Smooth Talking Stranger Read Free Page A

waiting room. “She’s mad because I’m not a virgin anymore.”
    “It’s your body,” I had whispered back, holding her icy hand in mine. “You can do what you want with it. But don’t get pregnant. And . . . I think you shouldn’t let a boy do that to you unless you’re sure he loves you.”
    “They always say they love me,” Tara had told me with a bitter smile. “How do you know when one of them actually means it?”
    I shook my head helplessly.
    “Are you still a virgin, Ella?” Tara had asked after a moment.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Is that why Bryan broke up with you last week? ‘Cause you wouldn’t do it with him?”
    I shook my head. “I broke up with him.” Glancing into her soft blue eyes, I tried for a rueful smile, but it felt more like a grimace. “I came home from school and found him with Mom.”
    “What were they doing?”
    I hesitated for a long moment before replying. “Drinking together,” was all I said. I thought I’d cried until no more tears were left, but my eyes watered again as I nodded. And although Tara was younger than me, she put her hand on my head and pulled it down to her narrow shoulder, offering comfort. We had sat together like that until the nurse came and called Tara’s name.
    I didn’t think I would have survived my childhood without my sister, or she without me. We were each other’s only link to the past . . . that was the strength of our bond, and also our weakness.

    To be fair to Houston, I would have liked it a lot more if I hadn’t been viewing it through a prism of memories. Houston was flat, humid as a wet sock, and surprisingly green in parts, dangling at the end of a belt of heavy forestland that extended from East Texas. There was a furious amount of development in every crevice of its spider-web layout—condos and apartments, retail and office buildings. It was an intensely alive city, flashy and spectacular and filthy and busy.
    Gradually the summer-braised pastures turned into oceans of smoking-hot asphalt with islands of strip malls and big-box stores. Here and there a lone high-rise shot up like a plant runner sent out from the main growth of central Houston.
    Mom lived in the southwest region, in a middle-class neighborhood built around a town square that had once harbored restaurants and shops. Now the square had been taken up by a large home-improvement store. My mother’s house was a two-bedroom colonial ranch style fronted with skinny white columns. I drove along the street, dreading the moment I would pull up in the drive.
    Stopping in front of the garage, I hopped out of my Prius and hurried to the front door. Before I even had a chance to ring the doorbell, Mom had opened the door. She was talking to someone on the phone, her voice low and seductive.
    “. . . promise I’ll make it up to you,” she cooed. “Next time.” She laughed at little. “Oh, I think you know how . . .” I closed the door and waited uncertainly while she continued to talk.
    Mom looked the same as always: slim, fit, and dressed like a teen pop star, no matter that she was pushing fifty. She wore a tight black tank top, a denim miniskirt cinched with a rhinestone-encrusted Kippy belt, and high-heeled sandals. Her forehead was as taut as the skin on a grape. Her hair had been bleached Hilton blonde, falling to her shoulders in meticulously sprayed waves. As she glanced over me, I knew exactly what she thought of my plain white cotton camp shirt, a practical garment that buttoned down the front.
    While listening to the person on the other end of the line, Mom gestured toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms. I nodded and went in search of the baby. The house smelled like air-conditioning and old carpets and tropical air freshener, the rooms dark and silent.
    A small dressing-table lamp had been left on in the master bedroom. My breath quickened in anxious wonder as I approached the bed. The baby was in the center of it, a lump no larger than a loaf of bread. A