by Sara Shepard
Her dad shifted his weight and glanced at his wife. “I knew we should’ve told her years ago, Veronica,” he mumbled.
“I didn’t know this was going to happen,” Spencer’s mom squeaked, raising her hands. The air was so chilly, her breath came out in visible puffs.
“Tell me what?” Spencer pressed. Her heart started to thud. When she breathed in, all she could smell was ash.
“We should go inside,” Mrs. Hastings said distractedly. “It’s awfully cold out here.”
“Tell me what?” Spencer repeated, planting her feet. She wasn’t going anywhere.
Her mother paused for a long time. A creaking noise sounded from inside the barn. Finally, Mrs. Hastings sat down on one of the enormous boulders that peppered the big backyard. “Honey, Olivia did give birth to you.”
Spencer’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Kind of gave birth to you,” Mr. Hastings corrected.
Spencer took a step back, a brittle twig snapping under her boot. “So I was really adopted? Olivia was telling the truth?” Is this why I feel so different from you guys? Is this why you’ve always preferred Melissa—because I’m not really your daughter?
Mrs. Hastings spun the three-carat diamond on her finger. Somewhere deep in the woods, a tree branch fell to the ground with an earsplitting crack. “This certainly isn’t something I thought we’d discuss today.” She took a Zen-centering breath, shook out her hands, and raised her head. Mr. Hastings rubbed his gloved hands together fast. Suddenly, they both looked so clueless. Not like the always-poised, absolutely-in-control parents Spencer knew so well.
“Melissa’s delivery was complicated.” Mrs. Hastings drummed her hands on the slick, heavy boulder. Her eyes flickered to the front of the house for a moment, watching as a battered Honda slowed at their driveway. Curious neighbors had been circling the cul-de-sac all afternoon. “The doctors told me that giving birth to another child could endanger my health. But we wanted another baby, so we ended up using a surrogate. Basically . . . we used my egg and your dad’s . . . you know.” She lowered her eyes, too demure and proper to say sperm aloud. “But we needed a woman to carry the baby—you—for us. So we found Olivia.”
“We screened her thoroughly to make sure she was healthy.” Mr. Hastings sat down next to his wife on the rock, barely noticing that his handmade A. Testoni loafers had sunk into the sooty mud. “She seemed to fit what we wanted, and she seemed to want us to have you. Only, toward the end of her pregnancy, she started to get . . . demanding. She wanted more money from us. She threatened to escape to Canada and keep you for herself.”
“So we paid her more,” Mrs. Hastings blurted. She put her blond head in her hands. “And in the end, she did give you up, obviously. It’s just . . . after how possessive she became, we didn’t want you to have any contact with her. We decided that the best thing we could do was keep it a secret from you—because, really, you are ours.”
“But some people didn’t get that,” Mr. Hastings said, rubbing his salt-and-pepper hair. His cell phone rang in his pocket, playing the first few bars of Beethoven’s Fifth. He ignored it. “Like Nana. She thought it was unnatural, and she never forgave us for doing it. When Nana’s will said she was only giving money to her ‘natural-born grandchildren,’ we should have come clean. It seems like Olivia has been waiting for a moment like this all along.”
The wind calmed down, coming to an eerie standstill. The Hastingses’ dogs, Rufus and Beatrice, clawed at the back door, eager to get out and see what the family was doing. Spencer gaped at her parents. Mr. and Mrs. Hastings looked ragged and exhausted, like admitting this had taken everything out of them. It was obvious this was something they hadn’t talked about in a long time. Spencer looked back and forth at them, trying to process it all. Their words made sense individually, but not as a whole. “So Olivia carried me,” she repeated slowly. A shiver went up her spine that had nothing to do with the wind.
“Yes,” Mrs. Hastings said. “But we’re your family, Spencer. You’re ours.”
“We wanted you so badly, and Olivia was our only option,” Mr. Hastings said, gazing up at the purplish clouds. “Lately we seem to have lost sight of how important we all are to one another. And after everything you’ve gone through with Ian and Alison and this fire . . .” He shook his head, staring again at the barn and then at the ruined woods beyond. A crow screeched and circled overhead. “We should have been there for you. We never wanted you to think you weren’t loved.”
