A Mother's Lie - Sarah Zettel Page 0,1

Dana was safe now. That was all that really mattered. Beth could handle everything else.

She always had.

PART ONE

SHOW AND TELL

CHAPTER ONE

“Time?” called Dana. She lifted the pan full of vegetable omelet off the burner and shook it to make sure the mass of egg and zucchini was loose.

Beth held up her phone. “Thirteen minutes, forty-four seconds. You’re never gonna make it!”

“Watch me!” It was down to the wire in the Fraser kitchen’s morning marathon—could Dana make an edible breakfast in fifteen minutes or less?

Dana shook the pan again and eyed the distance to the ceiling.

“You’re cleaning up when you miss!” Beth reminded her. The game of the fifteen-minute breakfast was their way of combining Dana’s love of cooking with the morning rush that never seemed to get any easier. Beth could not stand to be late, and Dana loved to show off, so it all worked.

Dana gave the pan a swift up-down jerk. The entire golden disk of egg and vegetables launched into the air, flipped, and came down. Dana bent her knees and held out the pan and—

SPLAT!

—caught the whole thing.

“Yes!” She pumped her fist in the air. “Get the plates!”

Beth pushed the colorful Fiestaware across the breakfast bar so Dana could slide segments of omelet onto the dishes. She sprinkled feta cheese on top of each plate, along with a handful of tomato chunks, and dropped the grilled bagels next to them.

“And done!”

“Fourteen minutes, fifty-three seconds,” Beth announced.

Dana threw both hands into the air. “Team Dangerface for the win!”

They both pulled their high stools up to the bar and tucked in. Dana glugged her orange juice. Beth poured a cup of coffee from the carafe. The speakers were cranked up, streaming a pulse-surging mix of Beyoncé, Adele, and Alicia Keys.

People who saw Beth and Dana together knew instantly they were mother and daughter. Beth had no idea where her ancestors had really come from. Her parents had regularly claimed to be everything from black Irish to Armenian. They had, however, gifted her and Dana with the similar oval faces, blunt noses, sandy skin, and thick brown hair. Time and determination had hardened Beth’s hazel eyes, but she still smiled easily, although that smile could be a disguise as often as it was a revelation.

If Beth was an expert at hiding in plain sight, Dana was brash and loud and determined to be herself, even when she wasn’t sure who that might be from day to day. Currently, she sported an uneven bob that ran down to her jawline on one side and barely covered her ear on the other. She had three piercings in one ear and four in the other. Her earrings never matched.

Dana’s most striking feature, though, was her eyes. The technical term was heterochromia iridis, meaning her eyes were two different colors—the left one, green, the right one, brown. Dana had flirted with the idea of hiding them a couple of years ago. Since then, she’d gone the exact opposite direction to emphasize them with mascara and shadow.

“So, last day of freshman year, huh?” Beth dug into the steaming omelet.

“Halle-effing-lujah,” Dana mumbled around her mouthful.

“Anything I need to know about today? And, by the way, this is really good.”

“Thanks, and, um, no, I don’t think so.”

Beth eyed her daughter as she took another gulp of coffee. “As an experienced parent and professional lie detector, I am qualified to tell you that’s a suspicious hesitation.”

“I hate it when you do that.”

“I know. So, what happened?”

“Nothing!” Dana tore her bagel half in two. “Except you might be getting an email about my oral presentation in English.”

“Why?”

Dana huffed out a sigh. “Cuz when I was giving the report, I maybe kind of said that Holden Caulfield was a self-involved asshole and he should have jumped off that cliff he wanted to save all the kids from, like they wouldn’t know it was there in the first place, and it seemed pretty obvious Salinger was full of horseshit.”

“Uh-huh. And what did Mr. Kennedy have to say?”

“That I should please remember that horseshit was not a current vocabulary word, and so I said fine, Salinger was full of bullshit.”

That was when the phone rang. Not Beth’s cell. The landline in the kitchen.

“Do not say, ‘Saved by the bell,’” said Dana as soon as Beth opened her mouth.

Beth just checked the clock. Seven thirty exactly. They both needed to be out the door in less than fifteen minutes. A well-known fact in some circles.

So, I wonder who this could possibly be?

Beth