Faces of Fear (22 page)

"Well, it sure wouldn't be hard to do," Conrad said, his gaze shifting to his stepdaughter. "What's the problem?"

"She's shy," Teresa said.

Alison wanted to fall through the floor.

"Why wouldn't she be?" Conrad countered. He sat down next to Alison. "You should have seen Teresa when she first came to see me—she could barely even speak."

"Really?"

"Really," Teresa said. "It was horrible. Even worse than the moment you just had."

"Which is now over," Conrad declared. He looked down at the open photo album on Alison's lap. "How about getting me a prosthesis in B, Teresa?"

"Give me thirty seconds." Teresa jumped up and disappeared down a hallway.

"Okay, so now that we're talking about it," Conrad said as soon as Teresa was gone, "how about if I gave you the procedure as a birthday present? I know it's not a car, but you're not old enough for one anyway."

"I—I don't know—" Alison floundered. "I mean, I don't know what my mom and dad would say."

Conrad grinned at her. "Well, I can't speak for your dad, but I know your mother thinks it's a good idea."

"She does?" Alison cocked her head and looked at Conrad quizzically as the truth began to dawn on her. "Was this all Mom's idea?" she asked. "Having you bring me up here to talk to Teresa?"

Conrad spread his hands helplessly. "Well, it wasn't all her idea. I might have had just a tiny little part in it. But how else were we going to get you to start talking to me about it?"

"You could have—" Alison began, but before she could finish, Teresa reappeared, holding a small lavender gift bag.

"Just take these," Conrad said, taking the bag from her and giving it to Alison. "It's a pair of falsies, exactly like the ones Teresa tried out a few years ago. Just try them for a couple of days and we can talk about it later. Or not—it's entirely up to you."

Alison gazed at the bag as if there might be a rattlesnake inside, but then gingerly took it and peered inside. "You're sure these are the same size as yours?" she asked Teresa.

Teresa nodded.

"Very conservative," Conrad said. "Which is very smart. The last thing you want to do is too much. And if you decide you want to do it, we can have you completely recovered before your party. Hey," he added as Alison looked at him suspiciously, "a girl should have her gift on her birthday, not a couple of weeks later."

"You're having a party?" Teresa asked.

"Sixteen," Alison said softly.

"Perfect," Teresa said, and gave her a warm smile.

Alison looked up at her stepfather and saw, for the first time, genuine affection on his face.

Was it the first time it was there, or was it the first time she'd let herself see it?

Maybe, after all, she'd been wrong about him.

"Let me think about it," she finally said.

"Great!" Conrad stood up. "Mrs. Wilson is stable and ready to be discharged tomorrow," he said to Teresa, then turned to Alison. "And it wasn't all a ruse: I really did need to look in on her. Ready to go home?"

Alison nodded. "My homework's still waiting for me."

And so was her first opportunity to see exactly what she'd look like if she could perfectly fill a size B bra.

* * *

ALISON STARED DARKLY at the gift bag on her dresser.

Who put falsies in a gift bag?

Weird. Very weird.

And why did the gift bag seem to be getting bigger and bigger, even though she knew it wasn't? The answer to that one was easy: it wasn't the gift bag she was thinking about at all, or even what was inside it.

No, the real problem was the surgery the bag and its contents represented. Even as she tried to concentrate on scratching Ruffles—who was curled up next to her on the bed with nothing more on his mind than making sure she didn't pause for even two seconds—she couldn't quite get the idea of the surgery out of her mind.

For one thing, no matter what Conrad said, surgery was a big deal. People could die in surgery, even surgery more minor than implants. And what if she went through it all and didn't like the results? Maybe she could have the implants taken out again, but she'd still have scars, wouldn't she?

So why did both her mother and Conrad think it was such a great idea? Of course, she couldn't remember ever having talked about plastic surgery with either one of her parents, so maybe she'd just always assumed they would be against it.

And no matter what her mother thought, she was pretty sure she was still right about her father. Maybe Scott would think it was a great idea—in fact, he probably would—but not her father. Her father would hate it.

