Faces of Fear

call.”

“I’ll be fine, Conrad,” Risa said. “And today we’re here for you.”

Conrad smiled at her, and then his tired eyes moved on to the next guest in line.

“YOU CERTAINLY SHARED a lot of personal information that wasn’t necessarily yours to share,” Risa said as the three of them walked the few blocks back to her car.

“Hey,” Lexie said, dismissing her words with a wave of her black-gloved hand. “He’s single now, and so are you, and in Beverly Hills there is no such thing as a decent interval.”

“As I recall,” Risa said coolly, “last week you were the one who talked about getting divorced the minute Conrad was ‘back on the market,’ as you so graciously put it.”

“And I could be,” Lexie said, refusing to rise to Risa’s bait. “But he doesn’t have eyes for me.” She paused to let the meaning of her words strike home. “I think you should call him, just like he said.”

“Are you kidding?” Alison demanded. “He’s creepy — the whole thing was creepy. What they did to his wife’s face — I mean, it was like they were trying to make her look like she was still alive! And all those photographs! She was beautiful, but it was all fake, like you said, Lexie. She didn’t look like that at all until she met him!”

“Oh, sweetie,” Risa said. “He’s not creepy. He’s just a plastic surgeon, and fixing faces is what they do. And Conrad is not only a very good plastic surgeon, but a very good man as well.”

“Maybe so, but you still don’t need to call him,” Alison replied.

“Okay,” Risa said, giving her daughter’s shoulder a squeeze. At this point, she knew there wasn’t a man anywhere that Alison wouldn’t resent, but if Lexie was right, she wouldn’t have to call Conrad Dunn. If Conrad wanted to get in touch with her, he already knew her number.

If Lexie was right.

But of course she couldn’t be, given that Conrad Dunn wasn’t even over the shock of his wife’s death yet, and wouldn’t be for many weeks to come. Still, just the thought of hearing his voice on the other end of the telephone gave her more pleasure than she’d felt since the night Michael had moved out.

Perhaps, after all, there would be life after her divorce was final.

Part Two. NEW BEGINNINGS

7

One Year Later

ALISON SHAW PUT HER LUNCH TRAY DOWN ON THE TABLE IN HER usual place — a place that hadn’t changed by even a single chair since last year — but glared at Cindy Kearns before sitting down. “I don’t even know why I’m sitting here,” she said, picking up a fork and jabbing angrily at the limp lettuce that was supposed to be a “garden-fresh salad.”

“You mad at me?” Cindy asked, a tiny forkful of macaroni and cheese pausing halfway to her mouth.

“That was a private message,” Alison said coldly. “It was personal, and now the whole school knows.”

“Knows what?” Anton Hoyer asked around a mouthful of his hamburger.

Alison threw a “don’t you dare” look at Cindy.

Cindy blithely ignored the look. “Alison’s mom is marrying Dr. Conrad Dunn,” she said.

“Who?” Anton asked, looking blankly from Cindy to Alison. “Am I supposed to know who that is?”

Cindy rolled her eyes. “He’s only like the most famous plastic surgeon in the world,” she declared. “Don’t you know anything?”

Anton ignored her tone. “So her mom’s marrying a doc. So what?”

“So she’s moving to Bel Air and she’s transferring to Wilson Academy.”

Anton’s eyes widened. “Wilson? That’s a great school. You can go anywhere from there. Harvard, Yale — you can practically pick it!”

“That’s not the point,” Alison said. “I like it here.”

“UCLA is, like, four miles from my house,” Lisa Hess, the fourth of their lunch table regulars, chimed in. “And most of Bel Air’s even closer. Your new stepdad will probably buy you a car for your sixteenth birthday and you can come visit us. It’s no big deal.”

Cindy sipped a Diet Coke through a straw. “A car,” she sighed. “In what, two months?”

“Plus which,” Lisa went on, leaning across the table and dropping her voice so no one but her three friends would hear, “you can get as much plastic surgery as you want — for free!”

Alison could barely believe her ears. She was being dragged out of school in their sophomore year, moved out of Santa Monica, and getting stuck with a stepfather she didn’t even like, and all they could talk about was colleges, cars, and plastic surgery? “I don’t want any plastic surgery,” she snapped back at Lisa, “and I don’t care where I go to college, and I don’t like Conrad Dunn.”

A momentary silence dropped over the table at Alison’s outburst. Then Anton grinned mischievously. “You’ll all please note for the record that she didn’t say anything at all about the car.”

“And I don’t want a car,” Alison added, but felt a blush giving her away.

“See?” Anton said. “She’s turning the same color red her new Porsche will probably be.”

In spite of herself, Alison giggled. “I hate red,” she said. “If I get one, I want white. And not a Posrche. Maybe one of those little Lexuses.”

“Well, at least we know she can be bought,” Lisa said. “And stop worrying about the guy your mom’s marrying. Nobody likes their stepparents at first. Give the guy a chance — he didn’t do anything wrong.”

Alison shook her head. “It’s not that. There’s just something about him.”

“Oh, come on,” Cindy said. “I’ve had two stepdads, and at first I really hated the newest one. But he turned out to be pretty cool — in some ways he’s even better than my real dad.”

“Nobody’s better than my dad!” Alison snapped.

Cindy pulled back in exaggerated alarm. “Jeez! Nobody said anything about your dad.”

“And it’s not going to be all that bad,” Lisa put in, realizing just how upset Alison was. “You can have a big sixteenth birthday party and introduce us to all those Wilson Academy guys. And you can take us all for a ride in your new car.”

“After you introduce me to all those hot Wilson Academy girls,” Anton countered.

Alison shook her head. “But I like our house in Santa Monica, and I like going to school here, and I don’t want to move.” She sighed heavily. “I just don’t want things to change.”

“No,” Cindy said, her voice turning dead serious. “What you really want is for your parents to get back together, but that’s not going to happen.”

Alison knew Cindy was right, but she also knew she wasn’t ready to accept that fact.

“Your dad’s happy,” Cindy continued. “And even if he weren’t, he wouldn’t be going back to your mom. He’d find another guy. So don’t you think your mom should be happy, too? In two years you’ll be going to college somewhere. What’s she supposed to do? Just sit around by herself, having passed up true love with the most famous plastic surgeon in the western world just because you didn’t want to move five miles? Grow up, girl — it’s not like it’s the end of the world. It’s not even like you’re going to Kansas or something. It’s Bel Air, for God’s sake! If you want to stay here so bad, I’ll tell you what — we’ll just swap places, and you can live in my room and walk to school and I’ll move to Bel Air and go to Wilson and drive the car over to see you every single weekend. How’s that?”

The way Cindy put it made Alison feel like a complete idiot. “I’m being a real jerk, aren’t I?” she asked, half hoping nobody would answer, but knowing that Cindy, at least, would. But instead it was Lisa who spoke.

“Only about half a jerk, and so what? If it was Cindy, she wouldn’t want to move, either. As for me, I’m looking on the bright side — maybe you can get me a discount on some new boobs.” She pulled her sweater tight