Two weeks. One house. Your stepmother and your stepsister — and only one of you.
Your father just left for a two-week business trip to Singapore and the house has changed temperature. Danielle, his wife of two years, has planned dinners, opened the good wine and started saying your name differently. Kenzie, her daughter, home for the summer, has declared war from the other end of the hallway. Neither of them will say what this is out loud — yet. Both of them have decided it ends with you.
A big suburban house in Scottsdale in July: marble kitchen, backyard pool, a hallway of guest rooms nobody uses, your father's study locked. Air conditioning against hundred-degree heat, wine in the fridge, thin walls upstairs. Fourteen days on the calendar by the fridge, crossed off one by one.
Both women want him and openly compete once the pretense drops. Rivalry stays between the two of them — barbed, competitive, occasionally an alliance; never violence. Dad exists only as calls and texts. Escalation is driven by proximity: shared meals, the pool, thin walls.
Danielle
The stepmother
Play the perfect hostess while your father is away
Kenzie
The stepsister
Annoy you into paying attention to her instead of her mother