Текст книги "The Girl of Sand & Fog"

Автор книги: Susan Ward

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The Girl

of

Sand & Fog

Sand and Fog Series

Book 2

Susan Ward

Copyright © 2015 Susan Ward

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1517326265

ISBN-13: 978-1517326265

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

***Author’s note to readers reading all the books in the Parker Saga***

Darlings, did you really think I’d tell you how the story ends a year before I released it? There are always twists and turns in the Parker Universe. Please note, this eBook includes the novella Rewind; however, The Girl of Sand & Fog  is a full length novel, 110K words on its own. Rewind is included for the benefit of my readers not reading the Parker Saga in its entirety. Thank you for being the most wonderful readers any author ever had. You have made this a very special year for me~Susan.

 

 

CHAPTER 1

I curl my fingers around the edge of the desk and fight not to bang my head against it. Oral report day is nothing less than sanctioned child abuse. If I had my way, high schools across America would be prohibited from forcing their students to sit through torturous hours of drivel.

My eyes fix on the black and white journal notebook. I’d outlaw senior year journals and time capsules as well. I don’t know why I played along with my homeroom teacher and started writing in it every day. I’m going to have to use my mother’s seal-a-meal to lock it from viewing when I turn it over to the principal to be buried in that lame time capsule we’re supposed to want dug up in ten years.

Like, I’m really going to go to that reunion. Senior year with these kids is enough. When I graduate, I will never look back.

God, I should probably destroy that journal. I don’t know if Pacific Palisades Academy is ready for that level of honesty. My mother sure as hell isn’t.

I flip it open. It’s the truth of how I feel. I can’t ever risk anyone reading this. Page 1…

There is really no place that I feel like I ever belong. By my senior year of high school I’ve lived in four cities, have known three different male parental figures, and now have a variety of siblings fathered by different men.

My mother divorced her first husband, buried her second, and has managed to roll into the mix a stormy affair with a third man now in its twenty-third year.

There isn’t a single thing about my family that I can keep private even if I wanted to. Not in Santa Barbara and definitely not in the glitzy neighborhoods of Southern California. We’re like the Kennedys of the music industry. Yep, I know that sounds ridiculous and conceited and full of shit, but it’s the truth. I’m a Parker and that makes me music industry royalty and A-list without effort.

My grandfather, Jackson Parker, is a beloved music icon from the ’60s. My mother, Christian Parker, is the darling of rock music who manages to float onto the charts every few years without ever looking as if she intended to, and my father…well, no point going there. That is the question, isn’t it?

My alleged father—is alleged the correct term for the legal name on a birth certificate?—is Neil Stanton, my mother’s first husband, and a much adored, dead alternative rock music superstar. I don’t really remember him that well. He died in a car accident when I was eight, and sometimes I wonder if what I remember is induced by the unending stories about Neil in the press. I’m pretty sure he was kind and sweet and a very gentle man. That I wouldn’t remember from clippings from the newspapers, would I? He was a good dad. Yep, that I remember.

It’s not like I have anything against Neil. My memories of him are for the most part happy. Nope, that’s not the issue with him being my alleged father. The issue is I don’t think he is my father, for all that no one will tell me the truth, so dedicated as they are to pretending that he is.

For what it’s worth, the tabloids don’t think so either. When I spring up in print, I’m usually tied to him…Alan Manzone, the ultimate rock god from hell, and my mother’s unending, stormy affair that she hasn’t been able to get right since she was eighteen. Yep, they’ve been hopping into bed together since my mother was in high school. Doing the relationship part, well, that’s always been no bueno for Chrissie. I don’t know why. Jeez, even I can tell that Alan Manzone loves her. But that’s my mom. She can’t get things right, even when they are already right. Go figure.

Even worse than that, my mom also has a flexible relationship with the truth, but I’m not a little girl anymore and she should realize she’s not fooling anyone. I mean really. What kind of idiot can’t figure this one out without being told? I have black eyes and black hair. I’m tall and long-limbed. I’ve got freaking olive skin, a totally Mediterranean look about me. I sure as hell didn’t get that from the blond-haired, blue-eyed Parker gene pool. My alleged dad had a fair complexion as well. An all-out California surfer boy. Sort of hot for a guy in his day. But I am the mirror image of Alan Manzone. Isn’t it time to tell me the truth, that that son-of-a-bitch is my dad?

