Great by Sara Benincasa Read Free Book Online

caroling at Christmastime.”
    â€œWell,” Mom said darkly, “I’d like to make some improvements, but I won’t have anything more done to it until I can find the perfect restoration experts to maintain the integrity of the original layout.” Mrs. Fairweather nodded approvingly.
    â€œWeren’t you talking about putting in a pool with a waterslide in the spring?” I piped in. Jeff held in a snort.
    â€œI most certainly was not talking about anything of the sort!” my mother snapped. “I did have an idea for a nice Zen garden with a reflecting pool, but it wouldn’t be for swimming. And of course it would be nothing like the one next door.” The house next door was something of an infamous legend among my mother’s friends. A three-story cedar-shingled castle, it fairly towered over Mom’s house. It even had a couple of turrets in the Queen Anne’s style. And while Mom had one very well-maintained acre of land, the house next door sat on over two acres. It even had a moat, sort of.
    A winding pool designed to look like a river dominated the backyard. It snaked along the right side of the yard and then doubled back, curving along its original path and then snaking out along the left side of the yard before curling around and returning to meet the place where it started. I imagine from above it looked like a giant bubble letter U drawn with squiggly blue borders, with perfect green lawn filling in the space between. There were a few rustic-on-purpose footbridges scattered along the river pool’s path, and here and there, little waterfalls built from smooth stones. There were even a couple of story-high waterslides. It was actually really cool, and ever since I was eleven, I’d secretly longed for a chance to swim in it.
    â€œWho lives in the Disney castle, anyway?” Teddy asked. “We’ve never been introduced.” You could tell by “we” he meant the entire great and powerful Barrington Oil clan. Super-rich people never really think of themselves as individuals—they’re forever blessed, or doomed, to be an extension of a glamorous genetic web.
    â€œNeither have we,” said Mrs. Fairweather.
    â€œGod knows we haven’t, either,” my mother said with a touch of resentment. “Some Europeans who never actually visit. They rent it out to summer families and, I’m telling you, Merilee, they pick the people with the noisiest children. Last year it was a Saudi family who let their boys swim until three o’clock in the morning. Nine-year-old twins. Screaming little madmen. You can imagine how much we loved that.”
    â€œThey were just excited to have that pool,” I said, not sure why I was defending a pair of rich Saudi boys. “It wasn’t their fault their parents let them stay up.”
    â€œI’m not saying it was their fault, Naomi, darling,” my mother said testily.
    We were all silent for a moment.
    â€œWell,” Mom said brightly, “it’s time we got ourselves to bed. We should be able to sleep through the night this year. No kids next door.” She leaned forward to peck Mrs. Fairweather near the cheek, and then began to clamber out of the SUV.
    â€œWho is staying there this year?” Delilah asked with mild interest.
    â€œJust some young woman, as far as I can tell,” my mother said. “She has a cleaning service come in every week, and the florist is over every few days. When I got here in May, she had an interior decorating service over for a full week. I can’t imagine any owners would let her redecorate if they knew about it.”
    â€œMaybe she’s doing it in secret,” Jeff suggested. “That would be a very East Hampton sort of crime.”
    â€œLike wearing white after Labor Day,” I said.
    â€œOr not going to a top-tier university,” Jeff added.
    â€œOh, you two,” Delilah said. She giggled