Absolutely hate it.

Like he'd hated her being on MySpace.

He'd probably forbid her to have the implants, just like he'd forbidden her to stay on MySpace.

Why? What was the big deal?

It wouldn't be fair—it wouldn't be fair at all!

Realizing she'd just made the decision she'd never thought she'd make, she did what she always did next: picked up her cell phone from the nightstand and speed-dialed Cindy.

"Hey," she said when Cindy answered. "Guess what I'm getting for my sixteenth birthday? Besides a party, to which you're the first person I'm inviting."

"Great!" Cindy said. "And I know exactly what I'm going to get you for a present. It's perfect for someone who lives in Bel Air."

"What?" Alison demanded, suddenly missing Cindy more than she'd realized.

"You'll find out on your birthday," Cindy shot back. "I can't tell you before then. So what kind of a party is it going to be?"

"Like nothing we've ever even been to before," Alison said. "I think it's going to be kind of a fancy thing up here at the house. A garden party with caterers and a band."

"A band?" Cindy repeated, sounding less enthusiastic. "How much am I going to have to dress up?"

Alison hesitated, glancing toward her closet where the twelve-hundred-dollar dress hung. "Some," she admitted, knowing what Cindy's clothes budget was. "It's my parents' idea."

"Ooookay," Cindy said slowly. Then: "So I better buy some really, really nice jeans, right?"

"Just wear that dress you wore last Christmas," Alison told her. "It looks great, and none of the Wilson kids have ever seen you in it."

"And they'll know exactly how much it cost and that I didn't buy it at Neiman-Marcus," Cindy said sourly.

"Oh, who cares?" Alison replied. "Anyway, the party isn't even the big news. Guess what my stepfather is giving me for my birthday."

"What?"

"Implants." Alison waited expectantly for Cindy's gasp of envy, but instead heard only silence.

A silence that stretched on way too long.

"Cindy?" she finally said. "Did you hear me?"

"I heard you," Cindy finally replied. "I just assumed you were kidding." Now it was Cindy who waited for a reply that didn't come, and finally she spoke into the void. "You mean you're not kidding?"

"No," Alison said. "Why would I be kidding?"

"Because it's the stupidest idea I ever heard," Cindy replied. "What are those kids at Wilson doing to you? It's only been, what, two weeks? And you're already getting plastic surgery?"

"What's wrong with that?" Alison demanded. "Everybody gets—"

"Everybody does not get plastic surgery for their sixteenth birthday. And a boob job? From your stepfather? You know what, Alison? I think I've got to go. I'll talk to you later."

"Cindy, wait." But it was too late—she'd already clicked off.

Alison closed her cell phone and pulled Ruffles closer. "She could have at least listened to me, couldn't she?" she whispered to the dog, who only wriggled for an answer. "I mean, she didn't even let me tell her why I'm doing it."

Ruffles whimpered.

And then, as she went back to petting the little dog, a thought came to mind.

What if Cindy was right?

What if she was making a terrible mistake?

Her eyes fell again on the gift bag on her dresser. She jumped up, got the bag, and dumped its contents onto the bed.

Then she went into her mother's bedroom, took a black bra out of her middle lingerie drawer, and went back to her own room. She fitted the perfectly molded foam prosthetics into the cups of the bra, then put it on. It didn't feel quite right, so she pushed the fake breasts around a little until they felt comfortable, then pulled on her favorite sweater—an ice-blue cashmere her father had given her on her last birthday—and turned to the mirror.

And she looked good. In fact, she looked fantastic.

She looked like Teresa at Conrad's office, with breasts that were neither too large nor too small, and looked perfect on her lean frame.

But maybe it was only the sweater.

She took off the sweater and her jeans and went into the closet. Very carefully she took the party dress off its hanger and slipped it on.

And once again the fake breasts filled the bodice perfectly.

So Cindy was wrong.

The perfectly formed breasts made her look better—a lot better—and when the implants were in, it would all look even more natural than it did now.

Suddenly, she wanted to tell Conrad to schedule the procedure as soon as he could.

