The Good Girls

Chapter 5

TUESDAY EVENING, AS AUDREY ROSE sat at the kitchen table, agonizing over her physics homework—she was in AP, much to the amazement of her only-interested-in-their-looks, fashionista friends. The problem sets were just getting harder and harder with each unit. What was also making the work practically impossible was that she was out in the open so her father and stepmother could keep an eye on her—their idea, not hers. After her latest scrape with the police, they'd kept eyes on her almost 24-7, as if she was a ticking, juvenile-delinquent time bomb.

Not that her father or her stepmother, Leslie, was watching her particularly closely. Her father was reading some work documents at the island while sipping tea. And Leslie was hurrying back and forth through the room, her bouncy, Drybar-styled curls barely shifting as she moved, and her cashmere dress floating gracefully around her knees. First she opened this cabinet, then that. Took out some candlesticks, frowned, then rifled through a drawer for some place mats. Amazingly, Leslie was doing all this while carefully balancing a glass of chardonnay in her hand. By Audrey's count, this was glass number three—and it wasn't even five o'clock yet. Classy.

"Damn it," Leslie muttered under her breath as the Vitamix blender she was trying to pin with one hand and her chin—God forbid she put the glass of wine down—almost slipped from her grasp. She shoved it inside a different cabinet and shut the door with such force that Audrey jumped in her chair, her pencil scribbling across her physics homework. Audrey tried to meet her father's gaze, but Mr. Rose was doing a really good job of feigning obliviousness. What the hell was Leslie so worked up about, anyway? Wasn't wine supposed to relax you?

Leslie clomped into the dining room, still muttering. She returned balancing a stack of silverware in one hand, her wine glass clenched in the other. "These need to be polished," she barked at Mr. Rose.

He shifted uncomfortably on his stool. Clearly he realized she was acting like a freak, right? And yet all he said was, "I'll let the housekeeper know."

"Maybe you can have Audrey do it." Audrey could feel Leslie's eyes on her. "Silver polishing is a useful skill."

Mr. Rose put a hand on his wife's shoulder. "Darling, we have almost a week to prepare. There's plenty of time."

Audrey couldn't help but look up from her problem sets. "Prepare for what?"

Audrey's father smiled kindly. "Leslie's mother is visiting us from New York. She'll be staying with us for a few days, and Leslie has decided to throw a party here at the house."

"And I want everything to be perfect." Leslie barged in, flicking at a crumb on the countertop with a crimson, talon-like fingernail. Then she shot Audrey a look. It said, very clearly, Which means I don't want any trouble from you.

Audrey shrugged, though inside she was seething. Leslie had never shown her an ounce of kindness, and after Audrey's recent trip to the police station for Jay's murder, she'd become downright witchlike. Audrey glanced at her father, but he was looking at his newspaper again as if he didn't sense the tension. Audrey was astonished at how different her father had become in this woman's presence. In the old days—the good days—he and her mother used to care about her deeply. There was so much laughing and cheer in the house. None of this frantic cleaning. None of these dirty, hateful looks.

The phone rang, and Mr. Rose excused himself from the kitchen to answer it in his office. Leslie began counting wine glasses, pulling down a few and placing them roughly in the sink. She mumbled something under her breath about them being too spotty. She looked like she was going to have a brain hemorrhage right then and there.

Audrey shut her textbook and looked at Leslie. "I'm sure everything is going to be perfect for your mom."

Bad idea. Leslie whipped around and stared at her, her nostrils flaring. "You don't have the right to speak right now."