her body when Alberto kissed her hand…That was the George Emerson effect. Instant chemistry. Which is how it was supposed to work, right? Slow burn friends to lovers felt like she would be settling.
Like her parents.
Harry and Elizabeth had been friends since their freshman year at Middlebury College. He was there on a football scholarship, and she was there because everyone in her family for three generations had graduated from Middlebury. Legacy Middleburian, Izzy’s grandfather had joked one of the two times she’d met him. But Harry and Elizabeth hadn’t gotten romantic until junior year when all their friends had started pairing off and they were the only two single people left in their group. Hooking up had seemed inevitable.
Then her mom had gotten pregnant, and that was that.
Izzy sometimes wondered why her mom hadn’t terminated the pregnancy and gone off to Italy, but it wasn’t something her parents ever discussed, and Izzy couldn’t exactly bring it up. And it wasn’t like they didn’t have three more kids after Taylor—there must have been some love between them. But she’d always wondered if her parents had simply settled for each other because they didn’t want to start over with someone else.
That wasn’t going to happen to Izzy. Love wouldn’t be a gradual realization but a lightning bolt. She wouldn’t fall into something easy with the guy next door, she’d wait for magic. She wouldn’t wake up one day and realize Jake was the one simply because they were both still around and both single.
The grandfather clock in her room chimed softly, the bell muted by layers of cloth wrapped around the hammer to dull the noise. The clock, another restoration job turned birthday present for Izzy’s mom, had been banished to the attic. Her dad had intended the clock for the dining room, but her mom had drawn the line: only one enormous cabinet clock on the ground floor of the house. Her dad and Taylor had then lugged the heavy piece up to the second-floor hallway, but it blocked the linen closet. Her mom wanted to get rid of the monstrosity, as she called it, her dad indignantly refused, so up it went to Izzy’s bedroom, where it had remained out of sight, out of mind.
Well, out of mind for her parents. To Izzy, it was an hourly reminder of their unhappy marriage.
Izzy picked up her phone again. She needed to get out of her own head, and her virtual BFFs, Mags and Amelia, always delivered. She popped in her earbuds, flopped back onto her pillows, and resumed her Murder Will Speak episode from where it had left off the night before in the minivan.
“I wonder if he’s an actor,” Mags said. “Failed, of course.”
Amelia snorted. Her signature reaction. “Not everyone in LA is an actor.”
“I suppose.”
“Besides, we don’t know he started his spree in LA.”
“True.”
Mags cleared her throat. She was about to get serious. “According to my sources, the investigation has widened. The authorities are now looking at cold cases in Las Vegas and Tucson, as well as two new missing persons in the San Francisco Bay Area. Which means our Casanova Killer might be on the move.”
“Sucks for Frisco. First the faceless guy in the Bay, and now this?”
“As I always say, Ames, the world is a dark place.”
“Com’è stato il tuo volo?” Izzy’s mom continued. Her accent was flawless, her voice strong and confident despite not speaking Italian for almost twenty-five years. Had she been practicing too?
“Bene, bene,” Alberto said with an uncomfortable little laugh. “E tu?”
Izzy wasn’t entirely sure, but she thought her mom had just asked Alberto about his flight, to which he’d replied, “Good, and you?”
Her Italian was worse than she thought.
“You must be tired,” her mom said in English, releasing her hold on Alberto. He straightened up and turned his megawatt smile onto Izzy’s mom.
“You are-a Izz-ee’s sister, sì?”
Izzy snorted. “More like my mom.” The words were barely out of her mouth when she felt her mom’s icy, hard stare boring into the side of her head.
“We’re not that far apart in age, Izzy,” her mom said. “Though I suspect Alberto is just being kind.” She shifted her eyes back to him, lids lowered.
He laughed, light and easy, as he gripped Izzy’s mom’s hand. “Signora Bell, you-a tease me.”
The handshake lingered, and Izzy saw her mom shift her feet. She broke away suddenly, gesturing toward Alberto’s small wheelie bag. “Is this all your luggage?”
“Sì, Signora.”
“For three months?”
“We Italians, we-a travel light.” Alberto ran a hand self-consciously through his floppy hair as his eyes darted back and forth around the emptying terminal. “Your house issa far from here? I am, as-a you say, tired.”
Her mom smiled warmly. “Yes, of course.” She gripped the handle of his bag and headed toward the parking lot. “This way!”
Izzy hurried to stay beside Alberto as they followed her mom out into the darkness. A car stenciled with a Holiday Inn emblem waited at the door, probably for the pilots and flight attendants, and though it was too dark to see, the close, damp air that smacked them in the face as they exited meant that the fog had thickened during their short time indoors.
Alberto shivered, hunching his shoulders toward his ears. “Always it is so cold?”