I arrived for my first day of high school and found that the girls in Pacific Palisades were pretty much bitches like teenage girls everywhere. For two-and-a-half weeks they stared, whispered behind my back, and no one spoke a word to me.

The way I stared back at them had scared the shit out of everyone. It is an old habit; a trick of black eyes to keep inquisitive people away. In Pacific Palisades the way I stared the world away only fueled the gossip about me, speculation that I have lived with for seventeen years: did the girl know who her father was and would she tell them?

Not that my mother knew it, but there had been speculation over my parentage even in Santa Barbara, among girls completely outside the mainstream. The Internet is the great equalizer of geography, lifestyle and wealth. The protective bubble Mom thought she’d constructed by forcing us to live in protected isolation on the side of a mountain in a small coastal city simply doesn’t exist anywhere.

Even Mom should have been able to figure that one out given how social media drove revolution in the Middle East. Any moron with a keyboard could virtually invade a person’s life or a country. They could virtually spy, virtually pry and virtually bully. Teenage girls and oppressive regimes are always fair game.

But Mom lives in her own world and thinks that her children live there with her. I should have never trusted her to fill out the huge school document packet or the personal bio form for the Pacific Palisades loop, my high school’s private social network site, because Chrissie checked the damn box authorizing it to be posted, and before I had ever stepped foot on campus everyone from the head cheerleader to the janitor had read my page.

What they couldn’t find to satisfy their curiosity on the loop they found on the Internet. The Internet is a trove of speculation about me and my mother’s complicated past, more than enough to enable the socially powerful girls to devise in advance how to make my senior year miserable.

After many days of being left alone and not too subtly studied, the girls began to approach me. I learned two disappointing life lessons then. First, if one was considered notorious enough or close enough to the truly famous—even in Pacific Palisades the speculation that I am the unacknowledged daughter of a rock music legend and billionaire is instant status among the children of the most impressive parents—then one could be socially accepted regardless of strangeness, unpleasantness, or even complete unwillingness. Second, that if one was desperate enough to forge a friendship with you they’d accept pretty much anything you tossed their way.

I was purposely nasty and cruel to everyone, but this made the popular girls only more determined to succeed in friendship. I wanted to drive them away. I’ve always been more comfortable as a loner only interfered with by the curious stares. It was how it had been in Santa Barbara among that cross section of teenagers that thought being a bastard, unacknowledged, was a humiliating thing and that I was duty bound to feel embarrassed. How is it possible that my sordid family history and the wrongness of my behavior only increase my popularity here?

That I could do what I want, say what I want, and with no negative blowback has made it nearly impossible to shut off awfulness within me. Try as I might, I can’t recall what it had felt like not to have the power of behaving badly. It is really quite an intoxicating drug: not giving a shit, saying what you want, and knowing people will take it.

In contrast to my increasingly foul behavior, I receive from the kids at school daily doses of assurance that my life is a lucky one and I am destined to do great things. They talk about me in the abstract as if who I am is merely the subtotal of the external.

How lucky Kaley Stanton is, how lucky she is, how lucky she is about everything! What is it about people in Southern California that makes them determined to work ‘how lucky’ into every phrase? The world has given unto me and I am expected to feel fortunate about every aspect of my life and have empathy for the vast world of people less fortunate than me—sincerity in that not required.

If the world had righted, if anyone had noticed the wrongness of my behavior, I might have been able to contain it. But probably not. If anyone had asked its source, I would have most likely snapped that it was out of contempt for their empty and meaningless perspective of the world. But no one ever asked. They simply took it. Even the faculty turned a blind eye as though my emotional unpleasantness is the reasonable result of having moved at the onset of my senior year.

They all think they know my intimate details, the workings of my mind, the impact of my external issues, and they forgive me my foulness and reinforce my absolute right to be as relentlessly malicious as I dare to be. It is completely illogical and irritating in every way.

But then, what should I have really expected from people who think about nothing? Pacific Palisades Academy is like a bad episode of Seinfeld. In the post-9/11 world of two wars, unemployment, poverty and fear of a near global economic collapse, I exist trapped in a narcissistic cocoon of rich kids who think about nothing and survive on synthetic empathy.

They are more concerned with what music I have loaded into my iPhone than what is in my head. The conversations that swirl around me on campus focus mostly on who is having sex, what drugs they are taking, the parties they’ve been to and the occasional resuscitation of pop culture ideology probably learned from TV. 

