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“No, why don’t you illuminate me, huh?” her daughter replied, typing something quickly on her phone. “’Cause I can’t figure out why would I have to go to the damn dentist again, after wearing plastic in my mouth for a year.”
Maybe she was sick of the braces,Alexandria thought. She approached Alana and reached out to caress her cheek, but her daughter withdrew as if her touch would’ve burned her skin. Teenagers.
Alexandria forced some air into her lungs, counted to three, then exhaled slowly. It was working; she was calmer already. “A perfect smile is just as important for your future as your SATs, Alana, you know that. It can make or break a career. It can open doors for you. Teeth, clothes, hair, gait, posture, everything is important.”
The girl shrugged, and the ridiculously flimsy top slid farther down off her left shoulder. “Nick’s coming to pick me up at ten. We’re going to the beach. Everyone’s going.”
“Nick again, huh?”
Alana didn’t reply; didn’t even grant her a side glance, totally absorbed by whatever was going on with her phone.
“Dentist first, then you do whatever you want to do.”
“But, Mom,” she pleaded, “it’s not that often we get a day off from school.”
“That is such bull, young lady, and you know it. You just came back from summer vacation, and you did whatever you wanted every single day. Beach, Nick, movies, road trips, you name it. You didn’t work, didn’t do house chores—”
“Ha! Are you kidding me?” Alana said, approaching her mother defiantly. “You’d have me do chores when we have staff?”
Their conversation was going nowhere fast. But Alexandria was still the mother. At least in theory, mothers always won those kinds of arguments. “We’re going to the dentist, then I’ll take you to the beach myself.” She spoke calmly, but her voice sounded just as threatening as she’d wanted it to, instantly cooling the air between them. “Is that understood?”
“Whatever.”
Alexandria checked the time and rolled her eyes, staring at the white ceiling for a moment or two, begging the heavens for patience. “You have exactly two minutes to put on a skirt or a decent pair of shorts and some sandals. You’re dressed like a piece of trash, and people will treat you as such.” Alana scoffed and grinned with insolence. “Not just the people you don’t give a crap about,” Alexandria whispered, at the end of her wits. “People you care about will be first in line to judge you. And they’ll treat you like a piece of meat.”
“Look who’s talking about meat,” Alana mumbled, her eyes lowered, her voice subdued. “You’re the one who treats me like that. Always looking to improve mypackaging,” she said with unexpected bitterness as she flashed her mother a quick glance. “Women are liberated these days, in case you haven’t heard. I’m not planning to compete in some stupid pageant just to get out of Casper, Wyoming. I’m not flat broke, and I have a little more going for me than my ass.”
Breath rushed into Alexandria’s lungs with a loud gasp. It took every shred of willpower to keep her composure. She stared at her daughter squarely and said, “Change. Now.”
She followed Alana into her bedroom to make sure she made the right choices for shorts and shoes this time. She watched her slide on a tight stretch denim skirt. A short pang of envy shot through her mind as she looked at her daughter’s perfectly slim figure, budding breasts, and tan, luminous skin.
“Whatever you think you have going for yourself, missy, can gokaboomin an instant,” Alexandria said on the way to the car, gesturing with her hands. “Then all you’re going to have left is yourself.”
“I’m not you, Mom, all right?” Alana protested, climbing into the passenger seat with a pout on her glossy lips. “I have Dad, and I have—” She stopped short, crossing her arms over her chest and looking out the window as Alexandria turned into traffic and took the road to the interstate.
“It’s always about Nick, isn’t it?” Alexandria sighed bitterly. Since Alana had met Nick Papadopoulos, their lives had become quite complicated.
There was no answer from Alana, only disapproving silence.
“What do you think will happen next year, when you’ll go to college?” Still no answer, but Alexandria thought she’d heard a muffled groan. “He’s going to Harvard, isn’t he? Leaving you behind?” she asked, mercilessly twisting the blade, realizing there was something good after all in Harvard’s decision to reject her daughter. She’d be better off at Stanford, where the name Keaney meant something, where her father could open some doors for her. She’d be better off without Nick.
Alana shot her a glance of pure, distilled hatred, chilling her blood. “Back off, Mom,” she said coldly. “We have one more year, and I intend to make the most of it. I’m not going to let anyone stop me. Not even you.”
One more year.
Then she’d be all alone in that big house on the hill, slowly going insane.
NINE
NEXT OF KIN
The climb out of the ravine was challenging, even if Kay held on to the whirring winch for balance. The terrain was slippery, covered in a thick, moist layer of fir needles and moss. Once she reached the edge of the ravine, she was quick to take Elliot’s hand and be pulled up over the ledge. Once safely on her feet, she ran her hands quickly over her body, absentminded, forgetting she was wearing crime scene coveralls.
She couldn’t get Jenna’s image out of her mind. In death, the anguish the girl had been going through had dissipated, leaving behind serenity and calm. That was unsettling; it was simply wrong. A seventeen-year-old shouldn’t find her serenity in death.
A disturbing thought ripped through Kay’s mind. Had she climbed up on the ridge with the intention to jump to her death? Suicide couldn’t be ignored as potential motivation, not for her actual demise, but what would have driven Jenna to leave the house, considering what her mother had shared about the girl’s recent state of mind? If she’d wanted to end her life, she would’ve told her parents a lie, then climbed the mountain by herself. Only up there, on Wildfire, she’d run into a predator.
Or had she been lured expertly by someone with the intent to do her harm? It must’ve been someone she trusted, someone she believed was a friend. But how does a seventeen-year-old girl who doesn’t leave the house make friends?