Yes. “Not usually this time of year,” Izzy lied. She suddenly wanted him to like her hometown. “September and October are our nicest months.”
He peeked at her through his hair. “I look-a forward to spending them with you, sì?”
Izzy felt her cheeks heat up and shifted her eyes to the asphalt to hide her confusion. It must have been a translation thing. He couldn’t actually mean that he was looking forward to spending time with her specifically. They’d literally met ninety seconds ago, and though Izzy wasn’t beyond a romantic fantasy, she knew better than to think that she was either beautiful or charming enough for this world-traveling Italian to instantly fall for her. That only happened in the movies.
Right?
“Alberto,” Izzy’s mom said, popping the rear door of the minivan with her key fob. The brake lights blinked red in the night, glinting off Alberto’s teeth. “My daughter has been practicing her Italian all summer. Say something, Izzy.”
They stopped behind the minivan, and all the warmth that had just radiated through Izzy’s body instantly drained away, leaving a debilitating panic in its wake, as cold and damp as the sea air surrounding them. The idea that Izzy had been practicing her Italian for months in anticipation of this moment made what was about to happen all the more horrifying. Once Alberto heard her wide American vowels and stuttering, staccato syllables, that beautiful smile would turn into a derisive sneer.
Her mom raised her eyebrows expectantly as she hit the “close” button. The motor on the mechanical door was the only sound breaking the ominous silence.
“Uh…” Izzy began. All of her memorized phrases and vocabulary abandoned her. “I…”
“No, no,” Alberto jumped in, waving his hands before him as if in surrender. “No italiano tonight, sì? We in America! I practice my English first, sì?”
Her mom shrugged. “It can wait until tomorrow!” She opened the front door of the van for him. “Shall we?”
Izzy let out a breath through pursed lips. A stay of execution. Though the firing squad would be back in the morning, locked and loaded, and there was literally zero chance she’d go from Italian hack to fluent speaker by then.
Alberto bounced lightly in his seat as he fastened his safety belt. “The American minivan!” He sounded genuinely excited by the aging car. “I am-a exciting.”
Izzy’s mom smiled at him. “I am excited,” she said gently, correcting his tense.
“Ah! Mi dispiace.”
“Your English will be flawless by the time I’m done with you.”
“Grazie tante, Signora.”
She started the engine. “Please, call me Elizabeth.”
“Ah, sì. Eleeza—”
He was in the middle of elongating the second syllable in her mom’s name when the car stereo connected to Izzy’s phone, picking up the episode of Murder Will Speak she’d started earlier that day. The two hostesses, Mags and Amelia, were bickering lightheartedly about the nickname of the West Coast’s newest serial killer.
“I think it’s a terrible name,” Amelia said with a groan. “Like, what octogenarian came up with it?”
Mags snorted. “It’s not that bad.”
“Lies.”
“It could be worse.”
“You’re bananas.”
“Only at breakfast.”
The lightning banter was one of Izzy’s favorite aspects of the podcast, like two friends shooting the shit about famous murderers. Her mom didn’t share her love.
“Izzy, can you switch it off?”
“Yeah.” Izzy fumbled with her phone. “Sorry.”
“I’m just saying,” Mags continued, “you could do a lot worse than ‘Casanova Killer.’”
Alberto jolted in the passenger seat.
“Izzy!” her mom snapped. She hit the brakes abruptly in the middle of the dark road and reached down to turn off the stereo before Izzy could get her app open. “You’ve upset our guest.”
“I’m sorry?” she said, not sounding or feeling the least bit apologetic. Alberto wasn’t a child, and the clip hadn’t contained any of the salacious details that Izzy knew would be discussed later in the episode.
“No, no. No need to apologize. I have heard of this Casanova.” He said the name in perfect Italian, and Izzy suddenly remembered that the original Casanova had been Venetian, a fact Izzy’s mom seemed to realize at the same time.
“Alberto, I hope you’re not offended by the name,” her mom said quickly, car still idling in the middle of the road. “It has no bearing on how we Americans view Italy or Italians. I doubt most people even know who Casanova really was.”
If his Italian pride had been wounded, Alberto didn’t show it. “Please, Signora. I have no offense.”
“I take no offense,” she corrected.
“Ah, grazie.” He flashed Izzy’s mom his beguiling smile. “Shall we go to the house?”
Izzy’s mom eased the car into drive. “While you’re with us, consider it your home.”
“Grazie, grazie,” Alberto said. “I think I shall like-a that very much.”
ALBERTO’S CHIPPER MOOD HAD FADED BY THE TIME THEY reached the Bell house that night, and it was clear that he couldn’t keep his eyes open. After meeting Parker and Riley, he politely declined the shepherd’s pie Izzy’s mom had prepared and merely requested a glass of water before being shown to his room.
