“Did you tell your mom good-bye?”
“Yeah,” I muttered, climbing into the front seat. “Let’s just get out of here.”
“First put on your seat belt.”
“Fine.” I sighed, pulling the belt across me.
“Don’t act so casual about it.” He revved the engine. “We just aired a special report over at the station about the death rate for car accidents, and it’s unreal the difference that little lap belt will make.”
“Whatever.”
Dad chuckled. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, munchkin,” he said, already backing out of my driveway.
I turned, thinking I might at least wave good-bye to Mom, but she wasn’t at the window anymore. The blinds were shut. I wondered if she’d gone back to bed, if she’d stay there for days the way she did for the first couple years after the divorce.
The sick part was that she’s the one who left Dad. I think part of her assumed he’d chase after her or beg her not to go. But he didn’t. After two months of separation, he sent her divorce papers, already signed. I didn’t blame him. They fought all the time about stupid stuff. I was sure that was why Trace moved across the country after graduation—to get away from the drama. I was probably the only twelve-year-old to ever be relieved that her parents were getting divorced.
I was less relieved, however, when I realized this meant I had to live with my mom full-time. The first two years were the worst. When she wasn’t depressed, she was angry. She was still angry now.
“Sorry I couldn’t make it to your graduation,” Dad was saying as we swerved through lunch-hour traffic. “I wanted to be there, but with my work schedule, it just wasn’t possible.”
“It’s cool,” I said, watching as the tall buildings of the city zoomed past the windows. “Graduation’s nothing special anyway. It’s actually really boring. But Mom recorded the ceremony on my digital camera so I could send it to Trace. If you want, I can load the file onto your computer and show you the footage once we get to the condo.”
“Right… about the condo, munchkin… I have some news.”
“What?” I turned to look at him, a little nervous as I remembered the beloved condo with its bright retro paintings and squeaky floorboards.
“It’s really not a big deal,” he said. “Nothing to get worked up about.”
“Ugh. You don’t have ants again, do you? I keep saying that you need to get a real exterminator in there instead of trying to do everything yourself.”
“No, it’s not ants,” he said. “And I don’t think we’ll have to worry about those pests again because… well, I moved.”
“Moved?” I repeated. “You mean, like, to a new house?”
“That’s what I mean.”
I stared at him, shocked. “But… you loved that condo. Why would you move? Did you want a place closer to the lake or something?”
“No, it wasn’t about the beach.”
“Then why give up the condo?” I asked. “If you’re not going closer to the lake, there’s no reason to live in Millerton.”
“Well, I agree. But that’s just it. I’m not living in Millerton.”
“What? Really? But you’ve always lived in Millerton. You grew up there—I grew up there. Why would you leave?”
“You’ll see when we get to Hamilton. You’ll love it there, munchkin,” he assured me. “It’s a nice little neighborhood. Great surroundings. Wonderful people. You’ll love spending your summer there, I promise. It’s even better than Millerton.”
Hamilton was a hellhole.
I discovered this three and a half hours later, after listening to every song on my iPod multiple times. I’d spent the drive giving Dad the silent treatment, annoyed that he hadn’t warned me about this move. He’d always had a bad habit of springing things on me, like new girlfriends (those never lasted long enough to matter, though) or remodeling the condo. But never anything as drastic as moving to a new town.
A new, crappy town.
I was just thinking that I needed to get on iTunes to download some music when Dad’s SUV rumbled past the WELCOME TO HAMILTON! sign. As soon as I saw that exclamation mark, I knew I was doomed. It only got worse as we drove farther into town.
Suburbs.
One stoplight.
A population of less than a thousand.
And definitely, definitely no beach. In fact, Dad’s new house was on the opposite side of Channel 34’s viewing area, which put us more than a hundred miles from the lake.
“Great,” I muttered, watching out the window as white picket fence after white picket fence zoomed past. “So much for spending the summer in a bikini.”
“Hey, don’t get upset just yet, munchkin.” He reached over to pat me on the knee.
