Sara Shepard: Heartless

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.

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.