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“I hate it here,” Cassie said, sitting cross-legged on her unmade bed while glowering at her mother through a curtain of thick hair. Her earphones were dangling from her neck and she could still hear the lyrics of her favorite song, but couldn’t concentrate, not with Jenna standing in the doorway like some kind of medieval sentry. “I never wanted to move here and neither did Allie, so you can’t blame me if things aren’t as perfect as you thought they’d be.”

“I didn’t expect them to be ‘perfect,’ Cassie. Nothing ever is.”

“L.A. was.” Cassie was boiling inside. She saw her mother wince and knew she’d hit a raw nerve.

“It wasn’t.”

“Not for you, maybe, but you did exactly what you tell Allie and me not to do. You ran away. Because of Dad and because of Aunt Jill.”

Jenna’s face turned ashen for a second and Cassie felt like she’d gone too far, but then, her mother deserved it. “I brought you girls up here because I thought it would be best for all of us.”

“Yeah, right,” Cassie snarled, furious. “It didn’t have anything to do with White Out?”

“Oh God,” Jenna whispered and leaned against the doorframe of the odd-shaped room with its dormers and bench seats.

Cassie felt like a heel but refused to show it.

“You’re right, Cass. I did leave to get away from all that and I…I missed Jill so badly, felt so awful about what happened to her.” Jenna’s throat worked and Cassie turned away.

Cassie didn’t want to see her mother hurt; she just wanted Jenna to back off. “Just leave me alone,” she said angrily, though she wanted to break down in tears.

“Not until we get a few things straight.”

“I thought we already did. You grounded me. I get it.”

“I grounded you last night and you cut class today. I don’t really think you do get it.”

“God, Mom, give it up.”

“You know, honey, I don’t want to fight with you.”

“Then get off my case.”

“I can’t. I’d love just to be your buddy, but I’m your mother and it’s my responsibility to—”

Cassie groaned and didn’t hear the rest. She replaced her earphones and tried to concentrate on the music. But Jenna didn’t leave. She waltzed in and plopped down to sit uninvited on the corner of Cassie’s bed. Like they really were “buddies.” Jesus. Could she just get out? Cassie tried to ignore her, attempted to close her eyes and get lost in the music, but she couldn’t. Not with her mom perched on the end of the bed. Didn’t Jenna get it? Didn’t she understand how hard it was to be Jenna Hughes’s daughter? To look so much like her famous mother? Everyone she knew, either at school or in her dance classes, wanted to know what it was like to have a famous celebrity for a mother, a mother who looked more like an older, beautiful sister. How many times had Cassie witnessed astonished faces as she’d heard the same old line: “This is your daughter? No way! You couldn’t possibly be old enough to be her mother!” Jenna had always been flattered and Cassie mortified. Cassie suspected that anyone who befriended her did it just to get close to Jenna Hughes, the once-upon-a-time actress, the beautiful woman whose life was marred by tragedy, the single mom striving to leave her glittery life behind for her kids. It was enough to gag Cassie.

Then there was Josh. Her boyfriend and quite possibly the worst of the lot. Though he’d never said it, Cassie suspected that Josh only hung out with her because of Jenna. Cassie had found his secret DVD collection, the one he’d hidden in the bottom drawer of his nightstand. And there were pictures of Jenna, too, prints he’d gotten off the Internet. Even more disgusting was the way he acted whenever they were around her mother. Josh had attempted to hide his fascination with Jenna Hughes but had failed. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. He’d stared at her in that certain way Cassie recognized as pure lust. Just the way all men did.

No, Josh didn’t love Cassie because she was special, as he’d claimed a thousand times. She knew better. If he did love her, which she sometimes doubted, it was because she was Jenna Hughes’s daughter. How sick was that? Cassie’s throat thickened and got hot. Oh, crap, she was gonna cry! No way! No friggin’ way! She squeezed her eyes tighter, determined not to shed one solitary tear over anything, or anyone, so stupid.

“Cassie?” Her mother’s voice was gentle. She felt a hand on her jean-clad knee.

“Go away.” Cassie upped the volume on her CD.

“We really do need to talk.”

Was it impossible to drown out her mother’s concerned voice? Damn it all! “Leave me alone, Mom. I got the message. Loud and clear.” She refused to open her eyes, and cranked up the volume again, until the singer was screaming in her ear. The hand on her knee dropped and the mattress moved a bit as Jenna, presumably, got to her feet.

At the end of the song, Cassie barely lifted one eyelid. The room was empty, the door ajar. Finally Jenna had taken the hint and left. Cassie felt a jab of remorse. Deep down, she knew her mom really did care about her and Allie, but Jenna had made a colossal mistake uprooting them and hauling them to this podunk town in the middle of nowhere.

Cassie’s social life had nose-dived and Allie had become shyer than she’d been in L.A. Yeah, she had the horses and piano lessons, but other than that, the kid was always holed up in her room with her Game Boy.

Like you are with the TV and CD player?

She wouldn’t think about that; wasn’t a nerd like her little sister.

Angry with her mother, herself, and the whole damned world, Cassie scooted off the bed and crossed the room, quietly shutting the door. Then she let out a long breath and grabbed her remote control. She flipped on the TV, searching for a reality show when she caught a glimpse of the local news. The reporter was up in the mountains, at Catwalk Point where the dead woman had been found. Cassie let the image linger for a second. It was morbid. The word in school was that the remains had been beheaded and torn apart, maybe by animals…some of the stories she’d heard were pure gossip, but Cassie figured whatever had happened up in the mountains, it had been gruesome.


Tags: Lisa Jackson West Coast Mystery