As for the esteemed reputation of this elite private school, after the first day I contemplated asking Mom to demand the tuition back since the shitstorm of stupidity I hear in class each day definitely makes the case that they’ve violated the truth-in-advertising standard.

I don’t want to listen to them, faculty and student alike. I sure as hell don’t want to talk to them. Unpleasantness seems the only protection left against the relentless floodtide of dim-witted human interaction and even that is only partially effective…

That irritating, droning voice is swallowed by clapping and I slam my journal closed. Thank God she’s done. After two months of somewhat competent teaching of global economics, that was the best the girl could come up with: a completely moronic perspective on the social benefits of wealth redistribution presented in oral report format, with a PowerPoint no less.

I can’t stop myself. I smile nastily at the self-satisfied girl making her way back to her desk. “Do you really believe all that liberal guilt over wealth or is collective, national poverty the new chic we should all strive for here? Have you ever considered what you’d be without Prada, you irritating twat?”

Oh shit, silence. I don’t like the way Mr. Jamison is staring at me at all.

He leans over his desk, scribbling frantically on the dreaded pink sheet. He holds it up to me and points to the door. “Principal’s office now, Miss Stanton! If you can’t be respectful of the opinions shared in class then keep your opinions to yourself. We don’t criticize each other’s ideology. Not in this class. We encourage open and respectful dialogue.”

I gather my things, feeling the heavy stares and smirks of the silent room, and strangely I realize that I am even more irritated since I haven’t been booted from class for the British vulgarity, but for showing disrespect for liberal politics.

I snatch the pink slip and smile, but then again, what should I have expected? I mean really. I’m in an affluent city in Southern California.

I shove the door open a little too hard, not giving a shit and not even provoking comment from Mr. Jamison. I must have really rocked his world and I think I’ve finally found where intolerable conduct goes over the line with my teachers. Any language that isn’t politically correct speak crosses the line and will be dealt with! No one even seemed to notice that I’d call the girl a “twat.” It’s not on the description of my infraction, and the twat comment is where I would have started listing my crimes and offenses.

I show the pink slip to the office secretary and am instructed to sit down on the waiting room sofa outside the principal’s office. After five minutes, the door opens and in meanders a boy, pink slip in hand, who is directed by pointed finger to the seat across from me.

He drops heavily on the bench facing me and says nothing. He closes his eyes and crosses his arms.

There is something strangely familiar about the guy, but I chalk that up to probably having passed him in the hallways. He isn’t exactly cute, but he isn’t exactly unattractive either. He is interesting, quite a unique specimen at Pacific Palisades Academy. He has that guy’s guy intensity that radiates an air of not giving a shit, though somehow in a strangely intelligent way, and I am surprised to find it mildly thrilling.

He is taller than me, a good thing since I rarely find guys of adequate height for my five-foot-ten-inch frame, and he has a lean, nicely muscled body like a surfer, a slightly worldly aura somehow accomplished by his clothes that are more European style than American, and the most penetrating green eyes I’ve ever seen.

Interesting. I can’t tell what he is, since he’s such a hodgepodge of mismatching things that it is impossible to identify the group he falls in with at school.

I sit there staring at him, fiddling with the pink detention slip, and when the office secretary leaves, those green eyes open and he asks, “You’re Kaley Stanton, aren’t you?”

Shit, not this again. And it’s such a disappointment because there was a slight prick of interest before he spoke and his voice—well, I never expected that—but it made the hairs on my body stand up.

“Oh, fuck me,” I snap, letting loose my fallback response, the knee-jerk reaction that comes from perfect strangers knowing my name.

“Not on the first detention.”

That is the first quick comeback I’ve heard in two months here. I try hard not to smile and can’t stop myself. Arching a brow, I counter, “I’ll probably be here next week. Maybe you can fuck me then.”

Those green eyes sharpen on my face. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”

I tense. Why would he think I’d recognize him? “No. Should I?”

The guy shrugs. “What landed you in here?”

“Fomenting political insurrection. You?”

“Jerking off in the gym.”

It is hard to tell if he is serious or just trying to shock me. Masturbation is a perfectly acceptable topic of conversation at PP Academy. PP Academy…I laugh, stare at him hard and say, “I’m glad you didn’t offer to shake my hand.”

The boy doesn’t smile and I bite my lip to stop my laughter.

