Page 61 of The Cul-de-Sac War

Theo, dumbstruck, held out his hands. “Can you tap-dance, Bree? Do you have alternate employment options between shows?”

Chip grinned wider as he listened, his throat tingling with the urge to laugh as he watched the quarrel from the corner of his eye.

Bree’s face was flushed as she shoved her hands into her pockets. “Whether I can tap-dance is unimportant here. The point is, there’s no honor in awarding someone a job they aren’t qualified for. I can’t imagine the rumors that would go around.”

Theo raised a brow. “About you and Mr. Richardson?”

“No,” she retorted. “About you and me.”

He smiled. Saw her expression. Stopped smiling. “And that’s . . . a bad thing?”

“If people believe I’m using you, yes!” she sputtered. Without pausing she pointed at Chip. “Stop smiling.”

Chip put his free hand to his chest, fighting his smile down. “Forgive me, neighbor, but I believe I’m the one stationed here, incapable of moving my conversation elsewhere—”

“Chip?”

The three of them stopped.

Oh boy.

Twice today he’d heard a woman’s voice he didn’t want to hear.

Wincing, he turned around, all jovial spirit gone. “Heyyyy, Ashleigh.”

And there Ashleigh stood, gawking as the head of his mother’s little tribe. His mother stood behind her to the right, the group lining up like bowling pins in formation.

Ashleigh looked from him to his easel. “I’m . . . confused. I thought you had work today.”

He felt his own neck starting to flush. “I did. I do. I just had a quick side project going.”

Her frown deepened. “Painting? You never told me you painted.” Everything about her face and voice was like a soft, fluffy white kitten with a hurt paw.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bree’s frown turn. Her posture straighten. One brow twitched ever so slightly as if to say, Trouble in paradise, Chippy boy?

They all split up quickly after, Bree and Theo continuing their stiff conversation on one side of the Creeper Trail, Chip taking on Ashleigh and her endless questions on the other. Chip’s mother directed the tribe to a spot beneath the canopy of some trees while covering her son’s lapse of judgment with phrases like, “My youngest son has always carried the mysterious virtues found in such men as Picasso and Kandinsky. I’m not surprised, honestly, that he’s expressing the cerebral needs of his right brain through the lens of the canvas. Much like Van Gogh, in the 1800s, who was misunderstood by so many in his time . . .”

* * *

Chip paid for his little lie to Ashleigh. By that evening, he’d ignored twenty-five work calls, sixteen text messages, and fourteen emails so he could focus on fifteen thoughtful apologies, mostly in the form of “I’m sorry” and “No, I don’t have a hidden alternate lifestyle.” It also cost him one exquisite, covered-in-guilt-and-gravy dinner for two at the Tavern.

Finally back at home, Chip pulled himself out of his truck and shuffled to his own dark house. The street was silent, void of signs of life from the parallel-parked cars and lightless houses. But Mrs. Lewis’s porch light glimmered.

Beneath the caramel full moon, Chip dragged himself up the porch steps and sat down. Soon Russell lay beside him with his head on his paws, drooping eyelids slowly closing off the midnight-blue world.

He felt the jab in his pants pocket and pulled out his business card.

He twirled it around a few times between his fingers.

He was five days overdue paying four subcontractors.

Six hundred forty-two dollars away from the business account dropping into the red.

Twenty degrees from freezing in his fixer-upper home.

But, he thought, spinning the business card around and around . . .

He had his dog.