The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale Read Free Book Online Page B

she were the world. Her eyes close. He comes a little closer, as if melting into her. Then his lips—those wonderful, wonderful lips—are on hers. One long slow kiss. Then another. Another. The umbrella droops. Her arms go around his neck, she drops the umbrella entirely, and they kiss long and deeply in the pouring rain.
    Yes, she’d seen it a dozen times (or twenty-one). And yes, each time that final kiss made her heart sputter, and she’d returned to Mike feeling particularly amorous and often downright frisky. Mike once declared it his favorite movie of all time. And he’d never seen it.
    Becky was standing in her driveway. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been there, reliving the last scene in Rattled Cages and waiting for Felix to show up. He didn’t. She peered behind the leafless shrubs then walked around the mammoth sycamore in their front yard, eyeing Hyrum’s treehouse for any occupants. Nobody. But Felix had been at the library, right? There, in the back row. In Salt Lake City. That hadn’t been an incredibly vivid daydream, a sign that a stiff white jacket would be in her future? No. If there was one thing in this world Becky was sure of, it was her own sanity.
    “That was one of the weirdest things,” she said to the rosebush. “Ever. Weirdest things ever.”
    The rosebush needed pruning. It didn’t respond.
    Putting out of her mind the “Why on earth did he come see me?” question because it was impossible to answer, she asked instead the “how” question. How had he known where she’d be? She went inside the quiet house and opened the white pages to “Jack.” In the Layton area, there were only three, and the first one listed was her brother-in-law Clark.
    His wife, Angela, answered the phone—Angela of the Perpetual Happiness, Angela of the Ubiquitous Exclamation Marks.
    “Becky! Hi! How did your little thing go?”
    “It was great, thanks. Hey, listen, did anyone . . . one of my friends call your house asking where I was recently?”
    “Yes! Your nice friend from England called! Hendrix, was it? Just this morning! He thought this was your number! Well, I gave him yours and Mike’s number, but I told him, I happen to know she’s not home now, because her kids are here while she’s doing a little thing! ‘Did you know that she’s a professional screenwriter,’ I said, ‘and she’s presenting today at a conference for professionals?’ Well! Wasn’t he happy for you! I can tell you! He said I was helpful beyond words! Wasn’t that nice?”
    “Yes, that was nice. And helpful. Thank you.” And part of Becky thought, thank goodness Angela didn’t give all her private info to some creepy stalker. Then again, did Felix fit that bill? It seemed he had flipped through an airport phone book to find her, taken a cab or something to sit in on her “little thing,” and then left again. Definitely questionable behavior.
    “Okay, I’ll see you later. Say hi to Clark.”
    Angela cleared her throat. “So, um, Becky, are you home now?”
    “Yes, I’m all done.”
    “So . . .”
    Becky waited. So . . . ? She was feeling antsy standing in the kitchen, tethered to the wall by the phone cord, and really wanted to go sort laundry and sort her thoughts with it.
    Angela’s voice turned shy. “So, will you be coming to pick up your kids sometime soon?”
    Her kids! Mike had gone with Fiona to a father-daughter church party, so Becky had dropped off Hyrum and Polly at their aunt’s house, and she was supposed to go straight there, not wander home to talk to unresponsive shrubbery and fl ip through an expired white pages! What was the matter with her? Usually she was the first minivan waiting outside the school, the first mom to sign up for the bake sale, the responsible one, for Pete’s sake! And now here she was completely forgetting her kids and thinking in gratuitous exclamation points!
    “Yes! Yes. Thank you. I’m on my way right now, so I’ll see you later, you know, like, in