The Girl Next Door

THE GIRL
NEXT DOOR

B
OOKS BY
P
ATRICIA
M
AC
D
ONALD

Stranger in the House

Suspicious Origin

Not Guilty

THE GIRL
NEXT DOOR

A NOVEL

PATRICIA
MACDONALD

ATRIA
BOOKS

N
EW
  Y
ORK
  L
ONDON
  T
ORONTO
  S
YDNEY

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VENUE OF THE
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ORK
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T
HIS BOOK IS A WORK OF FICTION
. N
AMES , CHARACTERS, PLACES AND INCIDENTS
ARE PRODUCTS OF THE AUTHOR’S IMAGINATION OR ARE USED FI CTITIOUSLY
. A
NY
RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL EVENTS OR LOCALES OR PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, IS
ENTIRELY COINCIDENTAL.

PATRICIA MACDONALD

ATRIA BOOKS
New York London Toronto Sydney

C
OPYRIGHT
© 2004
BY
P
ATRICIA
B
OURGEAU

A
LL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
THIS BOOK OR PORTIONS THEREOF IN ANY FORM WHATSOEVER.
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OR INFORMATION ADDRESS
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OOKS
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MERICAS
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IBRARY OF
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ONGRESS
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ATALOGING-IN
-P
UBLICATION
D
ATA

M
ACDONALD
, P
ATRICIA
J.

T
HE
G
IRL
N
EXT
D
OOR
/ P
ATRICIA
M
C
D
ONALD
-1
ST
A
TRIA
B
OOKS HARDCOVER ED
.

P. CM
.

ISBN 0-7434-2361-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-743-42361-8
ISBN-13: 978-1-439-14105-2

www.SimonandSchuster.com

1. M
ARRIED WOMEN
—C
RIMES AGAINST
—F
ICTION
.

2. C
HILDREN OF MURDER
VICTIMS
—F
ICTION
.

3. M
OTHERS
—D
EATH
—F
ICTION
.

4. S
UBURBAN LIFE
—F
ICTION
.

5. Y
OUNG WOMEN
—F
ICTION
.

6. U
XORICIDE
—F
I CTION
.

I . T
ITLE
.

PS3563.A287G57 2004

813′.54—
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22  2004047693

F
IRST
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TRIA
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OOKS HARDCOVER EDITION
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ULY
2004

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T
O MY FRIENDS
C
RAIG
, M
ICHEL, AND
D
ANIEL
G
RAS, AND TO
J
OSEPHINE
H
ALFPENNY, WHO BROUGHT US TOGETHER
. H
APPY
B
IRTHDAY
, N
AN
!

Special thanks to Rich Terbeck at the New Jersey State Parole Bureau for patiently,
thoroughly answering my questions. And my apologies to Rich for any liberties I took
with the facts!

Thanks, as ever, to Art Bourgeau, Jane Berkey, Meg Ruley, Annelise Robey, and Maggie
Crawford for tough questions and brilliant suggestions.

N
INA
A
VERY
tried to concentrate on her highlighted script. Even though she loved to act, and
was thrilled with the part she had landed in the school play, she could not focus
on learning her lines. She was distracted by the April breeze that drifted through
her bedroom window, and by the fact that it was Friday and school was over for the
week. But most of all, she was distracted by thoughts of Brandon Ross, the boy who
lived next door.

His family had moved in last November, and she had met him at Christmastime. Her mother,
Marsha, had invited the new neighbors to a holiday party. Brandon’s father, Frank,
was balding and stocky. His mother, Sheila, was blond, stylish, and thin. The party
ended, not surprisingly, in an argument between Nina’s parents. Her mother accused
her husband, Duncan, of flirting with Sheila. Duncan insisted that Marsha had ruined
the party all by herself by drinking too much egg nog and getting sloppy.

But the party wasn’t ruined for Nina. She had fallen head over heels for Brandon.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t seen much of him in the months that followed. They took
the same bus to school, but in the winter everyone ran to the bus stop at the last
minute to avoid the cold. Now that spring was here, Nina had been leaving the house
early just so she might be able to spend a few more minutes with Brandon before the
bus arrived. He was taller than Nina, and a year older. At fifteen, he had broad shoulders
and soft brown hair that fell over his forehead. His eyes, when she dared to meet
them, were brown with flecks of gold in them.

“No, you listen to me, Marsha. I have patients waiting for me. I left my practice
to go over to that school and be humiliated …” her father shouted.

Nina sighed and returned to reality. She knew very well that it wasn’t only spring
fever and Brandon Ross that were distracting her. It was impossible to memorize lines
over the sound of the shouting from downstairs. Her parents had just returned from
the high school, where they had been summoned to discuss her brother Jimmy and the
problems he was having. It didn’t sound like it went too well. Their angry voices
spiked up the stairwell and mushroomed in the hall.

“Your patients can spare you for an hour,” her mother retorted in a sarcastic tone.
“You don’t hear me complaining because I couldn’t work this afternoon.”

“Excuse me, I’m a doctor. I’m not just dabbling in a paint box,” Duncan replied.

“You see, Duncan?” she cried. “This is your attitude. Nothing is important but you.
My painting is a waste of time. The children are a waste of time. This is why Jimmy
has problems. Because you have no time for him,” Marsha shouted. “Because you’re too
busy with your …
other interests
.”

