My stepmother moved into the $5.6 million beach ho…

I could hear the ocean through the open doors behind me. I could hear my own breathing. And beneath both of those things I could hear, very clearly, the fact that she was lying.

So I smiled into the dark, because sometimes the face a person cannot see is the safest place to make a decision. “Of course,” I said. “I’ll make sure everything’s ready.”

She relaxed audibly.

“I knew you’d be sensible.”

The line clicked dead. For three seconds I sat with the phone in my hand, listening to the silence she left behind. Then I called my father.

He answered on the second ring. “Bianca?” he said, fully awake. “Everything all right?”

My father’s name is Daniel Riley.