“Well, I suppose I’m grounded again.”
“What’s the point, Court? I don’t think you’ve been off restriction for a day in the past year.” He walked to the backpack and crouched, opening it. “You can give this back to your friend tomorrow at school. If he even attends school.” He reached inside and began to pull out the movie DVDs, stacking them on the floor. “Without the movies, of course.”
“I didn’t know he was doing that,” she said. “I just went to the bathroom.”
“How well do you know him?” Lief asked. Christ, the kid had managed to get about thirty discs in his backpack.
“I just know him from school, that’s all. We were just going to listen to music.”
“And drink beer.” He left the backpack and stood to face her.
“I bet you drank beer when you were a kid,” she said with a lift of her chin.
“At fourteen? Not hardly.” He’d had farm chores; he’d played football, even though he’d been small for his age then and had gotten the stuffing beaten out of him. “Jesus, Courtney. How far are you going to push me?”
“I said I didn’t know he was doing that!”
“Maybe you should think about getting some more trustworthy friends,” he suggested.
“Don’t you get it?” she said, stepping toward him. “Nobody likes me!”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then he took another couple of steps toward her. He reached out and took the beer. “Will they like you better if you let them steal from us?”
“I didn’t,” she said, and there was a slight hiccup in her voice. “I just went to the bathroom.”
“How much has your friend had to drink?” Lief asked.
“Why?”
“Because he’s driving. Because he took off out of here like a bat out of hell and while I’d really like to tan his hide, I don’t want him to get hurt.”
She shrugged. “He just got here a little while ago. He brought two beers, that’s all.”
“Okay,” he said. He went to the kitchen and poured out both beers. He went back to the great room. “I’m going to my room to read for a while before bed. I’m going to set the house alarm. I’m really not up to chasing you down in the middle of the night, Courtney. I’ll see you in the morning. Luckily, you shouldn’t have a hangover.”
To his back she said, “I’m not going to sneak out.”
He looked over his shoulder at her. “Good,” he said. Then he went to his room.
Sometimes Lief didn’t know if he was more pissed or hurt by Courtney. He gave her everything he had. Why couldn’t she throw him a bone now and then? Just some small gesture like please or thank-you or even homework. It didn’t have to be good homework, even though he knew she was extremely intelligent. Just finished.
How long could she nurture the pain on the inside that made her so vile on the outside?
The house fell quiet again. Lief reclined on his lonely king-size bed, book in his lap. The vision of Courtney, all of fourteen but looking more like twelve, sneering at him over her beer kept obscuring the pages. He was going to have to get with that counselor, see if there was help for them. He was not optimistic—if he couldn’t find good therapy in Los Angeles, what were the chances he’d find it here?
In the morning, the first thing he did was head down the hall toward Courtney’s bedroom to be sure she was there. Fortunately, he didn’t have to go all the way to her room; he heard the shower in her bathroom. As he passed through the great room, he noticed the DVDs were put away. Put away or maybe stuffed back into the backpack for the little felon in question. He turned off the house alarm, made the coffee, headed for his own shower. She should be ready for school on time today; it didn’t take her long to mess up her multicolored hair.
When he got back to the kitchen, her homework and a note were on the table.
I made a copy of my homework for you to look at, but I’m taking the bus today so I left. Will you pick me up after school? Please.
Bone.
* * *
The very first rays of sunlight streaming into the window stirred Kelly from sleep. She sat up in bed and took stock of her surroundings—Jillian’s guest room. And there beside her in the bed, sleeping facedown, Jillian.
“Hey,” Kelly said, giving her a jostle.
Jill turned her head and peered at her through tangled hair. “Ugh. You’re up.”
“Last thing I remember, I was chatting it up with some cute guy at the bar. Over a killer martini.”
Jill pushed her hair out of her eyes. “It didn’t kill you. But it tried to kill me.”
“Huh?”
Struggling to a sitting position, Jill faced Kelly. “Do you realize what you did? “
Kelly let her eyes briefly close. “Gave myself a very large headache?”
“I went through your purse. You were taking both blood pressure medicine and antidepressants or something like that. Both bottles say alcohol could intensify the effects.”
“I can see that now.”
“I had to count the pills left to make sure you hadn’t OD’d. But I sat up and watched over you until you started to snore at about three in the morning. And boy, can you snore! I don’t think I’ve slept for ten whole minutes.”
“Oh, man,” Kelly said, rubbing her temples. “Who knew?”
“You know, if you’d had a little glass of wine, you might’ve gotten kind of tipsy. But a martini? Overkill.”
“I needed a shot of courage before dropping in on you and spoiling your hot new romance with Colin. And about those pills—I started the blood pressure stuff as directed, but the antianxiety pills were as needed. But I was feeling pretty anxious on the way up here, so I popped one. And I was still feeling pretty anxious a few hours later, so I had another one for good measure.”
“You’ll be happy to know you weren’t at all anxious by the time you got here.”
“Whew. Kind of scary to think I’d drive like that!”
“You didn’t. Your car is at the bar. The cute guy you were talking to brought you out here. Colin had to carry you to bed.”
“Oh, please tell me you’re making that up!”
“Not making it up. Now, what has you so anxious?”
“A lot has been going on for the last week. Can we have coffee? And aspirin? And I’ll tell you all about it. I might’ve really screwed up my life.”
Lief made phone contact with the counselor Jack had recommended and had an appointment for himself, after which he could go to Valley High School and pick up Courtney. On the way to Grace Valley, he decided to swing by Jillian’s big house to check on Kelly. He didn’t have to look far; he found her sitting by herself on the back porch, her feet drawn up and a throw wrapped around her shoulders.
He was grinning as he got out of his truck and approached her. “Well, you look none the worse for wear.”
“Oh, God,” she moaned. “I guess it was too much to hope I’d never see you again.”
“Aw, I’m crushed,” he said. “I thought we bonded.”
“That’s one of the reasons I was hoping …”
“I’m