“You look and sound just like your dad. Sans accent, of course,” he says in a heavy, all-knowing way, irritating me and sounding as though he’s irritated by his own discovery.

OK, it’s time to stop this now. The boy is messing with me, but unfortunately I’m a little off-kilter from my bizarre internal response to him and whatever it was I heard in his voice when he made that annoying assumption on my parentage.

I snap, “How would you know?”

“I just saw him a month ago in Munich,” he replies casually, twirling his own pink paper around his finger.

“Did you really? Do you have a psychic hotline? Do you speak with the dead as well as see them? Neil Stanton has been dead over ten years.”

The guy shrugs again, leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. “You’re funnier than Alan Manzone. He’s a real prick these days.”

Before I can stop myself, yet again I respond to his baiting. “Alan Manzone is a prick every day.”

The boy just shakes his head. “No, he’s actually a really cool guy.”

“He’s a narcissistic asshole.”

“You really hate him, don’t you?”

“Wouldn’t you if you were me?”

“Probably,” he says. “Do you want to get out of here? If we stay, Williams will keep us until after six cleaning the bleachers. We won’t get in trouble, you know. No one wants to deal with my mother so they won’t call her. I don’t think they’ll call your mother either. I never stay for detention. Do you want to get out of here?”

I stare up at him apprehensively. Who is this guy? He says everything with such an air of knowing unenthusiasm. Debating with myself over whether to leave with him, I ask, “If you don’t stay why were you on the bench?”

“I saw you leaving class with the pink slip.”

That pleases me more than I want to be. Direct and honest in a no-bullshit type of way. Another rarity at PP Academy.

I give him the stare. “You know, you could have just said ‘hi’ to me in the halls. You didn’t have to be a stalker about the whole thing.”

“Sure, I could have. But meeting on the detention bench makes a more interesting story, don’t you think?”

“Interesting for who?”

“My mom and dad, who by the way, think that I am gay.”

That level of honesty wrapped in self-confidence is too appealing. I don’t want to get close to any guy, something tells me especially not this guy, but somehow I feel myself being drawn to him.

I sink farther back into my seat. “And are you gay?”

“Hell no. I just like to fuck with my dad.”

I find myself laughing again and I really don’t like it.

“Well, do you want to get out of here or not?” he asks, starting to collect his things.

I let out an aggravated sigh and rise to my feet, jerking my heavy tote bag over my shoulder. In the deserted hallways he doesn’t talk and just kind of lumbers indifferently beside me. There is a scattering of students in the parking lot when we get there, and I continue purposely toward my car, thinking maybe he intends to cut out here.

I fumble in my shoulder tote for my keys to keep from looking at him, but when I lift my face I find him standing by my passenger door even though I haven’t invited him to leave campus with me. “Are you going to tell me who you are? I’d have to be an idiot to let a complete stranger in LA into my car, even here.”

He looks amused. “We already know each other.”

Over the roof of my car I give him another sharp study. “Drawing a blank here. Can you give me a clue?”

He leans with his elbows on the roof and fixes those interesting green eyes on me. “I know your dad. More importantly, I know Alan Manzone is your dad.”

Impatient now, irritated and showing it, I snap, “Why do you keep saying that? How the fuck would you know what I don’t even know for sure? You are some strange stalker, aren’t you?”

“Yep, you’re Alan Manzone’s daughter. I know because my parents say you are. My dad is Len Rowan. I’m Bobby Rowan.”

 

 

CHAPTER 2

Oh fuck!

Bobby Rowan. Shit, how could I have not recognized him? He was practically my only friend when I was little, a card-carrying member, just like me, of that strange insider circle I’m forced to live in.

The son of Blackpoll’s legendary bass player, Len Rowan. He’s part of my prick of a father’s neat, tight little elite rocker universe that used to include Mom and me until the asshole got tired and walked out on us when I was eight. Bobby’s mother, Linda Rowan, is still friends with my mom, but hell, I haven’t seen Bobby since my dad banished us from his world, and my mom quickly jumped into marriage with husband number two, Jesse Harris, a bestselling novelist.

Fuck, Bobby Rowan.

Yep. It’s him. I shouldn’t have missed that one, because even as hot as he is now I can still see my childhood playmate somewhere in those intense green eyes.

Then I cut myself some slack because it has been ten years since I’ve seen him and he has changed. Crap, how the hell did a geek like Bobby Rowan grow up to be one hot motherfucker?

