The Rumor by Lesley Kara

Author:Lesley Kara
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2019-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

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TWO HOURS LATER, after a dismal half hour traipsing along dark, wet streets while our hyperactive offspring knock on strangers’ doors and ask for treats, I’m desperate to get home. But when Karen and Rob ask me in for a cup of coffee—well, just Karen, really—and I realize they live in The Regal, I can’t resist. It used to be a fancy hotel in its day and I’m dying to see what it’s like.

One of the apartments on the upper floors with a terrace and a view came up for sale recently, but the owner withdrew it before I got a chance to take a look. Karen and Rob’s place, disappointingly, turns out to be in the more modern extension, but I can hardly change my mind now. And besides, she did let Alfie win the main prize in Hot Potato.

Karen ushers me into a warm, square-shaped living room. It might not be as big as I’d been expecting, but it has a homey feel to it. Hayley scrambles up onto the lap of an older woman curled up on one end of a large sofa with a laptop. The same woman I saw with Karen outside Pegton’s. She’s dwarfed by a white, fluffy bathrobe, and she’s wearing a pink beanie and slippers.

“Meet my mother,” Karen says. “This isn’t her usual attire, but then it is Halloween, right, Mom?”

I cross the room toward her, hand extended. She can’t get up, not with Hayley hogging her lap. She shakes my hand. Her wrists are tiny, her face gaunt.

“She’s charming, isn’t she, my daughter?” Her voice is surprisingly gruff. The pink hat and the fluffy slippers had me expecting something a little softer. More feminine.

“Learned it all from you, Mother dear,” Karen retorts. It’s just mother-daughter banter, but I sense a slight tension between them. It must be a strain for Karen and Rob, having her mother stay with them in this small apartment. I can’t help noticing that Rob’s disappeared into the bedroom and closed the door behind him.

Karen plucks a DVD from a basket on the floor, and before long Hayley and Alfie are sitting cross-legged in front of the TV, enthralled by the opening scenes of Frozen.

Karen beckons me into the kitchen. “Let’s go have some coffee. Mom’ll keep an eye on them. She loves Frozen.”

As I follow Karen out of the room, I glance back at the three of them: a somewhat disheveled Darth Vader and his ghostly bride, and the thin woman in the oversized bathrobe, tapping away at her keyboard.

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