If she’d been thinking straight, she would have told Kaye just to let her out in the garage and would have snuck home around back, but she was buzzing. She’d gone for the Frappuccino at the Starbucks as they left the mall, a twenty-four-ounce caffeinated frozen coffee-flavored milkshake with whipped cream and a straw and a rounded lid. It was a shock for a girl who had just had a pink shake in the food court and was not used to an all-sugar diet. Her heart beat so quickly she thought she was going to throw up.

Jillian said goodbye to Lindy and closed the car door. She didn’t even thank Kaye for driving. “Hi, Dad.” She walked up the path, her eyes on her feet.

“Jill?” he said.

“Yep,” she confirmed. Jillian Miller is a sneak. Jillian Miller is a fraud. She climbed the porch steps, hoping for a few final sweet moments with her mother before the game was up.

Her mother was sitting on the living room couch with her arms crossed over her chest, her expression stony. Jillian froze, trying to decide whether it would be better to go back outside, to her father, or to continue toward her mother. She was like a murderer in a house surrounded by the police.

“Hi, Mom,” Jillian said, wondering which scenario had come to pass. Had Mrs. Baxter called about the Greek temple? Had a teacher reported her absence from the after-school clubs? Had her mother, too, seen her get out of the Coxes’ car?

“I did some babysitting today,” her mother said.

“You did?”

“Adam. Suzanne came by not long ago to get him, in fact. She said she saw you at Nordstrom.”

“Oh . . .” Jillian closed her eyes and held her wrists together in front of her, awaiting the handcuffs.

14

DECEMBER 20

Now. This is your entrance,” Allison whispered to Grant from behind their makeshift backstage, gritting her teeth so she wouldn’t inadvertently scream.

“Me? Not yet. Do I?” Grant said, questioning and answering himself for so long that he missed his entrance entirely.

“Cut!” Rainier, the director, called. “Cut, fucking cut!”

They were rehearsing in the town hall basement instead of in the elementary school all-purpose room, leaving the school open for the public hearing that was to start in half an hour. The town hall was usually a spacious venue for town meetings, but tonight residents were going to testify about the proposed building moratorium. A standing-room-only crowd was expected.