Her mother tentatively took Spencer’s hand and squeezed. “What if we . . . start fresh? Could we try that? Could you forgive us?”
The wind gusted again and the smell of smoke intensified. A couple of black leaves blew across the lawn into Ali’s yard, coming to a stop near the half-dug hole where Ali’s body had been found. Spencer fiddled with the plastic hospital bracelet that still circled her wrist, oscillating from shock to compassion to anger. In the past six months, her parents had taken away Spencer’s barn apartment living privileges and let Melissa stay there instead, cut off her credit cards, sold her car, and told her on more than one occasion that she was dead to them. Damn right I haven’t felt like I had a realfamily, she wanted to scream. Damn right you haven’t been there for me! And now they wanted to just wipe the slate clean?
Her mother chewed on her lip, twisting a twig she’d picked up off the ground in her hands. Her father seemed to be holding his breath. This was Spencer’s decision to make. She could choose to never forgive them, to stamp her foot and stay angry . . . but then she saw the pain and regret in their faces. They really meant it. They wanted her to forgive them more than anything. Wasn’t this what she wanted most in the world—parents who loved and wanted her?
“Yes,” Spencer said. “I forgive you.”
Her parents let out an audible sigh and wrapped their arms around her. Her dad kissed the top of Spencer’s head, his skin smelling like his favorite Kiehl’s aftershave.
Spencer felt like she was floating outside her body. Just yesterday, when she’d discovered her college savings were gone, she’d assumed her life was over. She’d actually thought A was behind it all and had punished Spencer for not trying hard enough to track down Ali’s true killer. But losing that money might have been the best thing that could have happened.
As her parents stood back and appraised their younger daughter, Spencer attempted a wobbly smile. They wanted her. They really wanted her. Then, a slow, roiling wind blew through the yard and another familiar scent tickled her nose. It smelled like . . . vanilla soap, the kind Ali always used to use. Spencer flinched and the horrifying image of Ali covered in soot, choking on flames, sped back.
She shut her eyes, willing the vision out of her head. No. Ali was dead. She had hallucinated her. And that was that.
Chapter 4 Does Prada Make Straitjackets?
As the smell of fresh-brewed Starbucks French roast wafted up the stairs, Hanna Marin lay on her bed, soaking up the last few minutes before she had to get ready for school. MTV2 blared in the background; her miniature Doberman, Dot, snoozed fitfully on his back in his Burberry doggie bed; and Hanna had just finished polishing her toenails Dior pink. Now she was talking on the phone to her new boyfriend, Mike Montgomery.
“Thanks again for the Aveda stuff.” She gazed again at the new products sitting on her nightstand. Yesterday, when Hanna had been leaving the hospital, Mike presented her with the deluxe destressing gift basket, which included a cooling eye mask, cucumber-mint body butter, and a handheld massager. Hanna had used all of them already, desperate to find a panacea that would wipe the fire—and the bizarre Ali sighting—from her mind. The doctors had chalked up the Ali vision to smoke inhalation, but it still seemed so real.
In some ways, Hanna was crushed that it wasn’t. After all these years, she still had a burning wish for Ali to see with her own eyes how much Hanna had changed. The last time Hanna saw Ali, Hanna had been a chubby ugly duckling—definitely the dorkiest of the group—and Ali alway
s made countless cracks about Hanna’s weight, frizzy hair, and bad skin. She’d probably never have guessed that Hanna would transform into a thin, gorgeous, popular swan. Sometimes Hanna wondered if the only way she’d truly know for sure that her transformation was complete was if Ali gave Hanna her blessing. Of course, now that could never happen.
“My pleasure,” Mike answered, snapping Hanna out of her reverie. “And be forewarned—I sent some very juicy Twitters to some of the press people who were waiting outside the ER. Just to get them focused on something other than the fire.”
“Like what?” Hanna asked, instantly on alert. Mike sounded up to something.
“Hanna Marin in talks with MTV about reality show,” Mike recited. “Multimillion-dollar deal.”
“Awesome.” Hanna let out a breath and started waving her hands around to dry her nails.
“I wrote one about myself, too. Mike Montgomery turns down date with Croatian supermodel.”
“You turned down a date?” Hanna giggled flirtatiously. “That doesn’t seem like the Mike Montgomery I know.”
