The Bad Daughter(40)



It was after ten o’clock, and both Melanie’s and Landon’s bedroom doors were open. Robin stole a quick glance inside Landon’s room as she passed by, noting that his bed was neatly made, its covers all in place, as if it hadn’t been slept in. Had he come home last night?

“Melanie?” she called out, hurrying down the stairs and walking toward the kitchen, her sister’s absence palpable. “Melanie?” She half expected her sister to jump out at her from a corner of the room.

Some leftover coffee remained in the coffeemaker, and Robin poured herself a mug, then heated it up in the microwave. She glanced out the window over the sink to see if Melanie was in the backyard, but it was empty.

Where is everyone?

Mug in hand, Robin proceeded into the mudroom, which Alec had once claimed as his personal space. “What are you hiding, Alec?” she asked, noting that the cot he’d slept on stood folded up and abandoned in a corner. The small room was now a makeshift storage area for boots and forgotten household items, the sort of things that people never used but were loath to throw away “just in case.” An empty glass-front cabinet stood against the wall beside the back door, across from a wobbly wooden bench. A rusty yellow toolbox lay open on the bench’s scratched surface, a large claw hammer half in, half out of the slot intended for a screwdriver, the screwdriver tossed carelessly atop a pair of pliers. Robin was tempted to return each item to its proper place, but decided against it.

Several large cardboard boxes sat on the floor in the far corner of the room. Robin knelt to reach into the first one and removed a handful of pencil drawings. Many of them were little more than scribbles, but a number of them were surprisingly good. She sank back on her heels, marveling at a simple sketch of two horses and another of a helmeted man on a motorcycle. But the best ones were of a young girl as she morphed from child to adolescent: Cassidy.

Her nephew was quite the artist, Robin thought, returning the pictures to the box, grateful that Melanie had saved them. Perhaps she could suggest sending Landon to art school, maybe even offer to help out…

“We don’t need your help,” came Melanie’s imagined retort, even before Robin could finish the thought.

The second box was filled with old paperback books: Rosemary’s Baby; Kiss the Girls; The Shining. Someone obviously loved suspense thrillers. Nothing wrong with that. Another title suddenly caught her eye, and she squatted down to retrieve the softcover book from the top of the pile. Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer.

Shit, she thought, shuddering as she dropped the book back into the box. What the hell does that mean?

“It doesn’t mean anything,” she said out loud, noticing some larger books protruding from the bottom of the pile, her heartbeat quickening when she realized that they were old high school yearbooks. Eagerly tossing the paperback books aside, she extricated the half dozen leather-bound books.

She started with the most recent—the year she and Tara had graduated. Surely if there’d been anyone named Tom in any of their classes, she would find him in these pages.

Surely if there’d been anyone named Tom, she would have remembered him, a nagging voice in her head whispered.

She flipped through the pages, her eyes scanning the series of black-and-white homeroom photos. There was Sandi Grant, with her perpetually open, gossipy little mouth, and little Arlene Kessler, with her huge green eyes, freckle-covered nose, and Little Orphan Annie mop of curly red hair. Who’d have suspected she would grow into the sophisticated Dr. Arla Simpson?

Who’d have suspected a lot of things? Robin thought, locating her homeroom photograph and searching the faces of the normally sullen teenagers smiling awkwardly for the camera: Vicki Peters, with her too-short skirt and too-tight sweater, perched on a bench in the front row; Taylor Pritchard standing behind her, her long bangs almost completely hiding her half-closed eyes; Ron McLean, as tall as he was stupid; Chris Lawrence, a smug smile plastered across his round face; and Tara, front and center, as beautiful as always, her arm draped across Robin’s shoulders.

And then there he was in the back row—tall, heavyset, blond hair combed away from his not-quite-handsome face: Tom Richards, curiously insubstantial despite his girth. My God, she’d forgotten all about him.

Even now, staring into his blank eyes, Robin was hard-pressed to recall a single thing about him. He faded into the background. Like wallpaper, she thought, recalling Tara’s caustic assessment.

Was it possible that he and Tara had reconnected sometime in the last five years? That, improbably enough, they’d become friends? Possibly even lovers?

Robin dropped the yearbooks back into the box, burying them beneath the old paperbacks and pushing herself to her feet. She marched out of the mudroom, not sure what to make of—or what to do with—this discovery.

She found herself in the living room, the first time she’d been inside this room since her arrival in Red Bluff. Sinking into the moss-green velvet sofa against the wall opposite the large front window, she pictured her mother lying back against its pillows, a smile on her face, watching the large-screen TV with a magazine in her hands, her feet resting on the rectangular oak-and-glass coffee table in front of her. It was her mother who’d suggested the decorative brick fireplace in the middle of the far wall, her mother who’d selected the pair of matching rust-colored armchairs placed in front of it. She’d found the two watercolors of bucolic landscapes that hung on the wall at either side of the fireplace at a garage sale. “Can you imagine?” she’d said with a squeal of genuine delight. “Someone was actually going to throw these treasures out.”

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