Alice laid a palm flat on either side of her skull, pressed as hard as she could. Blocking her ears, though, didn’t block out the sound. Just made it seem like it was coming from inside her head. She loved her sister; she hated her sister. Her sister hated her; her sister loved her. Alice turned and fled, running into the house so big that in it she felt like a doll in a house for humans, through the kitchen, and up the twisting staircase to her bedroom. The laughter followed her every step of the way.

Two Weeks Earlier

Two Weeks Earlier

Chapter Two

Chapter

• TWO •

Alice felt her stomach doing this horrible churning flip-flop inside her. Motion sickness. She didn’t know if it was from her shiny new stepfather driving his shiny new Mercedes so fast or from his marrying her just-as-shiny-but-not-quite-so-new mother so fast. Sometimes it seemed to Alice as if the relationship had happened in one of those montage things in a movie. It was like they met, fell in love, and got married in a matter of seconds. Go to the bathroom for a quick pee and you missed the whole thing, needed your date to give you a recap. Okay, it was a matter of months, but still. Awfully speedy.

Her stepfather’s eyes behind his wafer-thin sunglasses were pointed straight ahead at the road, so she stared at him without fear of being caught. Richard. Richard Flood. Richard Flood the Third. Alice had never met anyone before who looked so much like his name sounded. He was tall and lean and perpetually tan. Not the tacky kind of tan you got from a bed or a bottle or from laying out—from trying—but the kind you got accidentally, from when you were doing something else, playing tennis or golf or sailing your Alerion Class Sloop (Richard had two of them). His hair was gray in a way that made him appear distinguished rather than old. His face was undeniably handsome, sharp-featured with deep-set blue eyes. There was something cruel about it, though. It was his mouth, Alice decided, the way it turned down at the corners when he was lost in thought.