“His ex!” Mom is fascinated. “Which one is she?”
“Over there.” Stephanie gestures with her elbow, not turning her head. “In the blue knit dress. Her name is Janet Green—Kramer now. She and her husband moved to the area recently, and she doesn’t know many people. Jules was fine with it, but now that she’s here, he’s very unhappy.”
Janet Green/Kramer is long-waisted and deeply tanned, with highlighted brown hair and a lopsided grin. She looks like any other mom. But I can’t help thinking, as I watch her sip from a glass of white wine: Crazy Jules was in love with that woman. They were together. It makes Janet Green seem profound, mysterious.
“Difficult breakup?” Mom asks.
“Devastating for him. It brought on everything: his breakdown, the assault…” Stephanie shakes her head. “What was I thinking.”
“Is Jules here?” Mom asks. “In the house?”
Stephanie is instantly wary. “He wants to be alone, Noreen.”
A crush of people comes through the front door, and Mom and I follow Stephanie toward them. But as soon as Stephanie starts greeting her guests, Mom veers toward the front staircase. “Mom!” I say, and manage to catch Stephanie’s eye. She hurries back over. Mom has already mounted the steps, but Stephanie seizes her arm and forces her to turn around. “Noreen,” she says, looking up at Mom from the stair below, “for whatever reason, you put Jules on edge, and he can become dangerously unstable when he’s on edge. I’m asking you: Please leave him alone.” She looks hard at Mom’s face. Then she goes to greet her guests without looking back.
Mom continues up the stairs. “You just promised,” I say, clambering after her.
“I promised nothing,” Mom says. “I never spoke.”
On the second floor, she begins knocking on doors and immediately shoving them open.
“You have to wait after you knock,” I hiss. “That’s the point of knocking.”
“Hannah,” she says, not slowing her pace, “you’re becoming more and more like your father.”
“Good,” I retort. “I want to be a lawyer.”
Mom charges up a smaller staircase to the third floor, which reverberates with sounds of running feet from the attic, where the kids are. There are only two doors on this floor. Mom pounds on the first, and we hear a guttural cry from within: “No!”
She flings open the door. Jules Jones is poised barefoot in the middle of the room in what looks like a martial-arts position. At the sight of Mom, he shrieks, as if confronting a demon. “You! Get out.”
He’s wearing khakis and a lavender button-down shirt with dry-cleaning folds still visible, as if he dressed for the party before changing his mind. A single bed is tucked in one corner of the room. By the window, a big desk is strewn with books and papers and a laptop.
“Relax,” Mom says. “I come in peace.”
“Like hell you do.” Jules bolts to the window and squints down at our two yards. He’s begun to resemble the Crandale dads, but only to a point, the way Mom somewhat resembles the other moms without ever fully blending in.
“I haven’t touched the fence,” she says. “I swear.”
“Your oath means nothing to me,” he says. “Less than nothing.” He peers again through the window, as if unable to stop himself. I notice a tape measure on the windowsill—the same one he brought to our house when Mom first moved the fence post two years ago.
“Let’s go down and measure it,” Mom says. “Come.”
Jules shakes his head. “I can’t right now.”
“Of course you can. So what if your ex is down there? You have a whole new life now.”