Safe House Under Fire. Elisabeth Rees

       ONE

      “Astrid, will you please come here this minute. If I have to ask again, you’ll be grounded until Sunday.”

      Lilly Olsen rushed around her living room, plumping the cushions, straightening the throws and arranging the magazines into piles. She hated to return from work to a messy home, so she tried to make life easier by keeping on top of things. Juggling her job as bank clerk with parenting a wayward fifteen-year-old daughter was difficult enough already.

      “Astrid,” she shouted, feeling her patience wear thinner than ever. “It’s eight fifteen. You’ll be late for school and I’ll be late for work.” She muttered under her breath, “Again.”

      “Okay, Mom, you don’t have to yell. Why do you always have to yell?”

      Astrid appeared in the hallway of their one-story home, wearing head-to-toe black clothing, topped off with a velvet beret. She was apparently now going through a goth phase. This came on the heels of a skater phase and a Japanese cartoon phase. She was clearly struggling to establish her identity, and Lilly had learned to pick her battles carefully.

      “You can take off that black lipstick in the car,” she said, choosing to ignore the rest of the outfit. “I have some wipes in the glove box.”

      Astrid flounced past her. “You’re such a killjoy.”

      “Yes, I am,” Lilly said, retrieving her keys from a hook on the wall. “And that’s a good use of the word killjoy, by the way. You have a great vocabulary when you choose to use it.”

      Her daughter groaned and sighed, picking up her school backpack from the hallway floor and opening the front door. As if the day was set against her, a fine mist of rain was falling. Lilly’s perfectly straightened, fine blond hair would now frizz up in seconds.

      “Well, let’s go,” Astrid said with an eye roll. “You were the one desperate to leave.”

      “Don’t you roll your eyes at me, young lady,” Lilly said sharply, sounding horribly like her own mother. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately. Did I do something wrong?”

      “Um, let me think,” Astrid said. “First of all, you gave me a totally stupid name.”

      Lilly was aghast. “Astrid is a beautiful Scandinavian name. You should be proud of your Swedish heritage.”

      “Second of all,” her daughter said, beginning to check the numbers off on her hand. “It’s my sixteenth birthday soon and you haven’t organized a thing. You know I want a party.”

      Lilly pinched the bridge of her nose. “I know, I know. We’ll talk about it later, okay?” She ushered Astrid through the door and beeped her car to unlock it. “I’ve been so busy dealing with a very important client at work that it slipped my mind.”

      “And third of all,” Astrid said, following her mom down the path, clomping in her heavy black shoes. “I wanted Dad to come visit for my birthday, but you drive him away all the time with your snarky attitude.”

      Lilly stopped dead, turned around slowly and looked her daughter straight in the eye.

      “Is that why you’re acting up?” she asked. “Are you upset because your father never comes to see you?”

      Astrid avoided her gaze and rubbed an arm self-consciously. “It’s been two years, Mom. I barely remember what he looks like.”

      “And you think I’m the one keeping him away?”

      “Yes.”

      Lilly tried to keep her anger in check. She was the one who had cared for Astrid since babyhood, the one who had borne all of the financial burden and was the sole parent barely coping with the emotional roller coaster of teenage emotions. Lilly’s ex-boyfriend, Rylan, had been her high school sweetheart and had reacted badly when she became pregnant at the age of eighteen. She’d wanted to do the right thing and get married, but he was adamantly against it. Instead, he’d abandoned her, gradually lessening contact until finally moving away from their small hometown of Oakmont, Pennsylvania, when Astrid was only four years old. He now lived in California, and Astrid was fortunate if she received a Christmas card or a rushed phone call telling her that she had another new baby brother or sister. Astrid had a total of five half siblings, born from three of Rylan’s many girlfriends over the last ten years.

      “Your father loves you, honey,” Lilly said. “It’s just that he has a hard time showing it. I promise that I’ll try my very best to get him to come visit. I would never keep him away from you. Never.”

      Astrid stomped to the car and sat in the passenger seat, scowling. At five feet nine inches tall, she cut a willowy and elegant figure when dressed nicely, but in this macabre and imposing outfit, she appeared intimidating. Lilly wished they were as close as they used to be, when Astrid would offer to plait her mom’s hair or paint her nails. In the last year, her daughter had grown into a young woman that Lilly mostly didn’t recognize.

      “Hi, Mr. Peters,”