“That he was the guy you saw with your sister? But that was what, six years ago? Haden would have been, like, ten or eleven. It couldn’t have been him.”
“I’m not saying it was him. They just share the same look, you know? Maybe he was, like, a brother or a cousin. All I know is that someone from this Lord family was with my sister just before she disappeared.” Tobin pulls a small key from his pocket. “But here’s where things start to get really weird, Daphne. I think there have been others.”
“Other what?”
Tobin crouches next to his mother’s desk and starts to unlock a large file drawer. “Other girls who’ve been taken from this place.”
“Tobin!” a stern voice interrupts us. Tobin stops what he’s doing and slips the key back into his pocket and shoves the family photo under the desk as Mayor Winters appears in the doorway. “What are you doing in here? I have a meeting.”
There’s a man with her, but he’s obviously not Tobin’s father. He’s wearing bike shorts and an Under Armour tee, and there’s a bike helmet covering most of his head. What kind of meeting was the mayor having with him in the middle of a party?
“Sorry,” Tobin says, quickly stepping away from her desk.
“Your father has been looking for you. It is impolite to neglect your other party guests for so long.”
The man in the bike shorts grins merrily. “Now, now, Rosemary. Don’t be so hard on the boy. Kids will be kids,” he says, with a little bit too much twinkle in his tone.
Tobin clears his throat. “Again, my apologies, Mother,” he says with a slight bow, and leaves the room.
I follow after him, wondering if I should bow also. The mayor stops me just before I exit the office. She taps my shoulder with one of her long, manicured, red fingernails. “I hear you’re the one who told security you thought the Perkins girl was attacked. You know it’s a crime to give a false report, don’t you?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t lie.” I almost add that the guy I suspected of doing Pear harm is currently in her backyard, but I don’t like the way she’s staring at me. Like she could have me locked up with only a single phone call.
“Tobin is a good boy,” she says. “I wouldn’t want him to make friends with anyone who might encourage him to behave otherwise.” She glances at the desk drawer that Tobin had been about to unlock. Is she insinuating that he was poking around in her stuff under my influence? “Thank you for inviting me to your party,” I say, not knowing how else to respond, and leave the room.
By the time I make it back outside, Tobin has been entrapped by his father into greeting their various guests, so I decide it’s time for me to make my exit.
I’m already tired of this so-called party.
I don’t see Joe anywhere—he’s probably off somewhere with that gaggle of women and a bottle of champagne—so I decide to walk home, despite how dark it’s gotten. I keep snagging the train of my dress with my heels, so I remove my shoes and leave them on the hood of Joe’s Porsche, which is parked along the road.
I set off barefoot on one of the lonely lake paths, only to find myself not quite so alone after all. A very short girl in a very tight purple dress is hunched over a trash bin at a fork in the path—in the process of losing her dinner. She heaves one last time and stumbles in her ridiculously high heels.
“Lexie?”
She steadies herself with the rim of the trash can and looks up at me, wiping the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. “What are you looking at?”
“Are you okay?” I ask. “Bad sushi?” More like too much drinky, but whatever.
She narrows her eyes at me. “Why do you care?”
I shrug, not sure why, either. “Do you need help getting home?”
“Why would I need help from you? You don’t even exist,” she says, turning her back on me.
“This stonewalling thing is stupid, you know. You can’t pretend I don’t exist when I’m the lead of the play.” I am so burned out from Joe, the party, trying to process Tobin’s revelation, and my encounter with his cranky mother that I’m ready to just lay into Lexie and tell her what I really think of her and her elitist little mafia. Do they really think they’re so much better than everyone else?
Lexie reels around, nearly toppling over in her shoes. “You think you’re so much better than me, don’t you?”
“What?”
“You think you’re so great because your dad is some middle-aged rock star.” She points a finger at me. “You think you can come waltzing in here with your long neck and your long legs and steal the part that should be mine. I’ve been working on Mr. Morgan for the last two years to get to be the star, and now it’s like he’s lost his mind. I mean, you’re a contralto or whatever you are. Contraltos never get the lead. And you’d look ridiculous onstage with Tobin. Look at you, you’re like a … like a … giraffe or an albatross or something.”
“Ostrich,” I say.
“Huh?”
“You called me an albatross, but I think you meant ostrich. An albatross is like a seagull. Ostriches are the birds with long necks. If you’re going to insult me, at least get it right.”
“What, now you’re a freaking brain, too?” She puts her hands on her hips. “But all you really are is a pathetic little brownnoser, or whatever you call someone who uses her daddy to get whatever she wants.”
“I barely even know him. I had no idea this play was the reason he wanted to bring me here, so don’t blame me, okay?” I reach for her arm. “Let’s just get you home.”
Lexie pulls away from me. “I don’t need your help. I can get myself home.” She takes a couple of unsteady steps down the path to the right of the fork that make it clear she does need help.
“Isn’t your house the other direction?” I call after her.
She responds with her middle finger. I stand at the fork in the path and watch her disappear around the bend of the tree-lined trail. Most of me wants to just let her go. She deserves to get lost in her drunken state for being such a brat. But then I realize that the path she took leads to the bridge to the grove, and I remember what happened the last time I let someone head in that direction when I should have stopped her.