Holy crap. Margaret had just given me access to her house.

“You’re creeping me out,” Pen announced in a singsong voice, kneeling beside the couch to look inside her laptop bag. “What’s up?”

“She’s out of town and left me the key to her place.”

My best friend’s head whipped around, and she stood upright, her hands on her curvy hips. “Get the fuck out of town.” I flashed my phone up at her. She took it, reading over the message before tossing it back to me. “What kind of idiot sends all their passcodes in an email?”

“The kind who doesn’t think their system can be penetrated and who doesn’t put a password on their laptop.”

Pen snorted.  It had taken her all of two days to get into Margaret’s laptop this past weekend, and she was slowly starting to sift through the hundreds of files. There were more pictures of Margaret and my father, more proof that he was involved with her while he was married to my mom. I tried not to let it bother me, but it did.

No matter how jaded I might be, I still wanted to believe in that happily ever after.

Two purple-painted fingernails snapping in my face jerked me out of my thoughts. My best friend’s grayish-blue eyes hovered in front of mine. “How long is she gone for?  You need to get off your butt and get the hell over there.”

“Just until tomorrow.” I slid on my shoes. “I’m supposed to be meeting her guests at her place this afternoon.”

“Screw this afternoon,” she said, reaching for her laptop bag and slinging it over her shoulders. She backed toward the front door. “Go. Now.”

Nodding, I drew myself to my feet, hobbling a little on my high heels. “Where are you going?”

A guilty expression passed over her features, but she replaced it almost immediately with a frown. “Unfortunately, I can’t go with you,” she said evasively, sounding genuinely sorry.

What were she and August working on that would make her be so secretive? Before I could do something I rarely did when it came to her extracurricular activities—ask questions—she said, “You can make up an excuse why you’re there but explaining me would be a stretch. You remember how to use that app I installed to your phone?” When I rolled my eyes because she’d added several apps recently, she continued, “The scanner one?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You find anything worth reading over, get me a copy. I’m ready to see what this bitch is hiding.” Before Pen rushed out the apartment, she gave me a stern glare. “Be careful and be smart.”

“Always,” I swore.

Although Margaret had given me her address in the email she’d sent, I didn’t use the GPS as I drove the half hour from my Marina del Rey apartment to her home in Bel Air. I didn’t need directions. Some of my happiest childhood memories had taken place inside the house I was heading to, and upon my return to L.A. over a month ago, it had been one of the first neighborhoods I’d driven past. Of course, I hadn’t been able to get through the gate because I didn’t have a code, but Margaret had just fixed all that.

Driving to the end of the cul-de-sac, I parked my Mini Cooper in front of one of the garage door bays—there were five in all—and turned off the ignition. For a moment, I sat in breathless silence, staring up at the Mediterranean-style house with its lavish balconies and stained-glass entry door. I could clearly remember my sixth birthday, following my father up the steps leading to that door. He’d knelt down and grinned over his shoulder.

“Birthday girls get piggyback rides,” he’d told me, and I had giggled and jumped on his back, burying my face into his short blond hair as he took me inside to where my mother and a room full of people whose faces I couldn’t remember were waiting to celebrate.

But then, I blinked, and that memory was gone.

I gulped down the fist-size lump in my throat. Now was not the time for emotion. I could shed my tears over the past—let myself wonder about what could have been if my parents hadn’t divorced or passed away—later.

Much, much later.

Holding my keys so tightly the metal dug into my skin, I gingerly got out of my car and crept to the front entrance, the sound of the pencil-thin heel on my suede booties seeming to echo off the stone driveway. I started to put in the lockbox code, but then I paused for a moment.

1283.

It was Oliver’s birthday, December 6, 1983. And the code I’d entered at the gate to get into the community was a reference to my father’s April 1951 birthday.

Maybe—just maybe the stepmonster was softer than I’d originally thought. I unlocked the front doors and stepped into the chilly foyer. I immediately disabled the security alarm, coughing at the overpowering scent of sandalwood vanilla fragrance oil.

I was home.

Chapter 9

A few years before my mom was killed, we had started a ritual. Even though she swore she was getting old—she was only in her mid-thirties when she died—she had more modeling gigs than ever before, and every now and then, her job kept her away from me. Whenever she was working late or had to leave town for a night or two to do a photo shoot, we would each read the same book, alternating whose turn it was to choose. Our quirky, two-person book club had carried me through some of my loneliest moments. It was why I fell in love with The Outsiders, The Princess Bride, and Blood and Chocolate. It was also the reason behind the Margaret Atwood quote sneaking through my mind.

“When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.” 

Because as I stood in the two-story entry, with my head tilted up toward the balcony on the second floor and my legs threatening to give out from the nervous energy slicing through me like a dull knife, I thought of the past. Of the beautiful things about it. Like the memory of attempting to ride the banister to my left, my mother chasing after me and admonishing me in a mixture of English and her native Ukrainian. Or when I saw the family room where we’d opened Christmas gifts and remembered how the stockings always sagged crookedly off the mantle no matter how much my mom fussed with them.

The furniture had changed over the years. Like the executive floor at Emerson & Taylor, it had made the jolting transition from deep, bold colors to the sterile neutrals Margaret seemed to prefer. But the memories—the recollections of my mom and dad evoked from being inside this place again—they stayed the same.

Achingly beautiful.

And a driving force to get something done. “I’ve screwed off too long,” I sighed ruefully. “It’s time I figured this out so I can get out of this place.”

Because the reality was that if I stayed around too much longer, that other force in my life—the one of the tall, blue-eyed, cocky swagger variety—would complicate things even more. It was inevitable. And being in this house—this blatant reminder of exactly who he was—did nothing to stop the harsh tug I felt in the pit of my stomach when I pictured my stepbrother’s face.

“Don’t think of him.” I breathed harshly and coerced myself to move from my spot. “Uncover, expose, and get the hell out of here.”

When I was a little girl, my dad’s home office was on the other side of the den attached to their bedroom. He’d often bring his Emerson & Taylor work home, and I’d sit on the burgundy jacquard armchair, my legs dangling off the edge as I pretended to assist him on the toy laptop my mom had bought me.

Halfheartedly, I shook the thought from my mind.

Since it was an incredibly large house—at least ten thousand square feet, twelve times bigger than my apartment in Vegas—the upstairs office was the logical place to start.  After locking the front door and donning the latex gloves I’d brought with me, I left Margaret’s keys on the mantle in the family room and inched upstairs, my fingers trailing up the cold metal banister.