Free Home Invasion by Joy Fielding Page A

never should have agreed to meet him for coffee. What’s gotten into me? Kathy wondered. She hadn’t seen Michael in more than twenty years. Why hadn’t she told Michael that she was happily married and the stepmother of a sixteen-year-old girl? Or better yet, why hadn’t she simply ignored Michael’s letter?
    Instead, Kathy had answered the letter and later agreed to meet Michael for coffee. And not just once, but twice. Then came Michael’s emails, sometimes as many as six in a single day. And now here Michael was, in Kathy’s thoughts and in her dreams, as real as if he were lying right beside her. Kathy pulled her husband’s arm tighter around her. Maybe that way Jack could stop her from going to see Michael again.
    “Mmm,” Jack said. He snuggled closer and buried his nose in the back of Kathy’s neck. “You smell good. Is that a new perfume?”
    Kathy felt a sudden pang of guilt. She’d bought the perfume to wear for her meetingwith Michael that afternoon. She thought its scent would have worn off by now. “Yes,” she answered. “Do you like it?”
    “Very much. I like your hair, too. Did you have it done?”
    “Yes,” Kathy said. “This morning.”
    “Special occasion?” Jack asked.
    “Not really,” Kathy told him. She wished her husband would stop asking questions and go back to sleep. Did he suspect something? she wondered. “I was just too lazy to wash my hair myself.”
    “It’s very nice. I meant to tell you earlier. I’m sorry,” Jack said.
    “No need to apologize.” Kathy’s hand moved to push away a few stray blond curls that had fallen across her mouth.
    “I’m sorry,” Jack said again.
    Kathy understood that Jack was no longer talking about her hair.
    “Do you want to talk about it?” Jack asked.
    By “it,” Kathy knew Jack meant the fight she’d had with his daughter, Lisa, at breakfast. “Not really,” Kathy told him.
    “I should have said something,” Jack said anyway. “I should have taken your side.”
    Yes, you should have, Kathy thought. “It’s okay,” she said instead. “Lisa’s your daughter. I know it’s not easy for you.” The whole thing is silly, Kathy thought. I’ve been that girl’s stepmother since Lisa was two years old and she can still barely stand the sight of me.
    Of course, Lisa’s mother, Ruth, didn’t make things any easier. Every time Kathy seemed to be getting closer to Lisa, Ruth butted in. Every time Kathy and Lisa started to form a real mother-daughter bond, Ruth made sure that didn’t happen.
    When Jack and Ruth divorced, Ruth had promised Jack that he could see Lisa whenever he wanted. The fact that she and Jack couldn’t get along was no reason for Lisa to suffer, Ruth had said more than once. And for a while, she had been as good as her word.
    And then Jack met Kathy.
    And everything changed.
    Ruth hated Kathy on sight. “She looks like a cheerleader, with her cute little nose and thosebig blue eyes,” Ruth had sneered. “I don’t think there’s much room for a brain under all those blond curls.” It didn’t matter that Kathy had a degree in English from the University of Toronto or that she had a good job working for a major publishing firm.
    Kathy’s job meant she had to travel a lot, so she gave it up soon after she and Jack got married. “Kathy wasn’t very good at her job,” Ruth told Lisa. That was the first of many lies Ruth fed Lisa about Kathy. “She got fired.”
    For the next year, little Lisa had stared at Kathy as if she were afraid Kathy was about to burst into flames.
    As the years went by, the lies got worse. Ruth did everything in her power to make sure that Lisa would never love her new stepmother. If Kathy bought Lisa a new dress, Ruth would tell Lisa that the dress made her look fat. If Kathy offered to pick Lisa up from school, Ruth would get to the school first. If Kathy got tickets for a play, Ruth would take Lisa to see it first.
    “Don’t worry,” Jack told Kathy. “Soon Ruth