When Izzy descended to the bathroom early the next morning, the door to Riley’s room was still closed. And again when she passed by on her way to grab breakfast half an hour later. Her mom had laid out a tray of bagels, cream cheese, fresh local lox, capers, and sliced red onion on the kitchen island, and Izzy wondered with a pang of guilt if Peyton had dropped the bagels off last night or if her mom had raced out this morning to pick up another box. Whichever the case, Izzy’s mom didn’t seem to care. She kept glancing at the doorway every few seconds, and it was clear from her worried expression that Alberto hadn’t yet emerged from his room.
“Do you think he’s okay?” she asked as Izzy slipped two halves of an everything bagel into the toaster oven.
“It’s not even eight o’clock,” her dad said, sipping heavily sugared black coffee from the window seat, his work boots kicked up on the bench. “He’s probably jet-lagged. Let him sleep.”
“He’s been in San Francisco for almost a week,” her mom said. “He should have acclimated by now.” She stared up at the ceiling as if she could see through the hundred-year-old floorboards into Riley’s room.
“College kid alone in San Fran?” Her dad laughed. “He hasn’t slept in days.”
Riley, who sat on a stool at the kitchen island with an empty coffee mug in front of him, looked up from his phone long enough to smile sympathetically at his mom. “Not all of us keep business hours.”
Izzy rolled her eyes. “And what time did you get home last night?”
Parker poked his head in from the laundry room. He still wore leggings from his morning run. “One thirty.”
“You had a second hookup last night?” Izzy asked, disgusted.
“Kylie. Again.” Riley grinned from ear to ear like a satisfied cat after polishing off a bowl of cream.
Parker arched an eyebrow. “Does she know how young you are?”
“Nope!” Riley held out his fist for a bump from his older brother, who pointedly avoided it.
“I don’t know where that thing’s been.”
“Gross,” Izzy groaned, eyeing her mom. This was normally about the time she’d lay into Riley for dating Kylie. Riley even braced for impact, tightening his muscles as he waited for the onslaught of “bad reputation” and “dangerous ex-boyfriend” lectures, but the Italian student asleep upstairs seemed to occupy all her maternal anxieties.
“It’s going to be such a nice day,” Izzy’s mom said, watching the fog retreat toward the ocean. “I hope Alberto doesn’t miss it.”
“Same weather forecast for tomorrow.” Izzy’s dad stood up. His voice was light, but the smile on his weather-lined face looked forced.
His wife wasn’t listening. “I wonder if I should bring up some food.”
“Oh, leave him alone, Beth.” Her dad rounded the island, coffee cup in one hand. “He’s a grown-ass man. He can ask for food when he wants it.”
Izzy tensed as she saw a shift in her mom’s face from concern to distaste as she slowly turned to her husband. “I’m so glad I have you as an expert on grown-ass men,” she said, her voice steely. “Oh, wait.”
He dropped his cup in the sink without rinsing it, ceramic clanging against porcelain. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re about as ‘adult’ as the JV football team.”
Parker had disappeared from the laundry room, and Riley was focused on his phone as if engrossed by the most interesting article ever written. Her brothers had a knack for avoiding their parents’ fights, a luxury not available to Izzy. Someone would have to pick up the pieces if the confrontation escalated, and that someone was always her. Meanwhile her dad, who should have known better by this point in his marriage, refused to back down, planting his hands on his hips like a pouting child.
“I don’t see you paying the bills,” he began, the familiar first blow in all their fights. Izzy wondered if he realized how sexist it was to call out his wife’s lack of earning power after she raised their four children, though pointing that out would only prolong the argument. With Alberto sleeping upstairs, she needed to de-escalate this standoff quickly. She didn’t want his first day in the house to be marred by domestic strife.
Before her mom could respond, Izzy jumped off her stool and pointed to the clock on the wall, a smiling starburst sun whose cheeky grin mocked the tension in the kitchen. “Eight already? Dad, don’t you need to be at the Dickersons to install that bargeboard?”
“Bargeboard,” he said slowly. “Right.” Izzy wasn’t sure if he knew she was trying to distract him and just looking for any excuse to avoid the fight he’d started, or if he was truly clueless about her machinations, but either way, he turned from his wife and patted Izzy on the head. A dutiful puppy. “Thanks, kiddo.”
“No problem, Dad.”
He loped toward the laundry room, his wife staring daggers at the back of his head. “Should be there most of the day. Home by dinner.”
“Okay, Dad!” Izzy said, trying to sound cheerful.
No one else responded.
