She nodded toward Connor, asleep in the passenger seat. "Our boy's pretty wrecked, isn't he?"

Something about how she said our boy kind of rubbed me the wrong way, but it wasn't like I was

about to correct her. Um, actually, Kathryn, he's my boy.

"Yeah," I said.

She looked at him for a long minute. "He's such a cutie," she said.

Now I was officially irked. Do not call my boyfriend a cutie. The hatred I'd reserved for Mara

ebbed a bit in the face of my new yet surprisingly powerful hatred for Kathryn Ford.

She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Too bad he's too young for me," she said.

She turned her head back to where I was sitting, reached through the front seats, and patted my

knee. "He's all yours."

"Oh. Ah, thanks," I said. Then I felt like a total idiot

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for saying it, since I'd pretty much just thanked her for insulting me. "Well, good night," I said.

"Have fun in the city."

"I will," she said.

I went up the front walk as slowly as if I were wearing shoes of lead, literally dragging my heels

along the flagstone. In the front hallway, I spent several long minutes taking off Connor's jacket

and hanging it up. As soon as I'd shut the closet door, I felt bereft, like the jacket was a suit of

armor without which I was totally exposed. For a split second I considered just going downstairs

and getting into bed, pretending I hadn't seen my dad's light. But then I thought about how it

would feel to defend myself to him in the morning, in front of Mara and the Princesses. As bad

as tonight was going to be, tomorrow could only be worse.

I walked through the darkened living room and down the two steps to his study, where a small

crack of light glowed under the closed door. I stood there, breathing deeply, and then I knocked.

"Come in," called my dad. I pushed open the door. He was sitting at his desk, typing on his

laptop.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey," he said.

"When did you get home?" I asked. I was amazed I was able to keep my voice normal when

everything else about me was shaking hard enough for me to feel it.

"A few hours ago," he said. He leaned back in his

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chair and put his feet up on the desk, gesturing for me to sit down in the chair facing him. "I

heard you had quite a week."

I shrugged and took a seat, feeling like I was settling into the witness stand. "I guess you could

say that."

"Want to tell me what happened?" he asked, pushing his hand through his hair.

My dad's not just a lawyer, he's a lawyer who's obsessed with the "inherent beauty" of the

American legal system. Imagine it, Lucy, a country where the accused is innocent until proven

guilty. Usually when he starts waxing rhapsodic about the Bill of Rights, I just roll my eyes or

point out that there's nothing especially beautiful about helping multinational corporations sue

each other, which is the kind of law my dad practices; but tonight I was glad he was so

passionately committed to the rights of the accused. After all, even if Long Island seems like it's

in a different universe from San Francisco, officially we were still in the United States.

I sat forward with my hands on my knees. "Okay, the thing is, I didn't do anything, and all of a

sudden Mara and everyone was saying how I was being selfish."

"And why do you think they would say a thing like that?" he asked, tapping the tips of his fingers together.

I was totally relieved. I'd thought he was automatically going ta take Mara's side, but now I could

see he was going to listen to my version of the story. "I don't know," I said. "Mara asked me to let her friend sleep in

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my room, and I asked her if I could think about it, and all of a sudden everyone was acting like

I'd said no, when I hadn't."

"So you feel you were ganged up on for no reason at all? ' Was it my imagination, or had his tone changed? Before he had sounded genuinely curious; now he sounded overly curious, i.e.,

like he really wasn't curious at all.

I refused to believe my dad's question was rhetorical. Was it really that impossible for him to

imagine his precious wife and stepdaughters might possibly gang up on his innocent daughter.

"As a matter of fact, I do think that."

"Well, I wasn't there, Lucy, so I can't say for sure what happened, but Mara made it sound like

you were inexcusably rude to her for absolutely no reason."

"Well, did it ever occur to you that just because Mara made it sound like that doesn't mean it happened like that?"

"Lucy, I don't understand what's going on here." He dropped his feet to the floor and sat forward in his chair. "Mara said she asked you to do her friend Gail a favor, and you said no, and then

you started shouting at her and the girls." He wasn't yelling, but I could tell he was getting

frustrated.

"I can't believe you're just taking her side like that," I said. "You're not even listening to me."

"Lucy, I am not taking sides. I'm only telling you what I heard."

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But when he put his hands flat on the desk's green blotter, his wedding ring gleamed.

I gripped the arms of my chair, hard. "Well, you heard wrong."

"So what did happen?"

Had he totally missed my previous description?

Even though I've never been much of a crier, for the second time in as many days, I felt my chin

quiver and my eyes filling with tears. "You don't understand what it's like for me living here.

You're off in San Francisco living it up while I'm trapped with the Wicked Witch of the East and

her evil spawn."

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. Some things aren't meant to be

said out loud.

My dad put his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes. Then he looked up at me. "Lucy, when you

say things like that, it makes it really hard for me to believe Mara's making up stories about how you insult her and the girls."

I snorted. "Oh, yeah, like you'd believe me even if I didn't say things like that."

"Why do you act like we're all ganged up against you? Everyone is struggling to make this

family work. Everyone."

I couldn't believe it. Struggling? Struggling! "Do you mean shopping, Dad? Do you mean everyone is shopping to make this family work? Because I don't see a whole lot of struggling

going on around here."

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"And that is exactly the kind of snotty response I'm tired of," said my dad. "How is that a helpful thing to say?"

"Well, maybe I don't want to be helpful," I said, standing up. "Maybe I'm tired of being helpful."

My dad stood up, too. "Tired of being helpful? Lucy, to be tired of something you have to do it

for a while."

"You know they totally ignore me when you're not here, Dad. All they do is go shopping and go

to movies and go to dinner without me."

"Lucy, just last weekend Mara asked you to come into the city with us, and you said no."

"Dad, are you blind} She only asked me to go because you were sitting right there. She wants you to think she cares about me, but really, she hates me."