Millerton had been twice the size of this place. It wasn’t really a city, but there was a mall, at least, and all the houses didn’t look exactly alike. There had been some diversity, some color. There were skate parks and weekend mini-golf places. And sometimes Dad took me to the go-kart track in the summer.
Unless they were hidden in the middle of a cornfield that separated the tiny neighborhoods, I doubted Hamilton had any of those things.
As we drove through the town, I spotted a library, a grocery store, a bank, and absolutely nothing fun to do.
“I’m going to be so pale when I start college,” I whined.
“You’ll still get a tan. We already have a pool.”
“We?” I repeated. “Who’s we? You mean you and me?”
“Actually…” Dad cleared his throat. “That’s the second part of the surprise.”
“Second part?”
We pulled into a driveway. The house we faced was pretty big, with a perfect, well-kept yard and neat little shutters on the windows. The part that caught my attention, though, was the woman standing on the front porch. She was tall, blond, and wearing super-high high heels.
“Dad,” I said. “Who is that?”
He cut the engine and pushed open his door. “Sylvia!” he called out in his deep, booming voice. “Honey, I’m home!”
“Honey?” I frowned and climbed out of the SUV.
The woman was already jogging down the sidewalk, which I had to admit was impressive in those heels. Instead of running toward my father, she steered in the other direction and landed right next to me, reaching out and wrapping her arms around me in a tight hug before I could stop her. Thank God it was a quick one. When she stepped back, she was smiling at me like some kind of lunatic.
“Oh, Whitley,” she said with a sigh, brushing blond hair out of her heart-shaped face. “It is so nice to finally meet you. You are just so, so beautiful. Your dad’s pictures don’t do you justice at all.”
“Uh, thanks…” I glanced over at Dad, who was making his way around the SUV, coming toward us. Then I looked back at this crazy woman. “Sorry, but who the hell are you?”
She looked taken aback for a minute before my father sidled up beside her, slipping his long arm around her shoulders. “This is Sylvia. My fiancée.”
3
Once we were inside, I got the full story.
Sylvia Caulfield was a lawyer from Indiana. She and Dad had met last September when Dad was doing a story on Land Between the Lakes, a national recreation area near his condo, and Sylvia was there, visiting the park with a friend from college. Dad asked her for an interview about her experience at the park, and she asked for his phone number. Not long after that, they were crazy in love.
The story made me nauseous.
“We mostly exchanged e-mails and phone calls for a few months,” Sylvia explained as she poured herself a mug of coffee in the house’s cheerful kitchen. The pastel blues and greens were in direct contrast to my mood—four hours into vacation and already everything was ruined, and I had the strong urge to strangle my father and his bride-to-be.
“You sure you don’t want a cup of coffee, Whitley?”
I shook my head. She had already offered me one, but I’d
refused. I hated coffee with a passion. The smell alone was horrible.
“Well, anyway… Neither of us expected a long-distance relationship to work out. Especially me, I think. I hadn’t dated since my first husband passed away from a heart attack a few years ago. This was so new to me. I was sure we’d break up before Christmas.”
“Did you really think I’d let you get away that easy?” Dad asked, kissing her on the cheek. “I’m not that stupid.”
She blushed and giggled.
I couldn’t believe I was seeing this. It was like a bad made-for-TV movie. Poor little widow meets successful local celebrity. Then it’s all flowers and sunshine in suburbia. Ew.
And it was so unlike Dad. After he and Mom split, my father had turned into a real flirt, which was, you know, pretty normal for a semifamous bachelor. Every summer when I came to visit he had a new twentysomething bombshell following him like a lost puppy. They always had names like Heather or Nikki, and they spent most of their time in way-too-revealing bikinis, lying on the beach and reading Vogue.
Sylvia wasn’t one of those girls, though. In fact, the only thing she had in common with any of them was her hair color, but my father had always preferred blonds. Other than that, she was a total one-eighty from the usual bimbos. For one, she had a real job, whereas all the others had been waitresses or retail clerks. And she was close to his age, too. So not his type.
