Free Die Before I Wake by Laurie Breton

mom never had trouble driving it.” I checked the mirror again. This time, my stepdaughter looked smug, and far older than her seven years. Why was it that she always made me feel as though she were the adult and I the child? I took a breath and forced myself to be civil. “This was your mom’s car?”
    A smile flitted over her face. The little wretch had hit a nerve, and she knew it. “Yes,” she said. “And Mom was a good driver. Sadie never got carsick when she rode with Mom.”
    Mild panic assailed me as I imagined myself cleaning vomit from the backseat of a very expensive Land Rover. “Sadie?” I said in alarm. “Are you carsick?”
    “I’m not sick,” Sadie piped up. “I love to ride.” In the mirror, Taylor was grinning. Gotcha! her face seemed to say.
    I reminded myself again that I was the adult, and far too mature for the kind of retaliation I was contemplating. I had other, more important things to focus on.
    Like the fact that the car I was driving belonged to a dead woman. A dead woman who happened to be my predecessor. Thanks, Tom. It would’ve been really nice if he’d bothered to drop a hint.
    I wasn’t sure why it gave me the willies. Did I think Beth’s spirit was still hovering around, clucking in disapproval as I stole her husband, laid claim to her children, and burned out her clutch? It wasn’t as though she’d died in the vehicle and was therefore doomed to haunt it for all of eternity. Although, come to think of it, I was sure Tom had told me his wife died in an accident. If that was true, and if this vehicle really had belonged to her, then what had she been driving?
    Maybe she hadn’t been driving at all. Maybe she’d been a passenger in somebody else’s car. Tom hadn’t gone into any detail about her death. I could tell it bothered him to talk about it; the wound was still a little too fresh to start picking at the scab, so I hadn’t pried. But I had to admit I was curious.
    I glanced in the mirror again. Sadie was staring out the window, humming under her breath, some tuneless little ditty that kept repeating itself, over and over. Or maybe that was just Sadie’s interpretation of how the song went. Taylor had tired of toying with me and was now focused on her Game Boy. The self-satisfied look on her face confirmed what I already knew: She was going to be a challenge. But one way or another, I’d win the war. After all, I’d once been a seven-year-old know-it-all. To paraphrase an old country song, I’d forgotten more than she would ever know about being a brat. The kid didn’t stand a chance against me.
    I eventually found the grocery store—the town was too small for it to stay hidden for long—and I pulled into a parking space. Just to satisfy my curiosity, I opened the glove compartment and rummaged around until I found the auto registration. I told myself I wasn’t snooping. After all, the vehicle belonged to Tom and, as his wife, that meant it was half mine. Besides, if I got pulled over for some in-fraction, I’d need to know where the registration was. I had a right to snoop.
    I could rationalize until the cows came home, but in the end, it didn’t matter. The registration didn’t answer any of my questions, because the car was registered to Tom. It might have been Beth’s vehicle, as Taylor had said, or my stepdaughter might have been needling me. It was impossible to tell. The only way I’d know would be to ask Tom.
    I shoved the registration back into the glove compartment and slammed it shut. “Okay, girls,” I said briskly. “Let’s do this!”
    For a weekday afternoon, the store was busy. Lots of harried housewives and elderly people pushing their shopping carts up and down the aisles. Zippy muzak, designed to move shoppers along at the opti-mum pace for picking and choosing, blared out of overhead speakers. I checked Jeannette’s list. It was extensive, but not detailed. Standing in front of the milk case, I pondered all the choices,