After She's Gone (West Coast 3)

Her phone rang as she was staring at her reflection, and she quickly made her way to the kitchen, where her cell lay charging on the counter. She’d missed the call and saw that no number registered on the screen. All that was listed was: Private call. She felt a moment’s fear, the old worries returning, but told herself it was no big deal. Probably just a wrong number. Or a telemarketer. Whoever it was, if they wanted something, they would call back.

She checked the screen again. Another call had come in, a number she recognized as belonging to Trent. This time he didn’t leave a message and she was surprised that she felt a prick of disappointment, but there it was, a tiny new rip in her already fragile heart. “Fool,” she whispered, and then noticed the face-down picture on a side table in the living room. She and Trent noticed. So much in love. She picked it up. The glass was cracked, a scar from a fight she’d had with Trent when she’d hurled the wedding photo across the living room they’d shared. Her temper had always run white-hot and the fact that she’d caught him having drinks with her sister had sent her over the edge. When he’d tried to explain, she hadn’t listened. Instead she’d thrown the wedding photo across the room, aiming for his face. After he left she’d tossed the picture into the trash only to retrieve it the next day.

She looked at it now. In the photograph, she was wearing a short white dress. Trent was in jeans a

nd an open-throated shirt. It was night, they stood near the street, the lights of Las Vegas blurring behind them. They were so happy, Trent’s crooked, irreverent grin in place, her smile as bright as the future stretching before them. She’d been certain at that moment their life together would be worry-free and guaranteed to have a happy ending. She’d been so naive. Such an idiot to start dating him again after their breakup in Oregon. Granted, they’d separated mainly because of distance and family pressures: She was leaving for LA, and he was staying in Oregon. Her mother had been worried, Cassie had endured so much, she was concerned about the relationship. And though Trent hadn’t given a rip about Jenna’s feelings at the time, Cassie had been confused.

Well, wasn’t she always?

Nothing had changed much there. Maybe her fury at Trent on the night of the fight had been misdirected. She knew now that Allie had targeted her husband, not the other way around. How sick was that, her own sister actually wanting to sleep with him? It was really messed up, but, of course, Cassie’s relationship with Allie had always been difficult and weird.

She hefted the only photograph of Trent she’d kept and considered throwing it away. Permanently. But she didn’t. Couldn’t. She wasn’t as rash as she once had been, at least she hoped that was the case. She set the picture face down on the table. He was just another bastard who’d crossed her path. One of a handful. Her taste in men had always been less than stellar, probably due to “daddy issues.” After all, Robert was always leaving his current wife for the next best thing. Not exactly a candidate for Father of the Year.

“Get over it,” she told herself.

Allie, as it turned out, had been right: Cassie was a screw up and a mental case.

Still, she wasn’t going to let paranoia stop her. Nor would she allow Allie’s questionable morals where Trent was concerned veer Cassie from her course.

Maybe she should start looking now. She wasn’t tired. In fact she was antsy, needed to do something to calm herself down and think clearly. Maybe she needed a drink? Or a walk? Even a drive? Risky, but then what in life wasn’t?

She dropped her towel.

Somehow, some way, she was going to find Allie.

Then the little princess could eat her words.

CHAPTER 10

Jenna felt a sudden chill, as if a ghost had just walked over her soul.

It was silly really, but as she stepped into the attic and snapped on the light, she went cold inside. It was night, Shane was working in the den downstairs and she needed time alone. To think. To consider her life. To silently pray that her daughters were safe. She’d used the excuse of looking for her grandmother’s recipe box, lost when it had been packed away during the kitchen remodel.

The attic was cold, its sloped ceiling uninsulated, the sharp tips of roofing nails visible between the rafters. One of the light bulbs had burned out, leaving just one small bulb to illuminate the vast space with its dormers and peek-a-boo windows. She pulled her sweater around her body a little more tightly. Here, she thought, was the detritus of her life, the pieces and things that no longer fit into her daily routine.

Boxes, broken tables, a broken lamp, pictures and frames stacked in a corner. The wind was blowing hard outside, whistling through the rafters in this section of the rambling old house, one of the few places she hadn’t renovated over the years. She ran a finger across the edge of a box, felt the dust collect on her skin and saw a bookcase filled with old electronic equipment and wires connected to nothing. Here were stashed the remnants of her life, boxes of possessions from her school days, college, and her marriage to Robert, things she’d never had the heart nor time to dispose of. Each of her children, too, had a collection of papers, trophies, clothes, books, and toys that had settled in the attic for years.

The scratch of tiny claws suggested she wasn’t alone and she scanned the ceiling for bats, then avoided the darkest corners that could be home for mice or rats or squirrels, even raccoons.

Not exactly the most peaceful or comfortable place to think. She dusted off an old rocker wedged between two stacks of plastic cartons and sat, letting the chair sway of its own accord. She’d rocked her babies in this very rocker, now forgotten and stained. She thought of her children and worried about them. Tears burned the back of her eyes as she saw a picture of Allie, distorted slightly in the dim light, her image just visible through the side of the plastic bin. She’d been around eight, her adult front teeth just showing through her gums, her smile wide and still innocent. Jenna moved some of the boxes, then opened the tub to extract Allie’s second grade school picture. Allie had been such an awkward girl at the time, an innocent if introverted kid who had no idea the beauty she’d become.

“Oh, baby,” Jenna whispered, her throat thick, the frigid air in the room burrowing deep into her bones. “Where are you?” Sniffling, she looked up to this attic where Allie had played as a child, where she’d hidden or built a fort or spent hours reading. Alone.

What had happened to change things so?

A divorce, yes, to Allie’s ultimate bewilderment.

A move that she didn’t comprehend. Both she and Cassie had loved LA and hadn’t understood Jenna’s reasons for taking her children to a place she thought safer, a ranch in Oregon out of the fast-paced life, the glitter of Hollywood.

Then in Oregon came a monster. A deranged fan who had terrorized them all.

Also a stepfather she’d accepted if not embraced.

And a sister. Older. More rebellious. One who required most of Jenna’s attention. Cassie and Allie’s relationship had always been strained and it had only gotten worse, much worse, after the attack ten years ago.

She shuddered at the thought of the madman who had killed senselessly and brutally, then set his sights on Jenna and her girls. Cassie had not only lost her boyfriend, but nearly her own life and had been traumatized, nearly committed at that time. Jenna had focused on getting her daughter mentally well and in the process, she now assumed, ignored her younger, more serious and stable daughter. Had the rift begun then? At the time Allie’s relationship with her father was nearly nonexistent and Jenna had been wrapped in guilt about inadvertently putting Cassie’s life in danger. Looking back, she had probably ignored Allie’s wants and needs, or at least put them beneath Cassie’s. And then there was the fact that Cassie had been much more popular with the boys. Probably her irreverent attitude had attracted them like flies, while bookish, “I’m bored” Allie hadn’t gotten a second glance. She’d matured late and always, Jenna had sensed, envied her sister’s appeal to the opposite sex. Being Cassie Kramer’s younger sister in school had resulted in a grudge that hadn’t eased with time, not even when the tables had turned as adults and Allie had been lavished with all of the attention once she’d been “discovered” in Hollywood.

But childhood despairs ran deep. Never completely evaporated. She knew it herself.