Jimmy was now sixteen, and had started hanging around
with a garage band called Black Death. In a lot of ways, Nina thought Jimmy was sweeter
than her older brother, Patrick, but lately he got into fights, cut school a lot,
and came home glassy-eyed from the Black Death rehearsals. The band’s lead singer,
Calvin Mears, was a known drug user whose single mother did not seem to care what
he did. A lot of girls thought Calvin was hot. He was lean and mean, with shoulder-length
blond hair and haunted-looking gray eyes. Nina thought he was a little bit scary.
She had heard the rumor that he had gotten a ninth-grader pregnant. Her brother Jimmy
was the opposite of Calvin. Girls thought he was cute, too, but in a different way
from Calvin. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with curly black hair and a face that
was scarred up from a million childhood scrapes. He acted as the band’s general grunt
and Calvin’s personal bodyguard. No amount of punishment had succeeded in keeping
him away from his new friend.

Nina couldn’t understand why her mother blamed her father for Jimmy’s behavior. Her
father was a hero in her eyes. Just last year it had been in all the papers when his
astute diagnosis and quick treatment had saved the life of their mailman’s young son,
who had a rare, often fatal blood disease. Nina liked everyone to know that Dr. Avery
was her dad.

But Nina’s mother was always mad at him. Her father would try to avoid the arguments,
but her mother would persist. And then he would snap back with something mean—that
she was a nag, or she drank too much, or she had let herself go. Which wasn’t fair
either, Nina thought. It was true that she didn’t look much like the raven-haired
beauty in her wedding picture. Her hair was graying now, and she was pudgy. But it
didn’t help anything when her dad, who was still fit and handsome, brought up her
mother’s shortcomings. Nina sighed. She loved them both so much. Why couldn’t they
just get along? But arguing had become a way of life for them. It was sickening. It
gave her a stomachache.

Nina heard the front door slam. She went to her open window and looked out. Marsha
Avery, wearing sneakers and her old green sweatshirt, her face like a thundercloud,
was crossing the front lawn, toting her paint box and her large zippered portfolio.
Nina knew where she was headed. At one end of their street was the Madison Creek Nature
Preserve. A state-owned woodland, it was her mother’s favorite place to paint. The
woods ran along the banks of a burbling stream, and its winding trails were overgrown
and shady. Nina started to call out to her mother, but then she hesitated. Nina and
her brothers all pretended not to hear the arguments between their parents. She didn’t
want her mother to know that she had been listening.

Nina rested her elbows on the windowsill, her chin in her hands, and breathed in the
balmy April air. The New York suburb of Hoffman, New Jersey, never looked more beautiful
than it did in the spring, and Madison Street was especially pretty. There were large,
comfortable old houses and lots of trees fuzzy with new leaves and buds. If you turned
right out of the Averys’ driveway, it was a short walk to the quaint downtown shopping
area of Hoffman. If you turned left, you were headed for the preserve. It wasn’t the
ritziest part of town. That was the horsey area of estates called Old Hoffman. But
Nina loved her street with its towering elms, lush gardens, and gas streetlamps.

Today, though, instead of cheering her up, the loveliness of her neighborhood made
Nina feel more melancholy than ever. Melancholy and lonely. Her thoughts drifted back
to Brandon Ross. “He’ll never like me,” she said aloud. She turned her head and looked
into the mirror over her bureau. She had long, wavy black hair and creamy skin with
no zits, knock on wood. She had often been told that she was beautiful when she smiled.
But why smile? If Brandon thought about her at all, it was probably to think how boring
she was.

Nina heard a car engine stopping and she looked out the
window again. A shiny Jeep with the sunroof open was pulling into the wide driveway
beside her father’s car. The Jeep belonged to Lindsay Farrell, a beautiful girl with
straight platinum-blond hair. Her dad was some kind of mogul in New York and they
lived in Old Hoffman. Nina thought she had never seen teeth as dazzling as Lindsay’s
or eyes as blue. Lindsay got out of the car, as did her passenger, Nina’s older brother,
Patrick. Patrick was a dreamboat with brown curly hair and an athlete’s body. He looked
like a younger version of his handsome father, and together he and Lindsay looked
like some
Vogue
advertisement for the good life.

Patrick came up close to Lindsay and tilted her face up to his with one finger under
her chin. Just then the front door slammed again, and Nina saw her dad come out into
the driveway, glowering and rattling his keys.

Patrick and Lindsay jumped apart. “Hey, Dad,” said Patrick warily.

Nina’s father mumbled a greeting and headed for his car.

“Dad, did the mail come?” Patrick asked.

“I don’t know. Check the box. I’m heading back to the office.” He climbed into his
car and began to back out of the driveway.

Nina sighed and turned away from the window. She lay down on her bed, pushing her
script to the floor, and looked up at the ceiling. She didn’t feel like learning lines.
She didn’t care about the play. She was overcome with a combination of weariness and
the jitters. Nina closed her eyes. “Life sucks,” she said.

The phone beside her bed rang. Nina picked it up.

“Nina,” said a familiar voice. “It’s Brandon, next door.”