Chapter 8

They arrived in an expensive white car—two blond strangers who looked very much alike and, at the same time, were very different as mother and daughter. The woman explained that she had come to apologize to us for what had happened at the smile contest, that she didn’t approve of her daughter’s behavior, and that the whole situation had been extremely awkward. She also said my victory had been deserved, and that her daughter, whose name was Catherine, had thought carefully about her words and what had happened at the fair and now agreed my win was fair.

We had lived in town for only two weeks and had no way of knowing who our guests were. Dad invited them inside and offered them coffee. The woman was reserved and polite, and her daughter really did apologize. I didn’t believe her. The girl kept turning up her nose at me and everything around her, but I was sure I would never see her again, and I wasn’t too upset when our guests left. I managed to forget about them for almost a whole year, until one day I learned Dad had a girlfriend—the same blond woman from the fair.

Their relationship wasn’t easy at first, I think, for either Dad or Patricia. Everyone in town knew Pat as the heiress of a respected family and a rising, already very successful politician. And her ex-husband, Howard Harding, was a sitting member of the state legislature’s lower house from one of the major parties. By thirty-seven, Patricia had connections and money, a reputation as an iron bitch ready to step over anyone to reach her stated goal, and plenty of opponents who regularly accused her of one thing or another on television and in the newspapers.

And then, suddenly, there were secret meetings with my father—an ordinary guy from Illinois—that threatened to spill into scandal. In Patricia Harding’s family, marrying down simply wasn’t done, and Howard Harding, despite seeing other women, still hoped to get back the wife he had separated from because of his own pride and his refusal to accept her political career.

Now I understand that it was a difficult time for both Dad and Pat. Whatever people may say about her, she was never someone who played with other people’s feelings to feed her own ego. I think meeting my father was as much of a revelation for her as it was for him. And for a long time, neither of them knew what to do with any of it. One moment they tried to break up; the next they came back together.

Still, I have to give my future stepmother credit. When Dad turned down a promotion so no one would connect it to Patricia Harding and decided to move from Sandfield Rock to the next county, it was Pat who came to our house and said she was tired of doubting and wanted to be with him. That they should try, because, after all, they were adults and didn’t owe anyone anything.

Don’t think it happened quickly. It took them almost four years to work through their doubts, and a year ago they got married in the next state, though they had still avoided publicity. In that time, Patricia and I had settled into an even relationship. I won’t say it had become especially warm, but we had grown close enough to accept each other in Dad’s life.

It was too bad Kate resembled her mother only on the outside and had inherited her personality and brains from her father—the snob Howard Harding. She and I had never managed to get along. We still couldn’t stand each other, and for exactly that reason, after the wedding, our parents continued living in two houses for a while, until three months ago they got tired of it. They decided to move in together and simply informed us that Kate and I would spend our last year before college under one roof, all together, as one family. Because whether we liked it or not, that was what we were now.

I didn’t like it. Kate didn’t either. But no one asked us anymore, and Dad and I moved into Patricia’s expensive cottage on Three Maples Street. And that was where I now had to return after the school day.

I got on my bike, adjusted my hair, tossing it down my back, and rode off. Skirting the teachers’ cars, I steered toward the edge of the parking lot and suddenly saw Matthew Palmer right in front of me.

He was standing beside a black motorcycle, backpack on one shoulder, stretching the strap of his helmet between his hands. Noticing movement, he turned his head and looked at me from under his long bangs.

Oh no. Palmer again. In surprise, my handlebars swerved to the side, and I gasped, one foot slipping off the pedal. I was wearing white sneakers and a dark-blue, gray-plaid skirt that came to my knees, but the wind caught the hem and suddenly bared my thigh high up.

Oh God. This is impossible. Whenever I think things can’t possibly get worse, it happens to me again.

I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut from shame and duck my head into my shoulders. Was there no end to my humiliation today?

Straightening the handlebars and keeping my eyes down as much as I could, I shot past him toward the school gates and only managed to breathe once the parking lot was far behind me.