Yoharie (part eleven)

Yoharie

Kate Hibbler and Mat Busby

(part eleven)

He had watched Yoharie’s daughter down the street for a minute. “Pretty girl.”

The absentness was the killer. Just that murmured comment like he’d forgotten his wife was beside him, hearing. Kate jostled Jer’s saucer of peanut butter crackers. “Jarmah. I don’t know how it’s spelled. You can look her up on Facebook. See if she’s got priors.”

She let the words be dry as dirt. Crime porn, “keeping up”, was exactly what Jer did all afternoons, anymore.

When it became clear Giarma Yoharie had moved in, he gained a pretext for lecturing her, about inches. Parking brakes. Her car was always on the street.

Thanksgiving, Mat reported the Yoharies opening their door at three pm (“…didn’t stay long. Coffee, not turkey, gotta guess…”) The Witticombes, Kathlyn Burris. How friendships were shaking out, and expected. Liberal troublemakers jelling. Could Trevor Royce be far behind?

“Trevor probably eats tofurky.”

She hung up on Mat a little a little giggly, a little conscious…

Am I an adult? With kids.

Yoharie riding out of his garage on a scooter, since September at irregular intervals. The Hibblers never walked together, but gear on, waving hand, Jer considered himself winning trust.

Dawn kept to Yoharie’s pace, her shoulder slung with a navy tote.

“That’s not really exercise.”

“Fresh air.”

She’s fat. Kate wanted him to say it. “That’s how they found each other. Dawn and…what is his first name…and the Witticombes, et cetera, down there at the ass-end. You know how that weirdo sits on his front steps. Talking to his phone.”

“Royce? He’s vlogging.”

“Oh, well, that’s normal.” When your gossip pal starts excusing people. “I actually know. I’m just saying, it’s how Trevor gets in other people’s business.”

Mat had two chairs, part of his parents’ dining suite, painted legs in speckly antique, gold cushions that grooved into your thighs. They were hauled around for sitting, today to the curve of the bay window. Mat and Kate didn’t point when they talked Yoharies, but a two-party glance at Roberta Witticombe brought a salute. She would tell her husband.

“Do you think I should…take cookies or something? I mean you don’t, randomly. It’s not Christmas.”

“You do cookies? Me and Tris never got any.”

“No, I don’t do cookies. But I might buy some…”

So it didn’t seem like the Witticombes were nice, and the Hibblers weren’t. It would matter less if Jeremiah wasn’t a sort of neighborhood ambassador. Watch Captain’s wifehood oozed towards Kate as a family duty…she kind of hated him for that.

11

Yoharie

Yoharie (part twelve)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)