tonight?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Your father called a few minutes ago. He and Sandy Mitchell are just now leaving Phoenix to come back to Sedona. Considering everything that’s happened the past few days, Sandy probably shouldn’t be left on her own tonight. Her brother, Phil, will be here, but he’s not worth the powder it would take to blow him up. So I told Dad I’d make dinner for them. Dave should be back from Prescott by then. What with the three of them, the two of us, you, Chris, and Athena, it’ll be a tight fit in our little dining room, but the more the merrier. You’ll come, too, right?”
“Dave is coming?” Ali asked.
“Yes. I just talked to him. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No. Of course not,” Ali said. “But who’s Athena?”
Edie took a deep breath. “You don’t know about Athena? Chris hasn’t told you about her?”
“Who’s Athena?” Ali repeated.
“Oops,” Edie said cheerfully. “Me and my big mouth. Well, you didn’t hear it from me. You’d best ask Chris. So there’ll be eight of us for dinner, and we’ll eat around six. I’d better get cracking.”
“Mother!” Ali objected. She was still holding the telephone receiver, but Edie Larson was long gone.
Astonished, Ali put down the phone. Chris had a girlfriend, one Ali knew nothing about? And this mystery girlfriend, this Athena, was coming to dinner at Bob and Edie’s house that very night? How dare Chris not tell her? Ali glanced at her watch. It was an hour at least before Chris would be home from school. She fully intended to corner him on this, but it wasn’t something that could or should be done over the phone.
Frustrated and needing something to take the edge off, Ali did the only thing that made sense-she grabbed Aunt Evie’s old Oreck out of the entryway closet and vacuumed like mad. Vacuumed and fumed.
Later though, once she’d run out of steam, Ali picked up her computer. Arabella had threatened to write a family saga, and from what Deb Springer had said, there were probably enough skeletons in the Ashcroft family closet to fill several volumes. Working alone and with one eye on the clock, Ali set about creating her own Ashcroft history.
She came up with mountains of material, whitewashed in the journalese of the time, but Ali was able to see through it to the uglier ramifications-the corporate takeovers that littered the business pages contrasted with the glowing charitable outreach that was chronicled in the society sections. Ali found a splashy article detailing William Senior’s marriage to Anna Lee Askins. In among the descriptions of the designer bridal dress and the sumptuous reception, Ali unearthed enough code words about the various attendees to make it clear that this was a hastily arranged affair. And the timing of the wedding, juxtaposed with Arabella’s birth date seven short months later, seemed to validate Deb’s claim that Anna Lee had been pregnant at the time she made her vows. That meant that the blue blood running in Arabella’s veins came from Anna Lee’s side of the family rather than William Ashcroft’s.
As far as information was concerned, there was plenty more where that came from, and Ali would have been glad to keep plowing through it, but her phone rang. Caller ID identified Dave Holman’s home number, but since Dave was still in Prescott at the county courthouse, it seemed unlikely that he was the person calling. Ali braced herself for another dose of Roxie Whitman.
“Ali?” Crystal said.
“Yes. Hi, Crystal. How are you?”
“Tired. I slept all morning.”
“My mom’s here and my brother. We’re getting ready to go,” Crystal said. “Getting ready to go back to Vegas.”
“I know,” Ali said. “Richey and your mother came by earlier and told me you were heading back.”
There was a pause. “They did? They came by your house?”
Crystal sounded almost as surprised and offended as her brother had been.
“Your mother was somehow under the impression that wedding bells were about to ring for your father and me.”
“I’m sorry,” Crystal said. “She shouldn’t have done that.”
“As I told you the other day, your father and I aren’t in that kind of a relationship. I told your mother as much. How are you?”
“They all ganged up on me and they’re making me go back home,” Crystal said. “Even though I don’t want to. Even though I hate it.”
“Why?” Ali asked. “Why do you hate it so much?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But it does matter, Crystal,” Ali told her. “Your parents both care about you, and I’m sure they want you to be happy. I don’t know what the laws are in Nevada. You may be old enough to have some say in your custodial arrangements. But if you’re fighting with all the adults in your life, if you’re not going to school, and if you’re running away every time you get a chance, people aren’t going to pay attention. Your parents won’t, and neither will a judge.”
“You think a judge might listen to me, really?” Crystal asked. “That he’d let me come stay with my dad?”
“You mean only if I behave.”
“Well, yes,” Ali said. “Arrangements like this don’t happen overnight, and you’d better behave. For your sake and everyone else’s.”
“I’ll try,” Crystal said finally.
“Has anyone told your mother what’s been going on?” Ali asked. “As in what’s really been going on?”
There was dead silence on the other end of the phone.
“You need to tell her,” Ali said.
“It’s bad enough that my dad knows,” Crystal whispered. “Do I really have to tell my mother?”
“Yes, you really do,” Ali insisted. “She loves you. She’ll want to protect you. She’ll want to protect you from yourself.”
“I’ve gotta go,” Crystal said abruptly. “Thank you for everything.”
“You’re welcome…”
But Crystal was already gone.
“Good-bye,” Ali murmured into her empty receiver. “Travel safe.” Before she could put the phone down, though, it rang again.
“Ali?” her new caller announced. “It’s Deb Springer again. Is this a bad time?”
“No,” Ali told her. “It’s fine.”
“I’ve been racking my brain ever since we got off the phone, and I finally came up with it. The Mosberg Institute.”
“What’s that?”
“The name of the place where they sent Arabella Ashcroft. And it wasn’t the Bay Area, it was located in Paso Robles. I believe it started out as a home for the criminally insane. By the time Arabella went there, it had become a bit more upscale, but it was still a dreadful place. I can’t imagine sending a child of mine into a world of electroshock therapy, ice baths, and God knows what else. I’m sure it wasn’t at all like those posh rehab places they have up and down Malibu these days. But about the Mosberg, I’m fuzzy on the details. I believe it’s closed now, but I seem to remember there was some kind of fire there, and I think several people died.”
The very mention of ice baths and shock treatments caused Ali to shiver. If that had been Arabella Ashcroft’s reality at age nine, no wonder she would have objected to Billy Ashcroft threatening to have her locked up again.
Ali thanked Deb for her help, ended her phone call, and was about to enter Mosberg Institute into her search engine, when she heard Chris’s Prius pull up outside. She closed her computer with a snap.
It was time to turn away from some of the Ashcroft family carrying-ons and pay attention to her own.