“Who needs Croatian supermodels when you have Hanna Marin?” Mike said.
Hanna wriggled with giddy delight. If someone had told her a few weeks ago that she’d be dating Mike Montgomery, she would have swallowed her Crest Whitestrip in surprise-she’d only pursued Mike because her soon-to-be stepsister, Kate, wanted him too. But somehow in the process, she’d actually started to like him. With his ice blue eyes, pink, kissable lips, and raunchy sense of humor, he was becoming more than just Aria Montgomery’s popularity-obsessed younger brother to her.
She stood up, crossed the room to her closet, and ran her fingers along Ali’s piece of the Time Capsule flag, which she’d taken at the hospital when Aria wasn’t looking. She didn’t feel guilty about it, either—it wasn’t like the flag belonged to Aria. “So I heard that you guys were getting notes from a new A,” Mike said. His voice was suddenly serious.
“I haven’t gotten any notes from A,” Hanna said truthfully. Since she’d gotten her new iPhone and changed her number, A had left her alone. It was certainly a welcome change from the old A, who had horribly turned out to be Hanna’s former bestie, Mona Vanderwaal—something she tried very hard never to think about. “Let’s hope it stays that way.”
“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Mike assured her. “Kick someone’s ass, whatever.”
“Aw.” Hanna flushed with pleasure. No other boyfriend had ever offered to defend her honor. She made a kissing sound, promised she and Mike would meet for lattes at Steam, Rosewood’s coffee bar, this afternoon, and hung up.
Then she padded down to the kitchen for breakfast, pulling a brush through her long auburn hair. The kitchen smelled like mint tea and fresh fruit. Her soon-to-be stepmother, Isabel, and Kate were already at the table, eating bowls of cut-up melon and cottage cheese. Hanna couldn’t think of a more vomit-inspiring food combination.
When they saw Hanna in the doorway, they both leapt to their feet. “How are you feeling?” they gushed at the same time.
“Fine,” Hanna answered tightly, scraping the brush against her scalp. Predictably, Isabel began to wince—she was a germaphobe, and had a thing against hair-brushing near food.
Hanna plopped down in an empty chair and reached for the carafe of coffee. Isabel and Kate sat back down, and there was a long, pregnant pause, like Hanna had interrupted something. They’d probably been gossiping about her. She wouldn’t put it past either of them.
Hanna’s father had been dating Isabel for years—even Ali had met both Isabel and Kate a few months before she disappeared—but they’d only begun living in Rosewood after Hanna’s mother was transferred to Singapore and Hanna’s father took a job in Philly. It was bad enough that her dad had decided to marry a fake-tan-obsessed ER nurse named Isabel—such a trade down from Hanna’s glamorous, successful mother—but throwing a tall, skinny stepsister Hanna’s exact same age into the mix was just unbearable. In the two weeks since Kate had moved in, Hanna had had to endure her daily medley of American Idol songs in the shower, the foul-smelling raw-egg conditioner Kate concocted to keep her hair shiny, and her father’s bottomless praise for every tiny thing Kate did well, as if she were his real daughter. Not to mention that Kate had won over Hanna’s new underlings Naomi Zeigler and Riley Wolfe and then told Mike that Hanna had asked him out on a bet. Then again, at a party a couple weeks ago, Hanna had blurted out that Kate had herpes, so maybe they were even now.
“Melon?” Kate asked sweetly, pushing the bowl toward Hanna with her annoyingly thin arms.
“No thanks,” Hanna said in the same saccharine tone. It seemed like they’d called a cease-fire at the Radley party—Kate had even smiled when Hanna and Mike got together—but Hanna wasn’t about to push it.
Then Kate gasped. “Oops,” she whispered, pulling the Opinions section of this morning’s Philadelphia Sentinel toward her plate. She tried to fold it before Hanna saw the headline, but it was too late. There was a large picture of Hanna, Spencer, Emily, and Aria standing in front of the burning woods. How Many Lies Can We Allow? screamed one of the essays. According to Best Friends, Alison DiLaurentis Rises from the Dead.
“I’m so sorry, Hanna.” Kate covered the story with her bowl of cottage cheese.
