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The street they were on was quiet, with tall trees providing shade. There were wind chimes in the distance and the sound of people splashing in pools she couldn’t see. It was like a daydream of suburban perfection, andEverly found it hard to imagine that the kind of scary men who’d been chasing her could have anything to do with a place like this.
“Ring it again,” Blue said from beside her.
He’d turned to face the street, standing in that loose, ready stance she recognized from their brief self-defense lessons in her living room.
Those stolen hours after work felt like a lifetime ago.
Everly reached over to hit the bell again. She could hear an echo roll through the house inside, and didn’t know why the sound made her tense.
“It’s the middle of the day,” she pointed out. “She could be at work.”
“There’s no evidence that Annabeth Lambert has ever held a job.”
Blue said that as if there were layers to his statement that she should have recognized instantly, but she didn’t. Instead, the longer they stood there, the more she noticed more things about the house that hadn’t been apparent to her before. Like the fact that once they’d walked up to the front door, they were hidden from the street. There was a driveway that circled around, but it, too, was hidden by the high hedges.
Meaning anyone could drive up to the front door and park here, and no one on the street would be any the wiser. Anyone could do anything here, in fact. And no one would see. She wasn’t sure they’d even hear it, unless the breeze from Lake Michigan was exactly right.
These were things that would never have crossed Everly’s mind a month ago.
She felt a weird kind of itchy sensation on the back of her neck and turned toward Blue, opening her mouth totell him they should leave, but that was when she heard it. A faint sound on the other side of the big, thick door.
Everly rubbed at the back of her neck, but the dancing bundle of nerves deep in her belly kicked into overdrive.
Blue was right there with her, so they would be okay. She was sure of it.
There was the sound of the locks being pulled, and then the great door swung inward.
And Everly actually flinched back in surprise. Because standing before them, rail thin and lightly tanned, wearing a bright orange top and white pants that managed to look both simple and incredibly expensive at the same time, was Rebecca.
Of course, it wasn’t really Rebecca, Everly realized in the next second. But the resemblance was overwhelming—and more than a little disconcerting.
The woman standing in the doorway was older than Rebecca, though how much older, Everly couldn’t begin to guess. Her forehead was too smooth for it to be at all natural, and there was a suspicious flatness beneath each eye. She had Rebecca’s same bright blue eyes and a long, thick mane of expertly blown-out chestnut-colored hair. She had the same narrow nose and the same faintly haughty set to her mouth, though her lips were significantly plumper. She was tall and willowy even without the added height of her glittery platform sandals, and Everly understood that this had to be Rebecca’s mother.
It couldn’t be anyone else.
“My God,” she said without meaning to. “You look just like her.”
The woman who was obviously Annabeth Lambert smiled, though it went no further than a strained crookof her overdone lips. “I’m told we could be mistaken for sisters. Perhaps even twins.”
And Everly made a mental note to never, ever worry about her relationship with her mother again. Because her own mother might have her issues, but Everly had never worried that she might try to... pass herself off as Everly.
She felt Blue’s gaze on the side of her face, and remembered herself. And why she was here, talking to a woman she wasn’t at all surprised her roommate had never mentioned. Because really, what would she have said?
Come to lunch with my mother and me, but fun fact, she’s made herself into my doppelgänger and maybe steals my clothes. Along with my face.
Maybe it was better that she and Rebecca had stuck to the odd revealing conversation about bad dates and, aside from that, shared rants about reality television episodes.
“I’m sorry to show up at your front door with no advance notice,” she said, trying to sound whatever normal was under these circumstances. “I know we’ve never met, but I am—I mean, I was—Rebecca’s roommate. And I was—”
“Yes.” Annabeth’s face didn’t change expression. Everly wondered if she was being deliberately flat and unreadable, or if she couldn’t actually move her face with all that... smoothness. “The roommate who reported my daughter’s murder when it appears Rebecca simply ran out on you. Evelyn, was it?”
That was a lot to digest, so Everly concentrated on the part she could actually handle straight off, as it wascertainly not the first time she’d been called Evelyn over the course of her life. “Everly, actually.”
“What a strange name.”
Rebecca’s mother didn’t smile at that, however woodenly. She didn’t laugh to soften it. Instead, she gazed back at Everly as if she were daring Everly to do something about it.
So Everly laughed, as if it had been a joke.