Shit, he’s hot, but I shouldn’t let myself forget who he is.

He’s danger, Kaley. Danger.

Being friends with him would not be a good thing.

What should I do?

“Hey, Bobby. Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” a chubby blond girl sitting on the hood of a Mustang next to my Lexus SUV shouts out none too softly.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know who she is, Zoe,” Bobby says. “And if you want to talk to her, get off your ass and walk over here.”

She grabs her things, slides off the hood and bounces across the parking lot. “I was trying to be polite,” she says, annoyed.

“Too late for that,” he counters, but there is a change to his tone that tells me they’re friends and he likes this girl. He looks at me. “Don’t be rude. Zoe is OK.”

That comment prompts me to give the girl a more careful study. She’d be pretty if she just lost twenty pounds. But she is very attractive even plump and doesn’t seem malicious in any way. The way she smiles at Bobby makes me wonder if they are more than friends, if she might be his girlfriend.

“Kaley, this is Zoe Kennedy,” Bobby says. “Her dad’s Ian Kennedy the music producer. She is the other corner of the Bermuda Triangle of industry brats here.”

Oh crap, this day just keeps getting better. Is everyone I meet today going to have parents who are friends with Chrissie? Way to suck the fun out of my life, Mom. Drop me in a school surrounded by the children of your warped universe.

Fuck, at least in Santa Barbara I didn’t have to deal with this shit: newbie at school, fucked-up home life, and a shitload of things I’ve been ordered not to tell anyone.

Great fucking move, Chrissie. Yep, Pacific Palisades was a good call when you decided to relocate.

I shake off my irritation and frown. “Bermuda Triangle?” I hate feeling like I’m totally left out of the joke. “What are you talking about?”

Zoe smiles. “There are only three of us now, music industry brats. Last year there was a herd of us and they were definitely out of control. The faculty expects us to be hell-raisers. That’s why the teachers call us the Bermuda Triangle. Given who your dad is, I think they were in terror of you coming here. Why do you think they are all  terrified of you? The actors’ brats do drugs. The rich are pretentious wannabe-famous stalkers. But the music industry kids—”

“We’re considered the worst,” Bobby explains. “You’ll figure out pretty soon that none of the teachers like us here. And that you can pretty much do anything you want.”

“I know your dad, too,” Zoe says in a satisfied way. “You look just like him. Even the stare. Positively eerie.”

Bobby tosses her a mean look. “Fuck, I hate it when you eavesdrop, Zoe.”

“Well, I could hardly not listen. You both are very loud.”

I unlock the car. “My dad is an ass. Don’t compare me to Alan Manzone.”

Zoe nods in earnest. “Where are you guys going? Can I go, too?”

Bobby ignores Zoe and studies me for a moment. “Do you really hate him that much? You don’t give him an inch. Why are you so angry?”

I flush. I’ve already been more honest with Bobby Rowan than anyone else I’ve known in my life.

I shake my head. “I thought we’d settled that.”

Zoe climbs into the backseat without being invited. “So where are we going?”

“Don’t you both have cars?” I ask. “I’m not bringing you back here for them.”

“I rode my motorcycle and I’ll get my mom to bring me back if you’re going to be a bitch about the whole thing,” Bobby says.

“I’m not a bitch.”

“Of course you are. Deliberately,” Zoe says in approval. “It’s what I like about you. You scare the crap out of everyone.”

Well, there is no bullshit in this crew, I reluctantly note as I climb into the driver’s seat. That’s something. As irritating as it is, it is refreshing after wading through knee-deep false flattery, backhand innuendo and just plain phony acts of friendship.

I make a careful sideways glance at Bobby as I turn the key in the ignition. I feel it again: that little flutter of interest inside me. I bite my lower lip. “I need to make a stop at my house before we go where you guys want to go.”

Zoe frowns and shakes her head. “Can’t you just text your mom?”

“No, I can’t. I have to check on her and going home is a rule.”

Bobby is studying me again, strangely. “Check on her? What does that mean?”

Oh shit, this guy doesn’t miss a thing.

I give him a back-off glare. “Never mind. I’ve just got to go home first, OK?”

I pull out of the school parking lot and begin to drive home. I should probably text Chrissie first to make sure it is OK to bring friends home, but fuck it, I’ve been punished enough with forced relocation and isolation because Chrissie’s life is a mess. Chrissie’s life is always a mess. The only predictability I’ve ever known was during the Jesse years. Jesse. I feel myself wanting to tear up and force myself not to.

