Trophy House Read Online Free

didn’t.”
    â€œWhy are we going over this again?” I said, moving toward the pot of soup simmering on the stove. “There’s no point in it.” This conversation was now about whether or not I told her about the bad house and not about the bad house itself. This was not quite the way I wanted things to go, especially on Beth’s first day with me.
    â€œHow about some soup?” I said, reaching for two bowls on a shelf above the microwave.
    â€œWhat kind?” she said, reminding me that one of Beth’s tricks is to manufacture tension between the two of us. I think it gives her a buzz.
    â€œSee if you can guess,” I said. Then she smiled and retreated. “Thanks, Mom,” she said. “Andy doesn’t do soup.”
    I had to sit on the words I wanted to say out loud, namely, “Oh, is that so?” or “I care?” But the poor child was pining for her erstwhile love. Who could blame her? Being dumped by a man is even worse than being fired from a job. I’m a feminist and I don’t care what other feminists have to say about it—it leaves a wound.
    As we ate—in more silence than sound—it occurred to me that the man who had peed on the beach the day before was probably the owner of the monster house. It all fit. The trophy dog and the hat and above all, his attitude. “You didn’t happen to see a man when you were on the beach before? A man with hairy eyebrows and a dog. Not a lap dog, a big floozy poodle?”
    Beth said she hadn’t and wanted to know why I was asking. I told her I thought this man might be the owner of the house she’d seen.
    â€œWhat’s his name?” Beth said. “What do you know about him?”
    â€œI think it’s Brenner. He’s from somewhere on Long Island. I hear he builds hotels, or maybe it’s shopping malls. Everybody loves malls.” Beth said that Andy didn’t; he wouldn’t let her shop at one. Did she realize how bad this guy was for her—how he was taking small bites out of her? Probably not: I had the feeling that she hadn’t entirely absorbed the idea that Andy was no longer part of her life. And for all I knew, maybe he wasn’t, maybe he was just playing games with her and he’d be back. I kept my big mouth shut.
    Beth wanted to know if there was a Mrs. Brenner. I told her that the word was, there used to be a wife. “They had three or four children together. Now there’s a younger missus—much younger. Like a trophy wife. He’s also got a trophy dog.”
    â€œJeeze, don’t you and your friends have anything better to do than gossip all day? When that weird woman was murdered last year, that was probably all you could talk about. Like September eleventh.”
    â€œI don’t know what Nine-Eleven has to do with the Tinkham murder, but why do you think she was weird? How was she weird? I just thought she was pitiful.”
    Weird, Beth said, because she lived alone with a two-year-old off the main road and went to P’Town bars two or three times a week, where she picked up guys and sometimes brought them back to her house. “I call that weird.”
    â€œI call it tempting fate,” I said. “And you’re right about the gossip. But it happened in our very own backyard. And no one knows who did it. For all we know, the killer may still be hanging out here.”
    She looked at me as if she thought I was going a little mental. “Well, you never know,” I said.
    â€œI don’t know what’s happening to this place—these hideous trophy houses and…”
    I interrupted her. “Maybe it isn’t quite so bad, pet. It’s the way you’re feeling about your own life that makes everything look so dark.”
    I had my work to do and Beth’s problems were cutting into my psychic energy. That was how it should be, I told myself. This is your only and beloved