What kind of spell did this chick have him under?
And how the hell could he not tell me about her?
“But we made it past Christmas,” she said, sitting across from me at the kitchen table. I wrinkled my nose as the smell from her mug wafted my way. “Finally, we realized we just couldn’t stand being apart for so long. Because, of course, your dad couldn’t travel to see me with his work, and I don’t get out-of-state cases that often.”
“So I asked her to move in with me,” Dad said.
“And I said no.” Sylvia laughed. “I just couldn’t live in that condo.”
I scowled. I hated the way she said it. That condo. Like it was a bad place. Didn’t she know that that condo had been a home to me? More of a home than Mom’s house in Indiana ever had been.
“So we negotiated,” Dad continued, either not seeing or choosing to ignore the glare I was giving them both. “I realized I wanted to marry her, but Sylvia wanted to live in a family community. She’d been in the city for too long, and she was right—that condo was just too young for me. It was a bachelor pad, and I wanted a real home. Plus, I was driving more than an hour to get to the station every morning. With that kind of trip twice a day, the money I was paying for gas was really ridiculous.”
“And my sister lives here in Hamilton.” Sylvia took a sip of her coffee, beaming at me over the top of the mug.
“We both knew that this was the perfect place for us. We got engaged last month, and we finally moved everything in last night.”
I looked at Dad, silently asking for a better explanation. Why? Why had he let this woman convince him to move out of the condo and into this place? Who was she to make him change? I kept hoping he’d burst out laughing and shout, Got you! You really fell for it, munchkin. But he didn’t, and that pissed me off even more.
“I got an Illinois license to practice law, moved to a new firm—one closer—and now your dad is closer to his work, too,” Sylvia was saying. “It’s only thirty minutes to the station from here. And we both just love this little town. It’s lovely, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” I muttered.
I’d been there for twenty minutes and already hated Hamilton. I never thought I’d say this, but I would have rather been back in Indiana. The city would have been better than this place. Dealing with Mom would have been better than dealing with this little surprise.
I couldn’t believe Sylvia had talked Dad into moving here. Hamilton so wasn’t his style. Dad liked bizarre pink flamingos and horseshoe pits in his yard. Not picket fences and cliché little gardens. At the condo, he had these crazy retro paintings and posters in trippy colors hanging from the walls. I think there was even a Velvet Elvis in his bedroom. But there was nothing like that in this house. Floral wallpaper. Watercolor art. Nothing with real personality. It was all generic and uniform.
I wanted to go back to the condo. Back home.
Sylvia got to her feet as the sound of the front door opening caught all of our attention. “That must be the kids,” she said, hurrying into the living room.
I turned to Dad, stunned. “Kids?”
“Oh, yeah,” Dad said, moving to sit in the chair next to mine. “Sylvia has two children.”
I didn’t say anything. I was shaking. Pissed, confused, overwhelmed. Mostly pissed, though. How dare this woman barge into our lives and change everything. How dare Dad let her! How could he just let this woman talk him into moving? How could he do it and not tell me?
“You okay, munchkin?” He brushed my long chestnut hair out of my face.
“It’s kind of a lot to take in, Dad.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. But I really think you’ll love them. The kids are great, and they’re teenagers like you. And Sylvia’s wonderful, isn’t she?”
I didn’t answer.
“Come on,” he said, standing up and pulling me to my feet beside him. “The kids just got back from the grocery store, and I know they’re dying to meet you.”
So they knew about me? I wasn’t warned about any of this, but Sylvia’s little brats were totally prepared? I knew Dad wasn’t much of a phone talker, but he couldn’t even spare a few minutes to say, “Oh, hey, I’m getting married and moving to Illinois!”
I hadn’t even been given a chance to say good-bye to the condo. To the chilly wood floor I used to sprawl across on hot days. To the shower curtain decorated with multicolored fish and one random mermaid. To the goddamn Velvet Elvis. It was like I had no part of it. Like it had never been mine.