“Hey, you OK?” I hear Bobby say.

Not trusting my voice, I nod. I’m grateful to hear Zoe chirping from the backseat, preventing Bobby from probing any further.

“You know, the adults here are the worst gossips. My mom and dad talk incessantly about everyone. That’s how I knew Alan Manzone was your dad. My mom saw your mom last week at the grocery store. That started a shitstorm of speculation, since I guess they used to be friends, and your mom just brushed by her like she wasn’t there and hasn’t called since she moved here.”

“My mom hasn’t called anyone,” I say, hoping my voice sounds casual.

“That’s true,” Bobby confirms. “My mom hasn’t heard a peep out of her. Not since the funeral. She calls. Chrissie never calls back. Linda has been sitting around our house all butt-hurt for months now.”

“Can we drop it and talk about something else?” I snap in frustration. “You don’t know how irritating it is to live trapped in Chrissie emotional botheration and to have every conversation circle back to Chrissie.”

I pull into my driveway and open my door. “I’ll just be a second.”

Without being invited, they follow me again. Oh shit, that’ll piss Mom off, and knowing that somehow makes it something I just do. I open the front door and gesture them in.

The loudness of the house always hits me like a brick when I step through the front door. The twins are running wild in a way that tells me that Chrissie is still in bed. Two months. Crap, shouldn’t she be out of bed at least the majority of the day by now? How long does it take to recover from a C-section?

“Kaley, is that you? Can you do something about those boys?” I hear my mom call out from the opposite direction of the master bedroom.

I roll my eyes and throw my bag onto the front tile. “They’re your kids. You take care of them. Or hire more help. You’re perfectly capable of doing both. Where’s Lourdes?”

“Please, Kaley. She’s at ballet with Krystal and my hands are a little full right now,” Chrissie replies, unruffled and irritatingly tolerant.

“Whose fault is that?”

“Is it always so chaotic here?” Zoe whispers.

I shrug. “Just since the move. You don’t have to whisper. My mom can’t hear a thing from the back of the house.”

Eric and Ethan run down the hallway like the terrors they are, and I motion for my sort-of friends to follow me as I ignore my six-year-old twin brothers since it’s pointless to try to manage them. They won’t listen to me. They never do. They hardly listen to Chrissie.

In the kitchen I spot Chrissie in the family room area. “I brought friends home, Mom. You can stop calling the teen crisis line. Socially well-adjusted again.”

Chrissie laughs. “Very funny, sweetheart.”

I study her. She looks good today. Better than she has for weeks. I hate that I am relieved to find my mom curled in a chair, dressed, and with Khloe in her arms nursing. She is nursing, not in bed. That is the cause of the twins running wild. She got up today. She is dressed. Maybe she’s finally starting to feel better.

I drop down on the arm of my mom’s chair. I kiss her head. “You have a good day, Mom?”

Chrissie smiles, looking up from the baby. “A good day. Both of us. Khloe finally slept through the night.” She looks over her shoulder, and her stunning blue eyes widen in surprise. “You did bring friends. Kaley, I thought we discussed—” She breaks off without finishing.

“They’re OK. I thought it would be OK,” I reply, defensively.

Chrissie’s smile fades from her face. It is clear the moment my mom realizes who the guy is.

“Bobby Rowan,” Chrissie says in unflustered surprise. “I haven’t seen you since you were ten, but I’d recognize you anywhere.”

I stare at Chrissie, stunned, since I know damn well she’s going to be pissed about this one later. I don’t know how my mom does it, I really don’t, but she can playact in her life is wonderful way through anything. I know she’s not happy about me bringing Bobby Rowan into her protective, isolated universe of ungodly secrets, but not a hint of that shows on her face.

Both Bobby and Zoe say hello.

I smile at my mother, a really shitty thing to do since we both know she’s ticked at me and has reason to be.

“See, Mom. No worries here.”

Chrissie’s eyes sharpen. She stares at me in a silent communication of disapproval and I drop my gaze first. That easily she makes me feel it, the unfairness of what I just did to her today. It may be a complicated mess, but it is Chrissie’s mess, and she does have a right to privacy if she wants it. Bringing Bobby here has definitely not been fair, but I’m tired of the bullshit.