Flawless by Sara Shepard Read Free Book Online Page A

with a capital L .”
    But a few weeks later, Ali went missing. And then it wasn’t so funny.
    A slide-whistle noise coming from Spencer’s computer made her jump. It was her new e-mail alert. She paced over to her computer nervously and double-clicked the new message.
     
Hi, love. Haven’t spoken to you in two days, and I’m going crazy missing you. —Wren.
    Spencer sighed, a nervous sensation fluttering through her. The moment she’d laid eyes on Wren—her sister had brought him to meet their parents at a family dinner—something had happened to her. It was like…like he’d put a hex on her the second he sat down at Moshulu, took a sip of red wine, and met her eyes. He was British, exotic, witty, and smart, and liked the same indie bands Spencer did. He was just so wrong for her milquetoast, prim-and-perfect sister Melissa. But he was so right for Spencer. She knew it…and apparently he did too.
    Before Melissa caught them making out Friday night, she and Wren experienced an unbelievable twenty minutes of passion. But because Melissa tattled, and because Spencer’s parents always took her side, they banned Spencer from seeing Wren ever again. She was going crazy missing him, too, but what was she supposed to do?
    Feeling groggy and unsettled, she walked down the stairs and passed the long, narrow gallery hall where her mother displayed the Thomas Cole landscapes she’d inherited from her grandfather. She stepped into her family’s spacious kitchen. Her parents had restored it to look just like it had in the 1800s—except with updated countertops and state-of-the-art appliances. Her family was gathered at the kitchen table around Thai takeout containers.
    Spencer hesitated in the doorway. She hadn’t spoken to them since before Ali’s funeral—she’d driven there alone and had barely seen them afterward on the lawn. Actually, she hadn’t spoken to her family since they reprimanded her about Wren two days ago, and now they’d shunned her again by starting dinner without her. And they had company. Ian Thomas, Melissa’s old boyfriend—and the first of Melissa’s exes that Spencer had kissed—was sitting in what should’ve been Spencer’s seat.
    “Oh,” she squeaked.
    Ian was the only one who looked up. “Hey, Spence! How are you?” he asked, as if he ate in the Hastingses’ kitchen every day. It was hard enough for Spencer that Ian was coaching her field hockey team at Rosewood—but this was bizarre.
    “I’m…fine,” Spencer said, looking shiftily at the rest of her family, but no one was looking at her…or explaining why Ian was scarfing down Thai food in their kitchen. Spencer pulled up a chair to the corner of the table and started to spoon some lemongrass chicken onto her plate. “So, um, Ian. You’re having dinner with us?”
    Mrs. Hastings looked at her sharply. Spencer shut her mouth, a hot, clammy feeling coursing through her.
    “We ran into each other at the, um, memorial,” Ian explained. A siren interrupted him, and Ian dropped his fork. The noise was most likely coming from the DiLaurentises’ house. Police cars had been there non-stop. “Pretty crazy, huh?” Ian said, running a hand through his curly blond hair. “I didn’t know so many cop cars would still be here.”
    Melissa elbowed him lightly. “You get a big police record, living out there in dangerous California?” Melissa and Ian had broken up because he’d moved across the country to go to college at Berkeley.
    “Nah,” Ian said. Before he could go on, Melissa, in typical Melissa fashion, had moved on to something else: herself. She turned to Mrs. Hastings. “So, Mom, the flowers at the service were the exact color I want to paint my living room walls.”
    Melissa reached for a Martha Stewart Living magazine and opened it to a marked page. She was constantly talking about home renovations; she was redecorating the Philadelphia town house their parents bought her as a reward for getting into U Penn’s