“Melissa’s delivery was complicated.” Mrs. Hastings drummed her hands on the slick, heavy boulder. Her eyes flickered to the front of the house for a moment, watching as a battered Honda slowed at their driveway. Curious neighbors had been circling the cul-de-sac all afternoon. “The doctors told me that giving birth to another child could endanger my health. But we wanted another baby, so we ended up using a surrogate. Basically . . . we used my egg and your dad’s . . . you know.” She lowered her eyes, too demure and proper to say sperm aloud. “But we needed a woman to carry the baby—you—for us. So we found Olivia.”
“We screened her thoroughly to make sure she was healthy.” Mr. Hastings sat down next to his wife on the rock, barely noticing that his handmade A. Testoni loafers had sunk into the sooty mud. “She seemed to fit what we wanted, and she seemed to want us to have you. Only, toward the end of her pregnancy, she started to get . . . demanding. She wanted more money from us. She threatened to escape to Canada and keep you for herself.”
“So we paid her more,” Mrs. Hastings blurted. She put her blond head in her hands. “And in the end, she did give you up, obviously. It’s just . . . after how possessive she became, we didn’t want you to have any contact with her. We decided that the best thing we could do was keep it a secret from you—because, really, you are ours.”
“But some people didn’t get that,” Mr. Hastings said, rubbing his salt-and-pepper hair. His cell phone rang in his pocket, playing the first few bars of Beethoven’s Fifth. He ignored it. “Like Nana. She thought it was unnatural, and she never forgave us for doing it. When Nana’s will said she was only giving money to her ‘natural-born grandchildren,’ we should have come clean. It seems like Olivia has been waiting for a moment like this all along.”
The wind calmed down, coming to an eerie standstill. The Hastingses’ dogs, Rufus and Beatrice, clawed at the back door, eager to get out and see what the family was doing. Spencer gaped at her parents. Mr. and Mrs. Hastings looked ragged and exhausted, like admitting this had taken everything out of them. It was obvious this was something they hadn’t talked about in a long time. Spencer looked back and forth at them, trying to process it all. Their words made sense individually, but not as a whole. “So Olivia carried me,” she repeated slowly. A shiver went up her spine that had nothing to do with the wind.
“Yes,” Mrs. Hastings said. “But we’re your family, Spencer. You’re ours.”
“We wanted you so badly, and Olivia was our only option,” Mr. Hastings said, gazing up at the purplish clouds. “Lately we seem to have lost sight of how important we all are to one another. And after everything you’ve gone through with Ian and Alison and this fire . . .” He shook his head, staring again at the barn and then at the ruined woods beyond. A crow screeched and circled overhead. “We should have been there for you. We never wanted you to think you weren’t loved.”
Her mother tentatively took Spencer’s hand and squeezed. “What if we . . . start fresh? Could we try that? Could you forgive us?”
The wind gusted again and the smell of smoke intensified. A couple of black leaves blew across the lawn into Ali’s yard, coming to a stop near the half-dug hole where Ali’s body had been found. Spencer fiddled with the plastic hospital bracelet that still circled her wrist, oscillating from shock to compassion to anger. In the past six months, her parents had taken away Spencer’s barn apartment living privileges and let Melissa stay there instead, cut off her credit cards, sold her car, and told her on more than one occasion that she was dead to them. Damn right I haven’t felt like I had a realfamily, she wanted to scream. Damn right you haven’t been there for me! And now they wanted to just wipe the slate clean?
Her mother chewed on her lip, twisting a twig she’d picked up off the ground in her hands. Her father seemed to be holding his breath. This was Spencer’s decision to make. She could choose to never forgive them, to stamp her foot and stay angry . . . but then she saw the pain and regret in their faces. They really meant it. They wanted her to forgive them more than anything. Wasn’t this what she wanted most in the world—parents who loved and wanted her?
“Yes,” Spencer said. “I forgive you.”
Her parents let out an audible sigh and wrapped their arms around her. Her dad kissed the top of Spencer’s head, his skin smelling like his favorite Kiehl’s aftershave.
Spencer felt like she was floating outside her body. Just yesterday, when she’d discovered her college savings were gone, she’d assumed her life was over. She’d actually thought A was behind it all and had punished Spencer for not trying hard enough to track down Ali’s true killer. But losing that money might have been the best thing that could have happened.
As her parents stood back and appraised their younger daughter, Spencer attempted a wobbly smile. They wanted her. They really wanted her. Then, a slow, roiling wind blew through the yard and another familiar scent tickled her nose. It smelled like . . . vanilla soap, the kind Ali always used to use. Spencer flinched and the horrifying image of Ali covered in soot, choking on flames, sped back.
She shut her eyes, willing the vision out of her head. No. Ali was dead. She had hallucinated her. And that was that.
Chapter 4
Does Prada Make Straitjackets?
As the smell of fresh-brewed Starbucks French roast wafted up the stairs, Hanna Marin lay on her bed, soaking up the last few minutes before she had to get ready for school. MTV2 blared in the background; her miniature Doberman, Dot, snoozed fitfully on his back in his Burberry doggie bed; and Hanna had just finished polishing her toenails Dior pink. Now she was talking on the phone to her new boyfriend, Mike Montgomery.
