PROLOGUE
When that first child is on the way, every woman wonders, What kind of mother will I be? Beth Fraser had plenty of reason to wonder, but she didn’t really find out until her daughter, Dana, was four years old.
They were still living in San Francisco and had gone to Bloomingdale’s, the big one on Market Street. Beth had a partners’ meeting about the new fund for Lumination Ventures. There were problems with the suit she had ordered. At the time, this had seemed important.
The woman behind the counter was slower than molasses in January. Beth demanded to speak to her manager. The charge was not accepted, the alterations had not been completed as promised, and they were going to get this sorted out.
Beth had told Dana to stand right here. She promised Dana a trip to the Disney Store just as soon as they’d straightened out this one thing.
The manager came over. Beth looked down. Dana was not there.
Beth did not remember anything after that for a while.
Dana remembered a bit more. Not everything, but more.
For instance, she remembered promising she would stand right here so Mommy could talk to the store lady. She remembered feeling that if she could look out the big front window, maybe she could see the Disney Store. She remembered the idea that right here kind of included the window, because she could see the window and Mommy at the same time. She remembered not really moving. Just drifting. She was still right here. Mommy was arguing with the lady behind the counter. She could hear them. She was still right here.
“Hey there.”
She remembered looking up to see a man in a gray suit and blue overcoat. His hair was slicked back in dark stripes against his pink-and-tan scalp. She remembered he had very round blue eyes and plump, pink hands.
“You lost?”
Dana shook her head.
“Where’s your mommy, then?”
Dana looked around. Suddenly she wasn’t sure. Mommy was by the counter. That was her dark jacket, but that wasn’t her head. She didn’t wear that hat. She was right here, wasn’t she?
“Oh, wait,” said the man. “I see her out there. Come on.”
He took Dana’s hand, and all at once she was walking with him. She wasn’t sure how that happened.
They were going out the sliding door now, and he was right behind her, bumping into her back and kind of pushing her along. Then, they were out on the sidewalk, heading up the hill, and his big, soft hand was holding hers and he was saying, “Now, where did Mommy go? Oh! There she is. Come on!” He gave her hand a little shake and also squeezed her fingers. Dana craned her neck, trying to see what he saw. He was pulling her along too fast. His hot, damp hand hurt as he squeezed her fingers and sang, “There she is! Come on! Keep up, sweetie!”
Then the world spun, and the sidewalk slammed against her head and Dana saw stars.
She sat up, not sure how she got onto the ground. The man was on the ground too, and Mommy was there. She was screaming—bad, bad words, louder than sirens, louder than anything. A lot of people were yelling.
The man was bleeding, and Mommy was kicking him. Hard. His head was bleeding. Bright red smeared his hot, pink hands. He was crying.
Mommy kicked him again, right in the teeth. His head snapped back.
A big lady with sunglasses swept Dana into her arms.
The man with the pink hands wasn’t moving anymore. Mommy turned around and walked up to the lady and to Dana.
“Give me back my daughter.”
The lady handed Dana across. Mommy wrapped Dana in her arms and they sat down on the curb. Mommy held Dana on her lap. She was breathing hard. Dana could feel her chest heaving under her jacket. Her eyes were straight ahead. She was shaking all over, and tears streamed down her face.
Dana wanted to hug her. She knew she should hug her, but she couldn’t. Not while her eyes were so blank like that. It was like she wasn’t even her mother anymore.
Beth didn’t know what was happening inside her daughter’s mind. All she knew was that somebody had tried to take Dana away, and she stopped them. Of course, the cops were on their way now. There would be lots of cops, and eventually lawyers. There’d be questions to answer and lies to tell. So very many lies. She needed to have them all lined up and ready to go.
But Dana was safe now. That was all that really mattered. Beth could handle everything else.
She always had.
PART ONE
SHOW AND TELL
CHAPTER ONE
“Time?” called Dana. She lifted the pan full of vegetable omelet off the burner and shook it to make sure the mass of egg and zucchini was loose.
Beth held up her phone. “Thirteen minutes, forty-four seconds. You’re never gonna make it!”
“Watch me!” It was down to the wire in the Fraser kitchen’s morning marathon—could Dana make an edible breakfast in fifteen minutes or less?
Dana shook the pan again and eyed the distance to the ceiling.
“You’re cleaning up when you miss!” Beth reminded her. The game of the fifteen-minute breakfast was their way of combining Dana’s love of cooking with the morning rush that never seemed to get any easier. Beth could not stand to be late, and Dana loved to show off, so it all worked.
Dana gave the pan a swift up-down jerk. The entire golden disk of egg and vegetables launched into the air, flipped, and came down. Dana bent her knees and held out the pan and—
SPLAT!
—caught the whole thing.
“Yes!” She pumped her fist in the air. “Get the plates!”
Beth pushed the colorful Fiestaware across the breakfast bar so Dana could slide segments of omelet onto the dishes. She sprinkled feta cheese on top of each plate, along with a handful of tomato chunks, and dropped the grilled bagels next to them.
“And done!”
“Fourteen minutes, fifty-three seconds,” Beth announced.
Dana threw both hands into the air. “Team Dangerface for the win!”
They both pulled their high stools up to the bar and tucked in. Dana glugged her orange juice. Beth poured a cup of coffee from the carafe. The speakers were cranked up, streaming a pulse-surging mix of Beyoncé, Adele, and Alicia Keys.
People who saw Beth and Dana together knew instantly they were mother and daughter. Beth had no idea where her ancestors had really come from. Her parents had regularly claimed to be everything from black Irish to Armenian. They had, however, gifted her and Dana with the similar oval faces, blunt noses, sandy skin, and thick brown hair. Time and determination had hardened Beth’s hazel eyes, but she still smiled easily, although that smile could be a disguise as often as it was a revelation.
If Beth was an expert at hiding in plain sight, Dana was brash and loud and determined to be herself, even when she wasn’t sure who that might be from day to day. Currently, she sported an uneven bob that ran down to her jawline on one side and barely covered her ear on the other. She had three piercings in one ear and four in the other. Her earrings never matched.
Dana’s most striking feature, though, was her eyes. The technical term was heterochromia iridis, meaning her eyes were two different colors—the left one, green, the right one, brown. Dana had flirted with the idea of hiding them a couple of years ago. Since then, she’d gone the exact opposite direction to emphasize them with mascara and shadow.