Hayley Aldridge Is Still Here


 
 
 Dedication
 To Alexandra and John
 
 
 Contents
 Cover
 Title Page
 Dedication
 Author’s Note
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
 Chapter 8
 Chapter 9
 Chapter 10
 Chapter 11
 Chapter 12
 Chapter 13
 Chapter 14
 Chapter 15
 Chapter 16
 Chapter 17
 Chapter 18
 Chapter 19
 Chapter 20
 Chapter 21
 Chapter 22
 Chapter 23
 Chapter 24
 Chapter 25
 Chapter 26
 Chapter 27
 Chapter 28
 Chapter 29
 Chapter 30
 Chapter 31
 Chapter 32
 Chapter 33
 Chapter 34
 Chapter 35
 Chapter 36
 Chapter 37
 Chapter 38
 Chapter 39
 Acknowledgments
 P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
 About the Author
 About the Book
 Praise for Hayley Aldridge Is Still Here
 Also by Elissa R. Sloan
 Copyright
 About the Publisher
 
 
 Chapter 1
 I wonder what the outside world is like, I think while sitting outside my twelve-bedroom, thirteen-bathroom Spanish-style mansion. After all, there’s nothing much wrong with me. I’m fit and healthy, yet stuck in the house with two young women who look unsettlingly like me. And some days, I feel like I’m going to lose it.
 I suck on a piece of mango and wish it could be in a daiquiri, but I gave up alcohol years ago. Drinking makes time go by faster, but it also makes you sluggish. What I need now is a sharp mind. No excuses for being kept in this house for any longer than I already have been.
 Jessica joins me by the pool, sunglasses perched on her head. I squint up at her. She’s the spitting image of her father in the backlight.
 “Mom,” she says, and I marvel at how my child can speak. She’s seventeen now, but will always be my baby.
 “Yes?”
 “Why don’t we go out? Why are we always stuck in the house?”
 “We’re waiting for your grandfather,” I say indifferently. “He and I will discuss it.” For the thousandth time.
 “I just don’t get it.”
 I wonder, if I knew then what I know now, if I would still make the same decisions, urge my parents to take me to auditions. Gone along for the ride. It’s not fair to blame a five-year-old, but that’s what I do: put the onus on a younger me, as if I knew better then. Would all this have come to a head like it had now? Or would I be living a free life, unfettered, somewhere else? Something boring and predictable.
 “Go get your sister.”
 Jessica sighs, but leaves and comes back with Jane. I bite another piece of mango, licking my fingers after it’s in my mouth. I used to count the calories of fruit; every bite, fifteen calories, until I hit ninety and then I’d stop. Now I can’t get enough. My belly is rounded from all the fruit and doughnuts and sugared cereal and potato chips, all the treats I wasn’t able to eat when I was younger. It is what it is. I’m having a second-childhood renaissance.
 “Mom,” Jane whines. She’s identical to her twin, but I can tell them apart without any problem. I’m a good mother, no matter what people say. “Why don’t we go hiking today? Why are we stuck here again?”
 “We’re waiting,” I repeat. “But while we’re waiting, should I tell you a story?”
 The twins exchange looks. “What kind of story?” Jessica says hesitatingly.
 “The story about your mom.”
 “What kind of story would you have that we don’t already know?” Jane asks.
 “Well, why I’m stuck here.”
 “We’ve seen the tabloids,” Jane says, rolling her eyes.
 “That’s not the story,” I say, slightly horrified that she would have read any of that trash. “That’s the screwed-up fairy tale.”
 Jessica crosses her arms. Jane mirrors her.
 I sniff. “I just figured you were old enough now to know.”
 “Know what?”
 It doesn’t matter which twin said it; I’m lost in my own world again. Remembering Ted and Brandon and Millie and Trey and Anthony and Olive. Where do I start? Do I begin in 2007, when the twins were just two and I was sentenced to this new life? Do I tell them it was only supposed to be temporary, but that it kept getting extended, over and over again, and it’s still not over, years later?
 “Once upon a time,” I say, and the twins groan in unison. “You really don’t want to hear this?” I ask them, surprised.
 The tablet chimes and I look down at it; there’s activity in the front of the house. I watch as a car snakes its way up the driveway and parks. A man gets out: short, bald, hawkish nose. He pulls his pants up over his belly with a snap and moves toward the front door.
 “Maybe this can wait until later,” I say.
 The man has crossed through the kitchen and appears in the back doorway.
 “Hi, Dad.”
 MY FATHER HAS no interest in mangoes. Inwardly, I curse, but I smile at him with my winningest grin. It’s Tuesday, which means it’s social media day. I’m already made up, though I know I’ve eaten off my lip gloss, and wearing a high-waisted bikini. He’s already pulling out his phone and aiming it toward me.
 “What today? Maybe a monologue from Third Time Around?” I say. He grunts in affirmation. He didn’t even say hello when he walked in.
 I swipe under my eyes, to make sure my mascara hasn’t run, and clear my throat. The twins escaped the moment their grandfather came into the backyard, and I don’t blame them.
 “Make it a happy one, not a crying one,” he instructs.
 So I do. I pull out one of the scenes from season eleven—or was it twelve?—where I am telling Ted he’d make a wonderful father. Not to me, of course (I played his kid sister), but to the child he’d conceived with his fiancée, Natasha. I forget the actress’s name now; Natasha was just the character’s name. I deliver the