Jane Darrowfield and the Madwoman Next Door by Barbara Ross

Author:Barbara Ross [Ross, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2021-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-seven

After bridge, Jane went home to her quiet house. Harry wasn’t coming over later that evening. He’d reluctantly agreed to a break in his nightly rounds as the watchman to spend Rosh Hashanah with his sons and their families as planned. On his dating profile he had listed himself as “casually Jewish,” something else he shared with his late wife, Elda, but not with Jane.

Both Harry’s boys and their families had been welcoming and generous to Jane. In the past year, they’d invited her into their homes and cheered alongside her at their kids’ Little League games. Jane relished the family gatherings given her situation with Jonathan, though sometimes it crept up on her and made the pain of what she was missing more acute, not less so.

Jane had never thought much about being a grandmother. She’d never known either of her own. But now, when Phyllis or Helen reported gleefully on their grandchildren’s adventures, it was all Jane could do to maintain a tight-lipped smile and dry eyes. Jonathan’s terrible silence made her memories painful in retrospect, but more devastating was the loss of the hope of a shared future.

The irony that she was spending her retirement fixing other people’s problems while this huge hole in her life went unaddressed wasn’t lost on her, or on her bridge friends. They had all remarked on it in one way or another, though not unkindly.

Much as she enjoyed her time with Harry and his family, Jane also tried to give them time to themselves. He, his sons, and their families needed time together without her to be the family they had once been as much as they could without Elda. Jane might be part of the memories they were making now, but she was not a part of their past—and who knew what the future might hold?

Wembly came down the stairs from the second floor and stared at Jane dolefully. There was still a lump of the latest food choice in his bowl. He wasn’t eating enough, the bare minimum to stay alive. Whether he was pining or simply boycotting Jane’s food selections she did not know. He came over to rub a jowl on her leg. She bent down and ran a hand along his muscled length.

She wished she’d grabbed his own food for him when she’d been at Megan’s. Jane went to the window and looked across the hedge. Megan’s house was quiet, unnaturally so. There had been no police or press there all day. Jane found the piece of paper on which Megan had written the access codes, lifted a canvas shopping bag from the peg beside the back door, and went out.

The hedge meant she had to walk down her driveway, out to the sidewalk, and then up Megan’s drive, where she felt terribly exposed. She wasn’t sneaking, exactly, but she doubted the Cambridge police would want her over there. At Megan’s garage door Jane hesitated. Had the police changed the codes once Megan’s disappearance became official? But as soon as she entered the numbers and pressed the button, the door rumbled open.

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