The Alvarez & Pescoli Series. Lisa Jackson

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      If only his father were still alive. If only Joe hadn’t been a hero and died in the line of duty. If only I’d been a better wife…

      Jeremy nearly ran into her as he made his way up the stairs to the single bathroom and slammed the door. Through the thin panels she heard him turn on the shower, and as the water warmed, flip up the toilet seat and pee like a racehorse.

      Things would have been better if Joe had lived, she thought. No, check. Change that. Things would have been different; that much she knew. Better? That was just conjecture.

      She walked the few steps to the kitchen, where her daughter, perched on a bar stool, was ignoring a slice of peanut butter toast and text messaging as if she’d been born with a cell phone trapped between her slim, be-ringed fingers. With thick, near-black curls, smooth Mediterranean skin and eyes as blue as a summer’s day, Bianca was a small, feminine version of her father, Luke Pescoli.

      She’d often wondered why, after carrying her children for nine months in her womb, neither had the courtesy to look like her. Jeremy was the spitting image of his father, Joe Strand, while Bianca was a miniature Luke. Sometimes Regan felt like little more than the vessel in which her husbands’ DNA had sprouted.

      “Eat up,” she said, her gaze sliding through the dining area to the living room, where, beside a tired mock-leather couch, a Christmas tree festooned in a billion lights and innumerable strands of tinsel was shoved into the corner, inches from a non-working fireplace. The chipped porcelain nativity scene that had been in her family for generations was strung along the mantel, atop glittery cotton that once had resembled snow but now was tattered and torn. This would be the snow’s last year.

      Bianca, fingers still flying, the phone clicking, ignored her. The toast was untouched. “Bianca, Jeremy will be ready soon and you know he won’t want to wait around. Eat your breakfast.”

      Click, click, click, click. “Ugh, Mom. Gross! Don’t you know that peanut butter is just fat?”

      “I believe there’s some protein in there.”

      “Whatever.” Bianca didn’t bother looking up. The tiny keys kept clicking softly.

      Not in the mood to argue, Regan refilled her cup from the pot warming on the coffeemaker. The kitchen was cramped, like the rest of the house—a small “starter home” that Regan worked hard to pay the mortgage on each and every month. The furnace was rumbling loudly, trying to make up for the cold air seeping through the cracks in the caulking around the windows and doors.

      Cisco was whining and scratching at the slider door leading to the deck. “Need to go out?” Regan walked to the dining area and opened the door. “Hurry back,” she said as the terrier, spying a squirrel trying to break into the bird feeder on the rail, took off on all cylinders, his bark low and gruff, the hackles on the back of his neck raised at the audacity of the rodent.

      “I’ll cook you an egg,” Regan said to her daughter as she closed the door.

      “Are you even remotely serious? Do you want me to puke? Geez, Mom, Michelle doesn’t make me eat breakfast.”

      Bully for Stepmom. Though Bianca’s father, Luke “Lucky” Pescoli, and Regan had been divorced three months before he began dating Michelle, Regan had never liked the woman, who was still in her twenties, for God’s sake, and had no business trying to be the kids’ second mother. No business! Built like a Barbie doll, if not an airhead, Michelle had the dumb-blonde routine down pat. Regan figured the ditziness was an act worthy of an Oscar. Beneath those long blonde tresses and behind the impossibly wide blue eyes, there was a cunning twenty-six-year-old who had graduated from college. Michelle knew exactly what she wanted and how to get it. She just needed enough lip gloss and stiletto heels to make it happen.

      The fact that she’d wanted Lucky was a mystery, one Regan hadn’t yet been able to solve.

      Not that it mattered much.

      Rather than think about the twit, Regan found a glass on the counter, rinsed it out, filled it with water and poured some into the rapidly wilting speckled poinsettia on the counter, adding a few drops into the soil surrounding the Christmas cactus, which was going nuts with vibrant pink blooms.

      Bianca, never one to leave an argument alone, added, “Michelle says a person should only eat when they’re hungry.”

      “Does she?” Not that Regan cared.

      “Uh-huh, and she never has a weight problem.”

      Good for her, Regan thought as she picked up Bianca’s rejected toast and bit into it. No reason for it to go to waste. Or was that waist?

      “I’ll make you some of that instant oatmeal.”

      Bianca glanced up, her pretty face twisted into a knot of disbelief. “You really do want me to throw up!” Her cell phone beeped again, another text that had her absorbed as a bellow of rage echoed from the bathroom. Old pipes groaned as a faucet was slammed off.

      “Shit!” Jeremy yelled loudly enough to be heard throughout the small house.

      Regan sipped her coffee and nibbled on the toast. “Guess your brother is finally awake.”

      The door to the bathroom opened so hard it banged against the wall. Jeremy, towel slung over his slim hips in an attempt to hide, or maybe call attention to, his nether regions stormed into the kitchen. “Who the hell used all the hot water?” he demanded, skewering his sister with an intense stare of hate that could have come straight out of a teen horror flick.

      “The tank’s small.” Regan dusted her fingers of crumbs. “Want some breakfast? Peanut butter toast.”

      Jeremy wasn’t about to be derailed. “So that means she has the right to hog it all? Jesus, Mom, aren’t you always preaching about consideration?” He walked to the refrigerator, pulled out a carton of orange juice and held it to his lips.

      “Get a glass.”

      “I’m finishing it.”

      “You brought up consideration.”

      He guzzled juice and left the carton on the counter next to last night’s pizza box.

      “Jeremy?”

      “What?” he called as he hurried down the stairs.

      “We need to talk about your chores around here.”

      “I thought my chore was to take the dingbat to school.”

      Bianca snorted. “The dingbat who’s on the honor roll. What a creep. He hasn’t seen anything above a two-point for so long, he wouldn’t know what it was.” One eyebrow lifted in prim smugness, though the truth of the matter was that her grades had been slipping lately. Something was up.

      “About those grades,” Regan said. “Yours have been—”

      “Yeah, yeah, I know.” Bianca finished her text and looked up. “I’m bringing them up. I told you Miss Lefever has it in for me.”

      “Maybe it’s all the time you’re spending with Chris.”

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