Love, Suburban Style Read Online Free Page B

lost
Brigadoon
role and assured her mother that something much bigger and better must be right around the corner.
    Meg has yet to tell her that
smaller
—but infinitely better is more what she has in mind at this point.
    “What about you? What are you up to these days?” she asks Kris.
    For Meg, who is a big believer in cosmic coincidence, the unexpected answer is a clear sign that her tentative new life plan is meant to become a reality.
    “I’m in real estate,” Kris says cheerfully. “I sell houses right here in Glenhaven Park.”
    Rounding the corner into the front yard, Sam immediately spies the source of the scream. Lori Delgado, soon-to-be-lady-of-the-house, is standing on the unkempt lawn. She’s wearing exactly the same clothing as Sam: faded Levi’s, a white T-shirt, and sneakers. Ah, the Saturday-in-suburbia homeowner uniform.
    Unlike Sam, who’s
Been Here, Done This
more times lately than he cares to count, she’s wringing her hands and staring fearfully up at the gloomy Victorian house.
    “What’s the matter?” Sam saunters to a stop—knowing only too well what’s the matter.
    “This place is haunted!”
    Yup, just as he suspected. She must have heard the rumors about the place, and now the legendary Duckworth ghost has already put in an appearance, courtesy of the power of suggestion and a vivid imagination. In broad daylight, no less. Usually the new owners wait until the wee hours, and well after they’ve settled in a bit, before they start seeing things.
    Sam wonders wearily if he should feign surprise, as he did with the last two sets of new neighbors. Or should he just come right out and admit that he’s well aware of the home’s reputation?
    Indeed, having grown up right next door, he’s known all his life that the old Duckworth place is supposedly haunted. Neighborhood kids used to dare each other to walk up the steps on Halloween night—not that deaf old Mrs. Duckworth would have heard the doorbell, much less greeted them with mini Zagnuts and tiny boxes of Chiclets.
    In fact, that was the whole point.
    In retrospect, there was something purely all-American about having grown up on a street like this, with a house like that. And in retrospect, Sam figured out that the “haunted” rumors stemmed from the home’s ramshackle appearance and classic Victorian architecture. With its broken shutters, untidy yard, and black wrought-iron fence, the Duckworth place exudes a delicious air of foreboding.
    Which is why Sam, mired in skepticism, remains utterly unfazed by the string of recent events involving the place.
    Now, he mildly addresses the new homeowner: “Haunted? Why do you say that?”
    “Why? Because I just saw a ghost!” Lori Delgado blesses herself and murmurs something in fervent Spanish. “I just want to go home.”
    Sam wants to remind her that this
is
home—it’s about to be, anyway—but is pretty certain she means home as in Brooklyn.
    “Where are your husband and your kids?” Sam asks, looking around and seeing no evidence of the couple’s ten- and twelve-year-old daughters or their SUV, which was parked on the driveway earlier.
    “We left the girls with my mother, and Joey just went down to the hardware store. We were going to start working on the kitchen today.” Lori bites her lower lip.
    Sam nods. This place is even more of a fixer-upper than his.
    Sure, the three-story house, with its mansard roof, fish-scale shingles, and elaborate original trim, has tremendous potential. But Agnes Duckworth, the spinster who moved in circa World War II and rarely emerged, was hardly a female Bob Vila. In all the years Sam lived here as a kid, he never once saw anyone do any kind of maintenance on the house next door.
    Old Agnes passed away a good two years ago, and the house has since changed hands three times. Nobody stays long enough to do anything to it.
    Sam is really hoping the Delgados will, though. Not so much for the neighborhood aesthetic, but for his