Perfect Nightmare Read Free Page B

Please initial it when you sign the listing agreement and I’ll put everything into motion.”
    Once again she nodded. “Yes, fine.”
    Acton picked up his briefcase, and she took that as a cue to usher him to the door. “I’m sure you’ll be more than happy with the marketing our firm will provide,” he said.
    That must sound canned even to him, Kara thought. “I’m sure I will,” she said. “Thanks for coming.”
    As she stood at the door, a car pulled up in front and her daughter got out. Kara watched Lindsay wave to her friend Dawn and to Phyllis D'Angelo, who was driving. “Call me!” Lindsay yelled to Dawn, then passed the agent on her way to the front porch.
    Mark Acton nodded to Lindsay, then turned to watch her as she walked up the porch steps.
    Kara scowled at him, but if he saw her, he gave no sign. She forced the scowl from her brow, told herself she had to get used to it. Her daughter was seventeen now, and pretty, and men would look at her every day for the next twenty years. Then, seeing the bandage on Lindsay’s wrist, all thoughts of Mark Acton vanished from her mind. “What happened?” she asked. “Are you all right?”
    “I’m fine,” Lindsay said, brushing by her and into the house. She dropped her backpack on the foyer floor, and only then held out her hand for the examination she knew there was no way of escaping. “It’s just a sprain. I goofed up a flip at practice.”
    “Nothing’s broken?” Kara fretted.
    Lindsay pulled her hand away. “No, Mom. I told you, it’s just a sprain.” She tipped her head toward the front door. “Who was that?”
    “Just an agent,” Kara said, shrugging dismissively.
    Lindsay winced as if she’d been struck. “Don’t I have any say in what this family does?” she asked as she wheeled around and started toward the stairs. Though she’d tried to hide it, Kara saw her daughter’s eyes glistening with tears.
    “Lindsay, wait!”
    But of course, she didn’t.
    When Lindsay vanished up the stairs, Kara looked again at the listing agreement on the dining room table, and had to resist the urge to pick up the forms and brochures and rip them to shreds. She didn’t want to move to the city any more than Lindsay did, but what choice did she have? Being away from Steve so much was destroying their marriage. Still, Lindsay only had a year of school left. Maybe they could find some way to work it out.
    But as she unconsciously picked at a different cuticle, she knew there would be no working it out. Not only was the commute killing her marriage, but Steve’s promotion, which required him to be in Manhattan even more, hadn’t been enough to even cover the cost of the tiny apartment he’d rented. In fact, the apartment had turned his raise into just another liability.
    So there wasn’t any choice; they had to move.
    Kara waited long enough for Lindsay to pour out her tears into her pillow, and as she moved up the curving staircase to her daughter’s room, she realized once more just how much she was going to miss this big house. She’d helped design it, and they’d moved in two weeks before Lindsay was born. The entire history of the family was in this house. Whatever they found in Manhattan would not only be much smaller, but an abandonment of their entire past as well. Could they really do it?
    She knocked twice on Lindsay’s door, then opened it a crack. “Linds? Can I come in?”
    She took the silence as assent and went inside. It was a quintessential teenage girl’s room, with its neglected but not forgotten stuffed animals and Barbie dolls, new and often replaced posters of buff young men on the walls, stacks of CDs, a computer, and enough makeup to beautify half the women on Long Island.
    Kara perched uneasily on the edge of the bed. As she’d suspected, Lindsay’s face was turned away, but the emotional storm seemed to have passed. Lindsay was quiet as she lay facing the wall.
    “Honey?” Kara smoothed her daughter’s silky blond