The Innocents by Lili Peloquin

Author:Lili Peloquin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2012-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter

• THIRTEEN •

That night the club was hosting an event that Richard was insisting the whole family attend: the Clambake Luau. It wasn’t really a clambake, Alice saw once she stepped inside the clubhouse. Nor was it a luau, whatever that was. It was really just a regular party, only with more seafood and candles on the tables made of halved coconut shells and the staff wearing floral short-sleeve button-downs instead of their usual polos. People were dressed to the nines, to the eights, at least—it was still summer in a beach town—and milling around the foyer area and dining room, drinking and eating, one eye on the person they were talking to, the other on the door to see who walked through. There was an open bar and a long table with chilled shrimp and crab legs and oysters on it, an indoor grill where a chef was cooking fresh lobsters to order. One of the club’s employees, that cute valet-waiter guy, was handing out leis to guests as they entered.

Alice spotted Tommy right away. (It was like she was equipped with an extra sense where he was concerned, could feel his presence in a roomful of people, hone in on it immediately.) He was in the far corner with his parents. As always, he was extremely attentive to his pretty, nervous-looking mom, his arm, sinewy and golden-brown, wrapped around her shoulders like he was propping her up, giving her strength. His dad stood next to him, stiff-necked, a drink in his hand. Nobody was talking to them; nobody was even going near them. It was as if they were radioactive or something. And Alice wondered what point Dr. van Stratten was trying to prove by showing up, making his family show up with him: That he’d been stripped of his right to practice medicine and barely escaped a prison sentence, but that he wasn’t ashamed? That he was down but not out? That there was no getting rid of him so the people of Serenity Point better get used to it?

Alice was anxious about seeing Tommy in a public setting. Their relationship so far had been conducted almost entirely in private, just the two of them in their own little world, no outside interference or influence. She wasn’t sure how he’d behave toward her tonight. Would he pretend they barely knew each other, were the most casual of acquaintances? It wouldn’t be that strange if he did, she told herself. If anything, it would show his discretion, prove that he was as protective of her reputation as his own. After all, it could be viewed as a little weird, a little creepy, that he was involved with the stepdaughter of the man whose daughter he’d been dating when she’d ended her life. And it wasn’t as if they were boyfriend and girlfriend, Alice reminded herself. They’d only kissed. An intense kiss, definitely, but nevertheless, just a kiss. Still, Alice knew that no matter how much she reasoned with

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