“It’s fine,” Hanna snapped, trying to swallow her embarrassment. What was wrong with these reporters? Weren’t there more important things in the world to obsess over? And hello, it was smoke inhalation!
Kate took a dainty bite of melon. “I want to help, Han. If you need me to, like, be your advocate with the press-go on camera and stuff like that—I’d be happy to.”
“Thanks,” Hanna said sarcastically. Kate was such an attention whore. Then she noticed a photo of Wilden on the part of the Opinions page that was still visible. RosewoodPD, said the headline under his photo. Are They Really Doing Everything They Can?
Now that was an op-ed worth reading. Wilden might not have killed Ali, but he’d certainly been acting bizarrely over the past few weeks. Like how he’d given Hanna a ride home from her jog one morning, driving at twice the speed limit and playing chicken with an oncoming car. Or how he’d vehemently demanded that they stop saying Ali was alive . . . or else. Was Wilden really trying to protect them, or did he have his own reasons for keeping them quiet about Ali? And if Wilden was innocent, who the hell set that fire . . . and why?
“Hanna. Good. You’re up.”
Hanna turned around. Her father stood in the doorway, dressed in a button-down and pin-striped pants. His hair was still wet from the shower. “Can we talk to you for a minute?” he asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee.
Hanna lowered the paper. We?
Mr. Marin walked to the table and pulled back a chair. It scraped noisily against the tile. “A few days ago I received an e-mail from Dr. Atkinson.”
He was staring at Hanna as if she should understand. “Who’s that?” she finally asked.
“The school’s psychologist,” Isabel piped up in a know-it-all voice. “He’s very nice. Kate met him when she was touring the school. He insists that students call him Dave.”
Hanna fought the urge to snort. What, had goody-goody Kate sucked up to the entire Rosewood Day staff during her tour of the school?
“Dr. Atkinson said he’s been keeping an eye on you at school,” her father went on. “He’s very concerned, Hanna. He thinks you may have post-traumatic stress disorder from Alison’s death and your car accident.”
Hanna swirled the remaining coffee in her cup. “Isn’t PTSD the thing soldiers get?”
Mr. Marin spun the thin platinum ring he wore on his right hand. The ring had been a gift from Isabel, and when they got married, he was going to switch it over to his left. Barf. “Well, apparently it can happen to anyone who’s gone through something really terrible,” he explained. “Usually people get cold sweats, heart palpitations, stuff like that. They also relive what happened over and over.”
&nbs
p; Hanna traced the wood grain pattern on the kitchen table. All right, she had been experiencing symptoms like that, usually experiencing the moment when Mona mowed her down with her SUV. But c’mon—anyone would freak about that. “I’ve been feeling great,” she chirped.
“I didn’t think much of the letter at first,” Mr. Marin went on, ignoring her, “but I pulled a psychiatrist aside at the hospital yesterday before you were discharged. Sweats and palpitations aren’t the only symptoms of PTSD. It can manifest itself in lots of other ways, too. Like self-destructive eating patterns, for example.”
“I don’t have eating problems,” Hanna snapped, horrified. “You guys see me eat all the time!”
Isabel cleared her throat, glancing pointedly at Kate. Kate wound a piece of chestnut hair around her finger. “It’s just, Hanna . . .” She gazed at Hanna with her enormous blue eyes. “You kind of told me you do.”
Hanna’s jaw dropped. “You told them?” A few weeks ago, in a moment of insanity, Hanna had spilled to Kate that she used to have an eensy-weensy binge-purge problem.
“I thought it was for your own good,” Kate whispered. “I swear.”
“The psychiatrist said lying could also be a symptom,” Mr. Marin went on. “First telling everyone you saw Ian Thomas’s dead body in the woods, and now with you girls saying you saw Alison. And that got me thinking about the lies you’ve told us—sneaking out of our dinner last fall to go to that dance at school, stealing Percocet from the burn clinic, shoplifting from Tiffany, crashing your boyfriend’s car, even telling your whole class that Kate had . . .” He trailed off, clearly not wanting to say herpes aloud. “Dr. Atkinson suggests that it might be best if you took a few weeks off from all this craziness. Go somewhere where you can relax and focus on your problems.”
Hanna brightened. “Like Hawaii?”
Her father bit his lip. “No . . . like a facility.”
