StoryLiar: Part 2

I finished my book the next Sunday morning. Matt and Jess were out, and Tommy was chilling in his room with the Berenstain Bears’ collection he’s pilfered from school over the past year. It was early, but probably not too early if I sent Ezra to the neighbors who’ve been supplying me with one Louise Penny mystery at a time.

“Tell them I need Book 4, and then come right back so I can start reading it before your brother gets home,” I told him.

He skipped across the road, looking neither way, with his bathrobe just so – tucked into his jammy pants with the belt tied in the back so as to reveal a strip of albino white across his skinny chest in the front. Sharp.

Ezra knocked, and our neighbor and his daughter came to the door. They chatted. They kept chatting. Then Ezra was inside the house, and I saw no one. Sum total it was probably 3 minutes, but it felt like 500, and I thought about sending a text, but then I remembered it was early Sunday morning when I wasn’t supposed to be bothering people, which Is why I’d sent my middle son to do it for me. He’d turned out useless.

I wanted to read something, but I didn’t want to start anything interesting when the book I was really interested in was across the road in a house that had swallowed Ezra without tossing the Louise Penny mystery to me first. I sat on the couch, looked left, and spied … you got it! The Screaming Staircase with the bookmark at page 57.

I started reading, and 15 minutes in, I was engrossed enough that I didn’t bother to get up when my phone dinged from the kitchen. It was probably a text from the neighbors about Ezra, but you know? He’s a resourceful kid – a real charmer – and at the moment, I was more concerned about Lucy & Lockwood and the ghost who was trying to kill them. More texts came, and I only looked up from my book when Jesse and Matt returned, the former, elated to see that I was reading his book for reals, and the latter, wondering whether I got his texts.

“I heard them,” I evaded.

“Ezra is across the street,” Matt said.

“I know all about that,” I said, waving my hand in the air nonchalantly. “I sent him there.”

“He’s been in their bathroom for the last 15 minutes.”

That was a plot twist, but as I said, Ezra is resourceful. He emerged – in the way men eventually emerge from these situations – and came back with the fourth Louise Penny book (after he washed his hands, I hope). Jesse confiscated it, declaring he would release it only after I finished The Screaming Staircase, which it turns out, is also a real page turner.

A book in the lap and one in the docket. I am happy. Jesse is happy I am reading and enjoying his book. We are talking about ghosts now.

The end.