But first she'd call Cindy again and tell her that her attitude was all wrong. But what good would that do? She wasn't going to change Cindy's mind—when Cindy decided something, that was that. So this would just have to be one of those things that friends accepted in each other.

But as she turned in front of the mirror, she knew she had to tell
someone
what she was going to do. And it had to be someone who would be as excited as she suddenly was.

Tasha!

Of course! Alison took off the dress and put it back in her closet, then put on her bathrobe. Even it looked better with her new shape.

She flopped back onto the bed, picked up her phone, and speed-dialed Tasha, who would not only understand and share her excitement, but also be able to tell her exactly what to expect in the surgery. In it, and after it.

And maybe—just maybe—Conrad would have time to do it next weekend.

Suddenly, life was fabulous.

* * *

NATALIE OWEN FISHED a Diet Pepsi out of the nurses' station refrigerator and dropped into the chair behind the big reception desk in the lobby, her eyes automatically going to the computer monitor. Everything was quiet tonight. Most of the nursing home's residents were sleeping, and all but one showed no signs of not making it through the night. The single exception was Manny Smithers, whose family was sitting vigil at his bedside so he wouldn't die alone, even though he'd shown no signs of recognizing anyone for the past two years.

In fifteen minutes Steve Williams would arrive to relieve her, and since she'd finished all her paperwork half an hour ago, she decided she might as well log on to eHarmony and see if the man of her dreams had noticed her yet.

With a few strokes on the keyboard, she logged into her account and found that almost a dozen people had looked at her profile since the last time she'd checked.

But nobody had responded.

And she was pretty sure she knew why: it had to be the photograph.

Double-clicking on the image to enlarge it, she gazed dolefully at the offending picture. It had been taken by her mother after her solo performance with the church choir last Easter, when she'd sung the Lord's Prayer. In the picture, she was wearing the blue choir robe with the gold V-neck stole that made her eyes look bluer and her hair even blonder than it was, and she knew it was one of the best photographs ever taken of her.

Her entire face was blooming with the spirit of Christ. Her hair was perfect, her smile attractive and welcoming.

But even her mother—who had
taken
the picture, for heaven's sake!—had said that if she was going to attract a man, she shouldn't post a picture of herself in a choir robe. Men wanted to see what she had to offer, and would be afraid she was hiding something beneath the flowing gown. But Natalie still thought it was the right picture; after all, she didn't want to attract just any man. She wanted God to send her a good Christian who would appreciate both her and her faith.

She clicked twice more on the photo to enlarge it further.

The hint of lipstick that the choir director put on her lips just before the service actually looked good—not slutty at all. Her mother always said her lips were her best feature, even insisting that they looked just like those of some famous supermodel whose name Natalie couldn't remember.

Margot something-or-other.

She had never actually bothered to find out if her mother was right, but even if she was, it hadn't seemed to matter. It was starting to look like no matter what photo she put up on any matchmaking site, no man was ever going to want her.

She was almost thirty.

It was about time she stopped all the wishful thinking and accepted that spinsterhood was going to be her lot in life.

Steve rang the bell at the front door, waving to her as she buzzed him through, and Natalie barely managed to close the Web browser before he could see what she was doing. She briefed him on what little activity had taken place over the last eight hours, then finished her Diet Pepsi, swapped her stethoscope for her purse in her locker, and walked out into the mild Los Angeles night.

Ten minutes later she pulled her secondhand Toyota into the dark carport behind her apartment building, reminding herself for what had to be the fifth time to tell the manager about the burned-out bulb tomorrow morning, and knowing even as she reminded herself that by then she would have forgotten all about it.

Not that it mattered, really, since she'd chosen the apartment three years ago because it was in the middle of the safest neighborhood in Studio City, and still was.

She got out of the car, grabbed the tote bag full of clothing that she was gathering from deceased residents to donate to the poor, and locked the car behind her.

But as she took a step toward the doorway leading to the stairwell up to her second-story apartment, icy tendrils of fear crawled up the back of her neck.

Something was wrong.

She was not alone.