The Checklist by Addie Woolridge (famous ebook reader txt) 📕

Most normal people would assume this was a mistake made by their otherwise pleasant, tidy, churchgoing neighbors. Most normal people had never endured the longest-standing family feud since the Hatfields versus the McCoys. The light was probably retribution for the tiger statue. Even for her parents, it was an unusual eyesore.

“So you’ll go over there tonight and tell them to get rid of those insidious things?” Henry wrapped up her mother’s raging tale with equal fervor.

“Dad. Mom. You know I love you and have for years participated in the Robinson loathing. But honestly, this is too much. I’m over thirty. I can’t go over there like I’m ten. I doubt Linda and Patricia will do anything I ask anymore.”

“Your room faces their house too. You act all high and mighty, but it’ll upset your sleep pattern, and then you’ll get off your high horse and go over there.”

“Mom, please. You’re being dramatic,” Dylan said as her mother picked up her mug of cold tea and ambled toward her studio.

“Just wait. You’ll see what I mean.”

CHAPTER THREE

“Dear God. Are they trying to signal someone in outer space?” Dylan asked Milo, squinting out of her bedroom window. As if in agreement, Milo grunted, slowly moving off the window seat and onto her freshly made bed. So much for clean sheets. Setting her book down, she unpretzeled herself from the armchair she’d been installed in. Quietly, she opened her bedroom door to survey the rest of the house’s response.

“I told you so! Now, do what you must.” Bernice’s mocking voice floated up three stories. Dylan marveled at her having heard the bedroom door open over her dad’s experimental Ghanaian drum-circle music.

“I’m on it,” Dylan called back before slinking down the stairs and grabbing her heels from over by the door. “‘Do what you must.’ Who says that?” she mumbled as she reached for the door handle, already regretting how quickly she’d caved. What had she said to her mother? Something about her age and independence? Obviously, that wasn’t true.

Cursing herself, she closed her parents’ door and began the slog across the street to the Robinsons’ house. Although modestly painted and well landscaped, the house wasn’t entirely dissimilar to her parents’ home. However, it was scientifically impossible for the family living inside of the house to have less in common with her own. Linda and Patricia Robinson were both tech-industry big shots in their own right. Linda was a patent attorney and the recent recipient of the Latina Bar Association’s Trailblazer Award, a fact she never failed to mention. Patricia was an accomplished programmer and volunteer youth-cheerleading coach who’d even made the cover of American Cheerleader magazine when her all-Black squad had pulled a real-life Bring It On–style competition victory. Both had come through the tech boom when the industry had still employed few women, and they took absolutely no shit from anyone—including Dylan’s parents. Dylan believed her parents objected more to the Robinson women’s love of golf than their jobs. As far as Bernice was concerned, golf was like standing for hours in a glorified front lawn.

The Robinsons had two boys around Dylan’s age, and she had been jealous of the entire family while growing up. They’d gone to church and played organized sports, their clothes had always matched, and their mothers had joined the PTA. Dylan’s dad had endured a short stint with the PTA, but the Delacroix didn’t do organized anything. If Dylan had left the house wearing something that matched, it was by accident.

Distracted by the past, Dylan had stopped paying attention to where she was walking until her foot sank into the divot near a storm drain, filling her heel with water. She cursed, her heart thwapping in her chest. Visions of her father toilet papering the neighbors’ house ran unchecked through her head. As did the memory of her mother nailing the police citation to the Robinsons’ door when it had arrived in the mail a week later. Dylan thought this was a tame response where Bernice was concerned, but it led to the Robinsons sending boxes of craft-store glitter to the house. The Robinsons had lost that round, and the joke was on them, because her mother loved glitter. It had appeared in several of her most lauded collages that year, which she’d named for Linda and Patricia Robinson when she’d taken out an ad in the Seattle Times to feature the work.

Ignoring the panic sweat forming on her palms, Dylan knocked on the door, then frowned, looking down at her soaked woolen pant leg. If she didn’t dry-clean those ASAP, they were going to reek.

“One minute.” She had barely registered a man’s voice when the door swung open. “Hello.”

“Uh. Hi.” Dylan’s voice cracked.

Mike was, if possible, better looking than the last time she had seen him. His thick hair had been cut short, highlighting his high cheekbones and the ambient glow of his golden-brown skin. Time had turned him into the sort of made-for-TV manly pretty that seemed unfair for one person to achieve. The vaguely chiseled features and broad-shouldered Latino archetype that beer commercials aspired to.

Aware that she needed to state her purpose, Dylan said the first thing she thought—“You still live here?”—and instantly regretted her decision.

“No, I’m visiting. Do you still live here?” Mike asked with an incredulous laugh. The Robinsons’ younger son filled up what felt like the entire doorframe, with one arm on the handle and the other resting comfortably on the jamb, as if being the J.Crew catalog guy were no big deal.

“I’m staying with my parents while I’m here for a work assignment. How are you?” Dylan smoothed a hand over the hem of her blouse and collected herself.

“Great. I live in Capitol Hill. I’m finishing my PhD at the U-Dub. I basically come here to bum dinner off my parents.” He smiled, and Dylan wished he still had braces. Braces had made him just above-average looking in high school. Now, hazel eyes and