The Woman in the Photo Read Online Free

escort. I position my shoulders as befitting a girl of my breeding. Like Mother, I, too, am a beauty. And following in the Haberlin tradition, I shall marry above my station, as well. Only I plan to follow my mother’s advice: I will be who I am, not who everyone expects me to be.

CHAPTER 4
    SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
    Memorial Day
    Present
    L ee was low on gas. Lately, the old Toyota seemed to be gulping fuel into its innards only to spew it out the tailpipe in gusts of white. Thankfully, the Encino branch of Bed Bath & Beyond was downhill almost all the way. She shifted into neutral and rode the brake.
    â€œDo you feel different now that you’re officially eighteen?” Valerie had asked before Lee left the pool house that morning. Lee was crouched behind the couch, folding her pajama pants and unfolding the tan khakis and blue uniform shirt she kept in a neat stack there. Next to the stashed sheets and pillow. Out of sight, as Mrs. Adell required. Valerie’s face was so openly hopeful, Lee didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. Of course she felt different. How could she not? The speed of life’s unravelinghad left her dizzy. She had envisioned rising on her eighteenth birthday in her own bed, in her own home.
    â€œGood morning, Mom and Dad,” she would say as soon as full consciousness took hold. It would be a rare day when everything went right.
    â€œScott!” Her older brother would surprise her by coming home for the weekend. The family would be together in a TV sort of way. Valerie would hum a Sunday-morning tune while she scrambled eggs at the stove. Gil, Lee’s father, would snatch a rippled piece of bacon from the greasy paper towel on the plate by the retro toaster. Valerie would playfully bump him with her hip. Scott would ruffle Lee’s hair and call her “sis.” Their twelve-year age difference would seem quirky instead of cryptic. Freshly ground coffee would suffuse the sunny kitchen with the irresistible smell of possibility.
    After a loud and laughing breakfast, Lee would clear the dishes and wipe down the table and promise to be home in time for the Memorial Day picnic. Then she’d meet Shelby in Balboa Park, where they’d spread two towels on the grass by the lake and get started on their summer tans. Together, Lee and Shelby would fantasize about the fall semester when they would both rise from a dorm bed. Lee at Columbia. Shelby at Stanford.
    â€œMy roommate will be perpetually hungover,” Shelby would muse.
    â€œShe’ll stir yogurt and granola into a rinsed-out coffee mug,” Lee would add. “And eat only half of it.”
    â€œHer hair will be sexily jostled.”
    â€œUnlike my morning fright wig!”
    â€œI will kick ass in linguistics.” Shelby planned to be a speech therapist.
    â€œI will . . . do something amazing!” Lee was undecided. The only thing she knew for sure was that her future would shine as brightly as the lighthouse at Cabrillo Beach.
    Even her most dire imaginings never pictured the current scenario: working at Bed Bath & Beyond and living in a cramped pool house with her mother, now a live-in maid. Her father gone, moved into a rusty trailer in Topanga Canyon, and her brother burrowed into a yurt somewhere in the Idaho woods. And Shelby—the best friend, who knew everything there was to know about Lee—in Malawi, spending her last summer before college building houses for the poor. Before, Lee never appreciated how heavy separations could feel.
    â€œI feel extremely mature,” she told her mom. Not entirely a lie.
    In the sweltering car on the way into the Valley, Lee slowly rolled downhill with the windows open and the air conditioner off to save gas. She reached her hand up to the dashboard to practice the keys to the right of middle C. Just because she no longer had a piano didn’t mean music wasn’t in her head. This morning it was Giovanni Marradi. The high notes