Free Paper Bullets by Annie Reed Page A

I said.
    She shot me a quick sideways glance. “I could always stay with Maddie. I’m sure her mom wouldn’t mind if Jonathan—”
    “Not gonna happen,” I said.
    “Mom!” She drew the word out like she used to when she was in her terrible toddler stage and we had frequent battles of will. “You don’t like any of my friends.”
    So much for having a logical conversation about this subject.
    “You know that’s not true,” I said. “We’ve talked about Maddie. I like Maddie. I still like Maddie. That doesn’t mean I’m not worried she’s involved in things I don’t want you involved in.”
    “So you don’t trust me to think for myself when I’m around her.”
    I gestured at the salad plates littered with the remains of dressing-free lettuce and bits of lunch meat. “You never worried about the calories in a tablespoon of dressing before this summer when Maddie lost all that weight. Or about fitting into designer jeans before she started wearing them.”
    Samantha turned away from me to glare at the television where the heroes of the movie were frozen on the screen.
    “Look, we can talk about Jonathan spending more than a couple of hours here,” I said. “Just not over Labor Day weekend. His mother seems open to the idea. I’m not opposed to it.”
    “Fine.”
    It wasn’t, not with her, not the way she said it, but I’d take it as a start.
    She carried the empty salad plates to the kitchen, declined my offer of popcorn for dessert, and said she was going to the den to work on a new piece.
    Loud piano music began to fill the house almost immediately.
    At least her anger seemed genuine, and she hadn’t put on an act about Labor Day just to get me to capitulate to the idea of Jonathan staying overnight at some point. Up until this summer, I wouldn’t have considered the possibility where Samantha was concerned, but it looked like my daughter was finally hitting the point in her life where she’d begin pulling away from me. I knew it had to happen one day, but I still wasn’t ready for it.
    I definitely wasn’t ready for the men who knocked on my door a half hour later.

 
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 11
     
     
    I’M NOT EXACTLY anti-social, but other than Kyle or one of Samantha’s friends, the only person who ever rings my doorbell after eight o’clock at night, even in the summer when the sun’s still up, is my neighbor Freddie March.
    After Ryan and I split up, Freddie took it upon himself to be my little helper, whether I needed it or not. He and his wife Bess had lived in the neighborhood long before Ryan and I bought the house I still lived in.
    Freddie had made enough money in the early days of the tech industry to retire comfortably far sooner than I ever would. He worked in his yard and watched sports on television and was the first person in the neighborhood to put up holiday decorations.
    He was also a letch, but I cut him a little more slack these days since he’d helped me out last December. Freddie had called 9-1-1 when I really needed the cops but the killers who’d kidnapped me wouldn’t let me make the call myself.
    If I sound a little flip about what happened, I’m not.
    I’m very aware of the fact that I could have been killed in my own house. Stuff like that makes a person appreciate the little things, like the fact that your letch of a neighbor actually has a good heart.
    I still didn’t accept Freddie’s offers to mow the lawn for me or take out the trash—those offers would have had strings attached, I was sure, and besides, I liked Bess—but I no longer pretended I wasn’t home whenever he brought over some of Bess’s homemade cookies or a flyer for a neighborhood garage sale that I had no desire to participate in.
    When the doorbell rang fifteen minutes into Samantha’s latest loud classical music piano-fest, I expected to find Freddie on my doorstep asking me if I could get my daughter to tone it down just a bit because he was trying to watch the