“Thanks again for the Aveda stuff.” She gazed again at the new products sitting on her nightstand. Yesterday, when Hanna had been leaving the hospital, Mike presented her with the deluxe destressing gift basket, which included a cooling eye mask, cucumber-mint body butter, and a handheld massager. Hanna had used all of them already, desperate to find a panacea that would wipe the fire—and the bizarre Ali sighting—from her mind. The doctors had chalked up the Ali vision to smoke inhalation, but it still seemed so real.
In some ways, Hanna was crushed that it wasn’t. After all these years, she still had a burning wish for Ali to see with her own eyes how much Hanna had changed. The last time Hanna saw Ali, Hanna had been a chubby ugly duckling—definitely the dorkiest of the group—and Ali always made countless cracks about Hanna’s weight, frizzy hair, and bad skin. She’d probably never have guessed that Hanna would transform into a thin, gorgeous, popular swan. Sometimes Hanna wondered if the only way she’d truly know for sure that her transformation was complete was if Ali gave Hanna her blessing. Of course, now that could never happen.
“My pleasure,” Mike answered, snapping Hanna out of her reverie. “And be forewarned—I sent some very juicy Twitters to some of the press people who were waiting outside the ER. Just to get them focused on something other than the fire.”
“Like what?” Hanna asked, instantly on alert. Mike sounded up to something.
“Hanna Marin in talks with MTV about reality show,” Mike recited. “Multimillion-dollar deal.”
“Awesome.” Hanna let out a breath and started waving her hands around to dry her nails.
“I wrote one about myself, too. Mike Montgomery turns down date with Croatian supermodel.”
“You turned down a date?” Hanna giggled flirtatiously. “That doesn’t seem like the Mike Montgomery I know.”
“Who needs Croatian supermodels when you have Hanna Marin?” Mike said.
Hanna wriggled with giddy delight. If someone had told her a few weeks ago that she’d be dating Mike Montgomery, she would have swallowed her Crest Whitestrip in surprise-she’d only pursued Mike because her soon-to-be stepsister, Kate, wanted him too. But somehow in the process, she’d actually started to like him. With his ice blue eyes, pink, kissable lips, and raunchy sense of humor, he was becoming more than just Aria Montgomery’s popularity-obsessed younger brother to her.
She stood up, crossed the room to her closet, and ran her fingers along Ali’s piece of the Time Capsule flag, which she’d taken at the hospital when Aria wasn’t looking. She didn’t feel guilty about it, either—it wasn’t like the flag belonged to Aria. “So I heard that you guys were getting notes from a new A,” Mike said. His voice was suddenly serious.
“I haven’t gotten any notes from A,” Hanna said truthfully. Since she’d gotten her new iPhone and changed her number, A had left her alone. It was certainly a welcome change from the old A, who had horribly turned out to be Hanna’s former bestie, Mona Vanderwaal—something she tried very hard never to think about. “Let’s hope it stays that way.”
“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Mike assured her. “Kick someone’s ass, whatever.”
“Aw.” Hanna flushed with pleasure. No other boyfriend had ever offered to defend her honor. She made a kissing sound, promised she and Mike would meet for lattes at Steam, Rosewood’s coffee bar, this afternoon, and hung up.
Then she padded down to the kitchen for breakfast, pulling a brush through her long auburn hair. The kitchen smelled like mint tea and fresh fruit. Her soon-to-be stepmother, Isabel, and Kate were already at the table, eating bowls of cut-up melon and cottage cheese. Hanna couldn’t think of a more vomit-inspiring food combination.
When they saw Hanna in the doorway, they both leapt to their feet. “How are you feeling?” they gushed at the same time.
“Fine,” Hanna answered tightly, scraping the brush against her scalp. Predictably, Isabel began to wince—she was a germaphobe, and had a thing against hair-brushing near food.
Hanna plopped down in an empty chair and reached for the carafe of coffee. Isabel and Kate sat back down, and there was a long, pregnant pause, like Hanna had interrupted something. They’d probably been gossiping about her. She wouldn’t put it past either of them.
Hanna’s father had been dating Isabel for years—even Ali had met both Isabel and Kate a few months before she disappeared—but they’d only begun living in Rosewood after Hanna’s mother was transferred to Singapore and Hanna’s father took a job in Philly. It was bad enough that her dad had decided to marry a fake-tan-obsessed ER nurse named Isabel—such a trade down from Hanna’s glamorous, successful mother—but throwing a tall, skinny stepsister Hanna’s exact same age into the mix was just unbearable. In the two weeks since Kate had moved in, Hanna had had to endure her daily medley of American Idol songs in the shower, the foul-smelling raw-egg conditioner Kate concocted to keep her hair shiny, and her father’s bottomless praise for every tiny thing Kate did well, as if she were his real daughter. Not to mention that Kate had won over Hanna’s new underlings Naomi Zeigler and Riley Wolfe and then told Mike that Hanna had asked him out on a bet. Then again, at a party a couple weeks ago, Hanna had blurted out that Kate had herpes, so maybe they were even now.