“N-Not him,” she said. “We need to call my real father.” She wrenched away from Lucy’s protective embrace, her gaze returning to the house, where three men were already working to retrieve Tom MacIver’s body. “He was my stepfather,” Teri said. “He adopted me when I was only four. Now we have to call my real father.”
CHAPTER 2
Bright sunlight flooded the room. As Melissa Holloway’s eyes opened, she instantly felt a pang of guilt—she’d overslept yet again. She started to fling the thin sheet aside, then remembered. It was all right to oversleep today. Today, this and all the other tiny sins she fell victim to every day of her life would be forgiven.
For today was her birthday.
And not just any birthday, either. Today was her thirteenth birthday, the first day of a whole new era. Finally, the eternity of being a child was over. She was a teenager.
She flopped back on the pillow, stretched luxuriantly, and tried to feel the difference between the Melissa who existed today and the Melissa who had endured all the other days of her life.
She felt nothing. No different at all.
Her feeling of well-being dimmed slightly, but then she decided it didn’t matter that she didn’t feel different. That would come later. The point was that she was different.
She sat up and glanced around the big room in which she’d spent every summer of her life. It would have to change now, she decided. It wasn’t a teenager’s room at all. It was a little girl’s room, the shelves that lined its walls overflowing with her collection of dolls and stuffed animals, and a few favorite toys from her toddler years still tucked away in the corners. Next to the fireplace was her enormous Victorian dollhouse, which would certainly have to go. After all, dollhouses were for babies.
She frowned, already wondering if perhaps she should compromise on the dollhouse. After all, it wasn’t as if it was just any dollhouse. It was big—so big that when she was very small she’d actually been able to crawl inside it—and it was furnished with perfect miniatures of Victorian furniture.
“What do you think, D’Arcy?” she asked out loud. “Don’t you think we should keep it at least for a while?” Suddenly she clamped her hands over her mouth, remembering her promise to her father. Only last week Melissa had vowed that she would give up D’Arcy today.
After all, friends who existed in your imagination were only for children, too. When you grew up, you gave up the imaginary friends for real ones. Except that in Melissa’s mind, D’Arcy wasn’t really imaginary at all—she was almost as real as she herself was. She lived up in the attic here in Secret Cove, and never traveled to the city when they were in the apartment in Manhattan the rest of the time. Of course, besides Melissa, there weren’t many people for D’Arcy to talk to—only Cora Peterson, the housekeeper—but that had never bothered D’Arcy at all.
Melissa thought that D’Arcy must be lonely when the house in Secret Cove was closed up for the winter, but years ago, during one of their long talks in the middle of the night when Melissa couldn’t sleep, D’Arcy had told Melissa that she liked being all by herself. In fact, when Melissa had confessed to D’Arcy yesterday that she’d promised to stop talking to her, D’Arcy had agreed immediately. “But I won’t stop thinking about you,” Melissa had reassured her friend.
D’Arcy had said nothing, but Melissa had been certain that her friend knew exactly what she meant—that was the wonderful thing about D’Arcy. Even when no one else understood Melissa, D’Arcy always did.
Melissa sighed. It was going to be hard giving D’Arcy up, even harder than giving up the dollhouse. Well, maybe she’d sort of cheat. Maybe she’d keep the dollhouse and pretend when she was talking to D’Arcy that she was really talking to the tiny wooden figures that populated the house. Except that even if it fooled her parents and Cora, she herself would still know she’d been cheating.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said, unconsciously speaking out loud once again. “You can have the dollhouse. I’ll move it up to the attic, and then come and visit it sometimes. And if you’re there when I come, that’s not my fault, is it?”
From far away, in the depths of her imagination, she was certain she heard D’Arcy laughing softly.