Haunting Olivia Read Free Page A

mirror. At times like this, when her face was fresh scrubbed and her hair was down (she liked wearing chignons at work) and her elegant outfits were replaced by an old “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” T-shirt and her comfiest yoga pants, she could still see the sixteen-year-old girl she was before her life changed forever. Before she began spending a part of every day in a playground—
    sometimes just a few minutes, sometimes hours—
    just to imagine what her baby might have grown up to be like at every stage, every age.

    Chapter 2
    What Zachary Archer needed was a guidebook: How to Deal with Your Thirteen-Year-Old Daughter without Scarring Her—or Yourself—for Life. Until now, he’d been doing fine as a single parent. More than fine. Great. If he did say so himself. He’d gotten through Kayla’s infancy and the terrible twos and the first day of school and her first broken bone and her first crush on a boy.
    He’d even gotten through her first menstrual period, through an embarrassing ten-minute analy-sis of the feminine protection aisle (what the heck were wings? ) of a drugstore before a grandmotherly type saved him, loading up his basket with brightly colored packages and boxes.
    He had no idea how he’d gotten through it. A few months ago, Kayla had come running out of the bathroom shrieking, crying, clapping her hands: “I got it! I got it! I’m not the last of my friends, after all!” At his perplexed expression, she’d said, “Duh, Daddy, my period!”

    HAUNTING OLIV IA
    19
    But you’re just a little girl! he’d thought frantically, wondering how his baby had grown up so fast.
    His first thought had been to call Marnie, his girlfriend, and ask her to bring over the necessary items and show Kayla how to use them, but before he could even mention Marnie’s name, Kayla had screeched, “If you tell whatshername I’ll never tell you anything again! Swearsies you won’t tell Marnie! It’s my private business!” By the time he’d returned from Rite Aid, Kayla was locked in the bathroom with a girlfriend and had half yelled, half laughed through the door that she didn’t need his help.
    He’d gotten through all that. He’d get through her first cigarette. Repeat, repeat, repeat, he told himself as Kayla got into his SUV, a little too okay with having been suspended from school.
    First cigarette. Ha. First cigarette he knew about.
    “You can’t ground me, Dad,” Kayla said, twirling a long, blond spiral curl around her finger as she stared out her window. “I’m already grounded.”
    At the moment she was actually thrice grounded.
    For purposely pushing a girl at the ice-skating rink, which had resulted in a badly twisted ankle. For telling the six-year-old boy two houses over that she was sending a monster to eat him at night and soon there would be nothing left of him but his finger-nails. (Apparently, the Herman family had suffered through three sleepless nights before little Conner told them why he refused to close his eyes.) And for this tidbit to his girlfriend while he went to pay the check at a “give Marnie a chance lunch”: “My dad doesn’t love you, you know that, right? He told me it was just a sex thing—whatever that means.”
    “ Do you love me?” Marnie had asked later, which was 20
    Janelle Taylor
    what had driven him to ground Kayla for two weeks instead of the one he’d been planning. Whether or not he loved Marnie wasn’t a question he wanted—or was ready—to answer. Or that Marnie would have asked without Kayla’s dig.
    Which meant that Kayla was grounded for four weeks. Of course, he’d lost track of when the punishments started and ended. And he had no clue where to fit in punishment for being suspended from school. Suspended. Even he himself, the kid from the wrong side of the tracks, the kid from whom bad behavior was expected, had never been suspended from school. He let out a deep breath.
    In the middle of an important meeting with a potential client,