Even after her dad’s exit, the kitchen was tense. Neither Riley nor her mom said a word: he was still fixated on his phone, while she fretted over the breakfast spread, swathing it liberally in Saran Wrap so it would be fresh whenever Alberto emerged from his bedroom. Before she could be asked her opinion on Alberto’s breakfast needs, Izzy grabbed her coffee and bagel and slipped back upstairs to her attic room.
Alberto’s door was still closed.
The screen on Izzy’s phone was just dimming as she flopped down on her bed, and she picked it up to see a string of missed texts from Peyton.
So? What’s he like?
Is he hotter than his photos?
Don’t make me show up there to see for myself.
What does your mom think? Is she happy?
Did you get the bagels I left on the porch?
One mystery solved.
Izzy started to respond, then paused. She and Peyton hadn’t spoken, even by text, since yesterday’s botched intervention, and though her friend was trying to sound normal, it was difficult not to infuse each message with subtext.
So? What’s he like? Maybe if he’s a douche you’ll rethink the whole Italian Scheme.
Is he hotter than his photos? If he’s hot, I might forgive you.
Don’t make me show up there to see for myself. I know you’re still mad at me, but I’m trying, okay?
What does your mom think? Is she happy? I know you desperately want her to be.
Did you get the bagels I left on the porch? I’m sorry.
Izzy sighed. She felt trapped up in her attic. Downstairs, her mom fretted and her brothers bickered. She couldn’t text Peyton for advice or comfort without the fear of reopening yesterday’s arguments, but as she held her phone in her hand, her thumb lingered over her messaging app.
A few weeks ago, this is when she would have texted Jake for some witty banter laced with sage advice, and once again, the weight of his loss crashed down upon her. She would have told him everything, held nothing back, and he would have responded kindly, thoughtfully, but with humor that would have diffused her anxiety and lessened the burden of her worries. She had no idea why Jake was the one person in her life who held this power, but he did.
Was she in love with Jake? She’d thought maybe she was, but then again, the way her stomach dropped out of her body when Alberto kissed her hand…That was the George Emerson effect. Instant chemistry. Which is how it was supposed to work, right? Slow burn friends to lovers felt like she would be settling.
Like her parents.
Harry and Elizabeth had been friends since their freshman year at Middlebury College. He was there on a football scholarship, and she was there because everyone in her family for three generations had graduated from Middlebury. Legacy Middleburian, Izzy’s grandfather had joked one of the two times she’d met him. But Harry and Elizabeth hadn’t gotten romantic until junior year when all their friends had started pairing off and they were the only two single people left in their group. Hooking up had seemed inevitable.
Then her mom had gotten pregnant, and that was that.
Izzy sometimes wondered why her mom hadn’t terminated the pregnancy and gone off to Italy, but it wasn’t something her parents ever discussed, and Izzy couldn’t exactly bring it up. And it wasn’t like they didn’t have three more kids after Taylor—there must have been some love between them. But she’d always wondered if her parents had simply settled for each other because they didn’t want to start over with someone else.
That wasn’t going to happen to Izzy. Love wouldn’t be a gradual realization but a lightning bolt. She wouldn’t fall into something easy with the guy next door, she’d wait for magic. She wouldn’t wake up one day and realize Jake was the one simply because they were both still around and both single.
The grandfather clock in her room chimed softly, the bell muted by layers of cloth wrapped around the hammer to dull the noise. The clock, another restoration job turned birthday present for Izzy’s mom, had been banished to the attic. Her dad had intended the clock for the dining room, but her mom had drawn the line: only one enormous cabinet clock on the ground floor of the house. Her dad and Taylor had then lugged the heavy piece up to the second-floor hallway, but it blocked the linen closet. Her mom wanted to get rid of the monstrosity, as she called it, her dad indignantly refused, so up it went to Izzy’s bedroom, where it had remained out of sight, out of mind.
Well, out of mind for her parents. To Izzy, it was an hourly reminder of their unhappy marriage.
Izzy picked up her phone again. She needed to get out of her own head, and her virtual BFFs, Mags and Amelia, always delivered. She popped in her earbuds, flopped back onto her pillows, and resumed her Murder Will Speak episode from where it had left off the night before in the minivan.
“I wonder if he’s an actor,” Mags said. “Failed, of course.”
Amelia snorted. Her signature reaction. “Not everyone in LA is an actor.”
“I suppose.”
“Besides, we don’t know he started his spree in LA.”
“True.”
Mags cleared her throat. She was about to get serious. “According to my sources, the investigation has widened. The authorities are now looking at cold cases in Las Vegas and Tucson, as well as two new missing persons in the San Francisco Bay Area. Which means our Casanova Killer might be on the move.”
“Sucks for Frisco. First the faceless guy in the Bay, and now this?”
“As I always say, Ames, the world is a dark place.”
