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realize she was being used for her body.
    Our different feelings about Tabitha were what first started driving the wedge between Ash and me. I couldn’t forgive her for letting Tabitha take Mother’s place, and Ash seemed to think I was being hypercritical and unfairly biased against Tabitha just because of her age.
    Now they were hanging out together like a couple of best buds, and I couldn’t understand how they could choose each other over Father. Wasn’t that what they were doing? Surely when Father expelled Ash from the house it wasn’t his intent for his wife to join the banished girl poolside. And Ash had always made it clear that she thought it was Father who took advantage of Tabitha, not the other way around.
    I could see that Ash and I were never going to see eye to eye. We may have had moments when we were kids where we acted like friends. Chalk that up to us not knowing any better back then, and taking advantage of the convenience of in-home playmates. It was no longer convenient. There may have been parts of me that longed to be like Ash—or at least to have her self-confidence and sexual prowess, but I could see clearly that the two of us were never going to be friends. We were two very different people who’d been on divergent paths for far too many years to connect now. Otherwise, how could Ash spend that kind of time with Tabitha? Even worse, how could she let Tabitha hang on her words and follow her around like a lap dog, as if she was just another one of Ash’s many lovers?
    That was particularly disturbing.

Chapter Three

    Ash was suddenly gone. She simply vanished. She was there when I went to sleep, but in the morning she never came out from the pool house. Cynthia and a handful of Ash’s friends continued partying and lounging around the pool, but Ash never appeared. Making an excuse to drop by the cabana, I confirmed she wasn’t there at all. Cynthia wouldn’t—or couldn’t—tell me where she was.
    When I came back inside the house, Tabitha came out of her room, dark rings under her eyes, but a look of excitement on her face, which faded immediately at the sight of me. I wondered whom she was expecting.
    “Oh, Megan,” she said in disappointment. “You surprised me.”
    “Oh, sorry. Have you heard from Ash?” I quizzed, all the while knowing the answer. Tabitha dabbed the corner of her right eye with her pinky, the gentle swipe of her French manicure offsetting cobalt eyes. The motion made her look so delicate and unexpectedly precious, it stopped me in my tracks. That summer was the first time I noticed that Tabitha was a woman, not just a creature I called my stepmonster.
    Tabitha had never been a mother to me. She tried, but by the time she married Father I was already a teen. I wasn’t in the market for a new mother, and all of my adoration was occupied, having been heaped in equal parts upon Ash and Father, with little room for interlopers like Tabitha. In fact, I was threatened by her, this new authority figure that Father had supposedly rescued from poverty like a stray from the pound. I thought she wanted to replace my mother, and I wasn’t willing to be mothered by anyone else, especially not a teenager. So I fought any affection she offered, assuming Father would eventually come to his senses and leave her. And though their marriage seemed rocky and forced at best, they never did split up.
    But Tabitha had a look about her, like she was more a woman trapped than a woman rescued, and I had no idea why in this day and age she would stay married. Sure, there was a pre-nup, but those things don’t always hold up in court and Tabitha was certainly still young and attractive enough to bag another wealthy suitor. If she left now. What was Tabitha holding out for?
    “No. I’m worried about her.” Tabitha broke my thought process with a quietly resigned admission. “Did you ask Cynthia?”
    “Yeah, Cynthia doesn’t know. She’s useless. All of Ash’s moocher friends are