What was the matter with Charlie anyway? Wild in all the wrong ways. Not wild like Camilla was wild, out of control but in it at the same time, calling the shots, running the show. Camilla, who only looked proper and pretty and girlish in her immaculate tennis whites and bouncy teen-queen ponytail but was really dark and dangerous and hell-bent, a femme fatale disguised as the all-American girl, her lips shiny with blood not gloss. No, Charlie was dumb wild, obvious wild, wild with no real purpose or to no real end. In fact, what she was doing couldn’t even properly be termed being wild. It was misbehaving. And at someone else’s command, no less: former Camilla boy toy and weak-link druggie, Jude Devlin.

“You’re pathetic, you know that?” Alice said.

Charlie was too stunned to react immediately. She just stared, looking bewildered and victimized, totally unprotected, like she’d been punched in the face for no reason and without warning. All at once the anger drained out of Alice’s body, replaced by horror. She wished she could suck the words out Charlie’s ears and back into her own mouth, swallow them down into her belly. Because as mad as she was at Charlie, she loved her more and couldn’t bear to see her upset or in pain, could bear even less the thought that she was the cause of her upset or pain. But it was too late.

Charlie’s face had hardened, eyes flat, lips a straight white line. And then the lips parted. Out came spitting rage: “You hate me because Richard hates you.”

“What?” Alice said.

“He can barely stand to be in the same room with you, but he likes me, and it drives you crazy. And you know what? I like him back. He’s a better father than our crappy father ever was, and he needs a daughter. Camilla got bored with her life? Didn’t want it anymore? Decided to throw it away, drive it off a bridge? Well, okay, I’ll take it. Her loss, my gain.”

“You don’t mean that,” Alice said quietly.

Charlie was crying now, hot, angry tears, not bothering to cover her face with her hands. “Don’t tell me what I mean and don’t mean.”

“I’m sorry for what I said. It’s just, Jude. He’s not good for you.”

“Oh, come on, Allie, you don’t like anyone.”

“He’s bad, I’m telling you. A year ago, when Martha died, he—”

“A year ago?” Charlie repeated, like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Who the hell cares what happened a year ago? Besides, he told me about all that, the stint in rehab and everything else.”

“No, not rehab. I don’t care about rehab. It’s—”