Read Watching Amanda for Free Online

wood door to the left of her desk.
    The moment Amanda entered the large rectangular room she could feel the tension.
    Olivia Sedgwick sat ramrod straight at a long polished wood table, looking over a large leather appointment book. She wore a stylish, fitted black suit and a short, netted black veil over her honey blond hair, which was pinned up in an elegant bun.
    Olivia’s mother, a tall, thin, regal-looking woman in her late fifties, sat beside her daughter, staring from her watch to the round clock on the wall. When the door had opened, Olivia’s mother’s head jerked up expectantly. The woman seemed disappointed that it was only Amanda.
    Ivy Sedgwick was across from Olivia. With her short, straight brown hair, fringe of bangs, and warm, expressive green eyes, Ivy always appeared friendly, which gave Amanda a false sense of security about the youngest Sedgwick sister. Ivy was as complex and as complicated as Olivia. On one side of Ivy was her mother, also tall, also thin and also regal-looking.
    William Sedgwick definitely had had a thing for tall, thin, regal-looking women, since Amanda’s mother had also fit that description.
    What Amanda would give to have her own mother in this room, sitting beside her!
    On Ivy’s right and holding her hand, grasping her hand, really, atop the table was a good-looking man in his thirties. Amanda had never seen him before.
    Ah. A diamond gleamed on the ring finger of Ivy’s left hand. The man must be her fiancé.
    And I didn’t even know she was engaged , Amanda thought sadly. We might as well be strangers.
    Amanda smiled inwardly at the sight of Ivy and her handsome husband-to-be. When they were teenagers, Amanda had found Ivy crying more than once in their father’s summer home during their two-week vacations together. Once, Ivy had opened up to Amanda, sobbing that she was a plain-Jane who would never have a boyfriend, never be kissed, never get married. Apparently, Olivia had tried to set up Ivy on a blind date with a friend of the guy she was dating, and when the blind date glimpsed Ivy, he suddenly came down with the flu.
    Or so he said.
    Olivia was the oldest Sedgwick sister; Ivy the youngest. And at fifteen, Olivia Sedgwick, who pored over beauty and fashion magazines and transformed herself into a style maven, had more requests for dates than there were summer nights. Ivy, on the other hand, had spent so many summer nights watching television, especially cop shows, that she developed a huge interest in police procedure and forensic science and subsequently spent her days in the local police precinct as a volunteer, filing and doing data entry.
    And Amanda, the middle sister, who had dark blue eyes like Olivia and silky chestnut brown hair like Ivy, spent her summer weeks with her sisters observing them, trying to find a way in. Amanda had turned down a date with a local boy in order to spend an evening watching NYPD Blue with Ivy, hoping a common interest would create a bond. But it never really did. And Amanda had read Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue until she knew the supermodels by name, but that too didn’t make Amanda and Olivia any closer.
    And then Olivia turned eighteen and stopped coming for the summer vacations, and the tradition simply dissolved. Looking back, Amanda wondered what the point had been since William Sedgwick was hardly around during the two weeks he arranged for the four of them to spend together. In all her times at the house in Maine, Amanda had only even managed to develop a friendly relationship with Clara, William’s housekeeper and cook.
    Now, as Amanda sat down next to Olivia, the beautiful blonde glanced at her and offered a solemn smile. Amanda smiled back, and then looked over at Ivy, who also smiled somberly. It was something. If not spoken condolence, then at least a sympathetic connection.
    Amanda felt other eyes on her; both sisters’ mothers were looking at her with contempt.
    As usual. Not