Well, this house wasn’t mine, either. Maybe it was home to Sylvia and her spawn and even Dad—but it would never be home to me.
Before Dad and I could leave the kitchen, Sylvia’s voice came through the dining room, her heels clicking across the tile as she headed toward the archway.
“Thanks for doing the grocery shopping,” she was saying. “Greg and Whitley arrived a few minutes ago. Come in here and I’ll introduce you guys.” She smiled at me when she entered the kitchen, a plastic shopping bag dangling from her hand. “Nathan and Bailey are excited to meet you,” she told me.
A second later a short blond girl appeared in the doorway, followed closely by her dark-haired older brother. They both stepped into the kitchen, letting the bright sunlight from the screen door fall across their faces.
I froze.
Holy. Shit.
This could not be happening.
I knew the boy in front of me. But the last time I’d seen him he’d been shirtless, hungover, and half-asleep. It was the boy who’d thrown the graduation party. The boy I’d run out on after getting drunk enough to go all the way with him.
I had a flash of his lips on my neck, his slurred voice asking, “Is this okay?” My cheeks burned.
“You,” he said, his brown eyes wide.
“Do you two know each other?” Dad asked.
“No,” I said immediately.
“We went to the same high school,” the boy answered.
Sylvia seemed ecstatic about this. “Oh, you went to Fairmont, too?” she asked, moving her hand to my shoulder. She was very touchy. “Greg, you never told me that.”
Beside me, Dad looked sheepish. “I thought the school was called Fairview…. Shows how good my memory is.”
“Oh, Whitley, if I’d known you two lived that close to each other, I would have asked your father to pick you kids up at the same time instead of letting Nathan take a bus last night.”
Nathan. So that was his name.
“I can’t believe you two went to school together.” Sylvia laughed. “What are the odds?”
/> “Small world,” I growled.
“Very,” Nathan said. He was smiling now, but I could tell it was forced. At least I wasn’t the only one uncomfortable here. Stiffly, he extended his hand to me. “Nice to finally meet you, Whit.”
“Whitley,” I corrected, reluctantly taking his hand and shaking it for just a second before letting go.
“And this is my daughter,” Sylvia said. She gestured to the blond girl—thank God, I didn’t know this one—who stepped forward. “Whitley, this is Bailey. She’s thirteen, getting ready to start high school in the fall. She’s very excited to have a girl around to hang with.”
“Mom!” Bailey snapped, cheeks red.
“What?” Sylvia asked. “You are, aren’t you?”
Bailey turned to me, clearly embarrassed, and said, “Hi, Whitley. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Yeah… you, too.”
“Isn’t this great, munchkin?” Dad said, stepping up beside Sylvia and putting his arm around her. “You kids will have a wonderful time together. Won’t this be a fun summer?”
Fun? Fun was not the word I would have chosen. Unbearable, awkward, torturous… Anything but fun.
This was a nightmare.
I was supposed to be at the condo, wasting time on the beach, just Dad and me, figuring out college and my life and spending time together. Instead, I was in a new house with new people—including a future stepbrother who’d seen me naked.
“Well.” I sighed, facing my father again. “It will definitely be interesting. That’s for sure.”
4
Sylvia asked Nathan to show me to my new bedroom. Talk about irony.
“This is it,” he said, pushing open the second door on the left when we reached the top of the stairs. “Right across the hall from mine.”
“Great,” I muttered, stepping into the room with my arms folded tightly across my chest. It wasn’t small, but it wasn’t very big, either. The walls were painted a boring shade of white, and they didn’t even have any paintings or pictures hanging on them, which gave the place an eerie psych-ward feel.
My gaze moved to the queen-size bed in the middle of the room. It wasn’t the bed I’d slept in at Dad’s condo, the bed I’d called mine for six years. This one was larger, with an oak frame and way too many pillows. The comforter was a neutral shade of beige, matching easily with the carpet and the curtains that hung around the only window. It was perfect and clean and pretty, just like everything else in my dad’s new life.