A Week at the Lake Read Online Free PDF Page A

location.”
    â€œI’ve left you with a sitter and a staff when I’ve had to,” Emma replied. And only after Zoe got too old to miss so much school. “That’s not the same thing at all.” It wasn’t, was it? Her voice faltered as she realized she was asking Zoe to accept things she’d never forgiven her own parents for. If Emma hadn’t had Gran, she would have been completely lost.
    â€œYou’re always trying to hold me back.” Zoe’s voice rose. It was a favorite complaint and one she’d clearly come to believe. She delivered it with conviction.
    Emma knew her daughter could act. She was fairly certain she’d been emoting in the womb and she’d done really well at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. She just didn’t think there was any reason to start a career so young. Nor did she think a teen exploitation film in which most of the characters would be screaming their heads off while naked was an acceptable first vehicle. And Emma should know. She’d walked away from childhood stardom, but that didn’t mean she didn’t remember every painful moment of it.
    Their food arrived. She checked her watch and wondered if eleven thirty was too early for a drink.
    â€œI’m trying to protect you, Zoe. If you decide you want to act, there’s plenty of time for that. After you finish school. Not before.”
    â€œSonya is tutored on set,” Zoe argued.
    Sonya Craven was sixteen and had a regular role on
Teen Bitch
, er,
Teen Witch
. From what Emma had seen of Sonya—and her mother, with whom Emma had had the “pleasure” of performing—this was a clear case of typecasting and required almost no acting at all.
    â€œYou’re not Sonya. And I am not Sonya’s mother.” Their voices were rising.
    â€œThat’s such a cop-out.” Zoe quivered with righteous indignation. “At least Sonya’s mother nurtures her talent instead of trying to squash it.” Zoe’s eyes plumbed hers. She could feel her daughter’s awareness of the scene they were playing. When you were born into a theatrical family, there was no escaping theatrics.
    Zoe put her glass down on the table and crammed a French fry into her mouth.
    As emotional earthquakes went this wasn’t even a five on the Michaels Family Richter Scale. Compared to some of the rows that had taken place while Emma was growing up, it was barely a tremor. But there was something about the wrath of a fifteen-year-old girl to whom you’d given birth and loved more than you’d ever imagined you could love anyone, that could yank the ground right out from under your feet.
    Emma glanced around the restaurant. At a Michaels family gathering this altercation would hardly be enough to make people stop chewing let alone end a meal. But the other diners had fallen silent and were no longer pretending they weren’t listening. It wasn’t every day you got to watch this kind of performance between two members of the Michaels family without buying a ticket.
    â€œOh, what’s the point?” Zoe, who knew intuitively how to end a scene
and
make an exit, removed the napkin from her lap, dropped it on the table, and scraped back her chair. “I’m out of here.”
    â€œZoe!” Emma put some bills on the table as she stood. Then she was speed walking out of the silent restaurant. The last time Zoe had stormed off she made it onto a cross-country flight from LAX to Serena’s in New York City.
    Emma’s heart beat frantically as she shoved open the door. Out on the sidewalk she saw Zoe already across the street and two blocks down. This was the Upper East Side of NewYork not West LA, but Zoe was a fifteen-year-old girl and bad things happened in expensive neighborhoods every day.
    â€œZoe!” Her eyes on her daughter, who was studiously ignoring her, Emma began to sprint across the street. Which was when something