Breaking Through by A. M. Hartnett

Author:A. M. Hartnett [A. M. Hartnett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2014-10-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

The Agricola Street house was the first place Miranda lived that had a backyard. It wasn’t much of a backyard, only twice the size of her bedroom, but it was good enough for her, and more importantly it was good enough for Eddie. He loved the playhouse and the sandcastle table that his grandmother had bought him. And Miranda loved her lawn chair. As she watched him run in and out of his tiny shelter, she flicked through a magazine and listened to the music coming out of her iPhone.

Yet this was a poor excuse for a Sunday evening, at least compared to her last few Sundays.

A few times, Miranda had tapped out a message to Simon and considered adding an invitation to join her for a backyard barbecue on the hibachi grill, but that would reveal her lie and she might be prompted to tell him the truth.

Not happening, she thought as she hit send, then went back to her magazine.

She didn’t read, but plotted out possible scenarios for date nights. If Juliet hadn’t gone funny, she and Simon could have gone to the movies like they’d been talking about. They could have checked out a burlesque show downtown. Or they could have locked themselves into his apartment again and just fucked like mad until the dawn.

As comfortable as her lawn chair was, as good as her music was and as cute as Eddie was, running around with a spade and a bucket, she was pissed.

Inside, Juliet had camped out in her bedroom, still determined to give Miranda the silent treatment. She’d pass by long enough to slip outside for a cigarette, and had indulged Eddie in the kitchen while she made a sandwich – at least her snit didn’t extend to her nephew – but otherwise kept to herself.

One more thing for Juliet to commandeer with her bullshit. My money, my future, and now the one day a week I get to be normal.

It would have been easy to stomp upstairs and give Juliet a piece of her mind, but it wouldn’t have made her feel better and the silent treatment was better than tears and screaming that could have rivalled Eddie’s most epic tantrums.

So she stayed in her lawn chair, which she didn’t love half as much as she did the last time she’d brought Eddie out here but pretended to anyway.

The crunch of gravel alongside the house dragged her attention away from her fantasies, and as she rose to greet the intruder he appeared.

‘Hey, what’s up?’ Arch, Juliet’s … whatever he was, raised his hand in greeting and proceeded into the backyard.

‘What brings you around?’ she asked, and didn’t get an answer until he had finished chasing Eddie around the yard, then carried him onto the veranda.

‘I was bored,’ he said, and leaned against the railing as Eddie shimmied down his legs.

Arch was shaped like a garden rake, scrawny with big feet, and recently had decided to grow a beard, probably because Juliet had said something about liking men in beards.

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