caroling at Christmastime.â
âWell,â Mom said darkly, âIâd like to make some improvements, but I wonât have anything more done to it until I can find the perfect restoration experts to maintain the integrity of the original layout.â Mrs. Fairweather nodded approvingly.
âWerenât you talking about putting in a pool with a waterslide in the spring?â I piped in. Jeff held in a snort.
âI most certainly was not talking about anything of the sort!â my mother snapped. âI did have an idea for a nice Zen garden with a reflecting pool, but it wouldnât be for swimming. And of course it would be nothing like the one next door.â The house next door was something of an infamous legend among my motherâs friends. A three-story cedar-shingled castle, it fairly towered over Momâs house. It even had a couple of turrets in the Queen Anneâs 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 poolâs 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, Iâd secretly longed for a chance to swim in it.
âWho lives in the Disney castle, anyway?â Teddy asked. âWeâve never been introduced.â You could tell by âweâ he meant the entire great and powerful Barrington Oil clan. Super-rich people never really think of themselves as individualsâtheyâre forever blessed, or doomed, to be an extension of a glamorous genetic web.
âNeither have we,â said Mrs. Fairweather.
âGod knows we havenât, either,â my mother said with a touch of resentment. âSome Europeans who never actually visit. They rent it out to summer families and, Iâm 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 oâclock in the morning. Nine-year-old twins. Screaming little madmen. You can imagine how much we loved that.â
âThey were just excited to have that pool,â I said, not sure why I was defending a pair of rich Saudi boys. âIt wasnât their fault their parents let them stay up.â
âIâm not saying it was their fault, Naomi, darling,â my mother said testily.
We were all silent for a moment.
âWell,â Mom said brightly, âitâs time we got ourselves to bed. We should be able to sleep through the night this year. No kids next door.â She leaned forward to peck Mrs. Fairweather near the cheek, and then began to clamber out of the SUV.
âWho is staying there this year?â Delilah asked with mild interest.
âJust some young woman, as far as I can tell,â my mother said. âShe 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 canât imagine any owners would let her redecorate if they knew about it.â
âMaybe sheâs doing it in secret,â Jeff suggested. âThat would be a very East Hampton sort of crime.â
âLike wearing white after Labor Day,â I said.
âOr not going to a top-tier university,â Jeff added.
âOh, you two,â Delilah said. She giggled
Learning to Kill: Stories