Read Online More Than Neighbors by Janice Kay Johnson - Free Book Online Page B

have heard the phone, but you can check voice mail. After dinner,” she added, reading his mind even before he started to jump to his feet.
    “But Mom—”
    She took a bite to give herself a minute. “It’s only six-thirty. If he said this evening, it’ll probably be later anyway.”
    Mark hunched his shoulders and stabbed at his peas. Several went skittering off his plate. “He’ll forget. He always forgets.”
    He was right. Jeff did always forget. She wished he wouldn’t make promises at all, however casual. He knew how literal Mark was. In his world view, if you said you were going to do something, you did it.
    “Your dad is pretty busy these days,” she said gently. New wife, new baby, promotion at work. Out with the old.
    No, not fair—the new family and promotion at work had absolutely nothing to do with his disengagement from his first son. That happened as soon as he began to suspect Mark wasn’t a chip off the old block. The son he had once described as a “retard” was her fault, he had declared. Jeff was unimpressed with the reality that Mark scored at 95 percent or above on most standardized tests given in school.
    “You know what I mean,” he’d growled.
    Yes, she did. He meant Mark wasn’t a swaggering, sports-crazy, rough-and-tough boy’s boy. Instead, he was thoughtful, given to intense interests— none of which his father shared—and, at least so far, spectacularly un athletic. Ciara could not understand how any of that made Mark unlovable to a parent.
    “How’d things go with Mr. Tennert today?” she asked in an attempt to divert him.
    It worked. His face brightened. “He said to call him Gabe, you know.”
    “Right.” She was trying to stick to Mr. Tennert, who sounded like a neighbor, versus Gabe, who was a sexy guy she found herself thinking about way more often than was healthy.
    “It was good.” He chattered on, explaining how today they’d worked on finding the missing angles in triangles and quadrilaterals.
    At one point she leveled a look at his plate, and he took a tiny bite then a larger one before he continued his enthusiastic recitation about complementary, supplementary, vertical and adjacent angles. Ciara pinned an interested smile on her face and tuned him out.
    “He remembers everything about geometry,” Mark concluded with satisfaction. “That’s good, because I think it’s cool.”
    Panic briefly raised its head. What if Gabe Tennert lost interest in helping Mark with his math?
    I can research anything, she reminded herself. I am perfectly capable of staying ahead of a seventh grader.
    It was humiliating to know she wasn’t buying her own pep talk.
    Gabe had also had Mark sawing assorted pieces of scrap lumber. He’d done some miter cuts today, and Gabe had shown him how to mark intended cuts so as not to make a mistake.
    “Mark them.” Her son cackled. “Get it?”
    She produced a chuckle.
    This was Thursday. She hadn’t encountered their neighbor since their Saturday morning confrontation over Watson chasing his horses. Having seen the bone-deep reluctance on his face, she’d honestly been surprised when he’d let Mark come down to his workshop later that same morning. She was even more surprised that he had scheduled appointments thereafter, meaning Mark had disappeared for up to two hours to the neighbor’s both Tuesday and today.
    She was trying to keep her distance, but had expressed her gratitude by sending a loaf of freshly baked bread with Mark on Tuesday and a Bundt cake today. Mark had reported an enthusiastic reception for both the cookies and the bread. She asked now about the cake.
    “He said you don’t have to send stuff every time.”
    “Oh.” Ciara was disconcerted to feel let down. “Does he not like desserts?”
    “He had, like, a humongous piece of cake while he helped me with my math.” Lines appeared between Mark’s eyebrows. “So I don’t know why he said that.”
    Her spirits rose. “He was probably being