From New York Times bestselling author Megan Hart comes a haunting and insightful novel about a woman trying to find her place in the world…

Brought up in the savage captivity of her unstable grandmother’s rural Pennsylvania home, Mari Calder once yearned for rescue. Now she struggles every day to function as an adult in the confines of normal society. Left with only a foggy recollection of her childhood, she’s consumed with being a dutiful wife to her husband, Ryan, and mother to their two children.

But an unexpected twist of events returns her to that long-forgotten house in the woods. Soon, Mari is greeted with reminders of a past life, the clarified memories only inviting a new level of strangeness into her fragile world. To protect her family, she must find the beautiful, powerful strength hidden in her inner chaos. Because someone is bent on exploiting Mari’s trauma, and as normal and wild begin to blend, a string of devastating truths force Mari to question all she thought she knew.

Praise for the novels of New York Times bestselling author Megan Hart

“Hart’s beautiful use of language and discerning eye toward human experience elevate the book to a poignant reflection on the deepest yearnings of the human heart and the seductive temptation of passion in its many forms.”

—Kirkus Reviews on Tear You Apart

“A fantastic story that will stick with readers.”

—RT Book Reviews on Tear You Apart

“A tense look at dark secrets and the redemptive power of truth.”

—Kirkus Reviews on The Favor

“Heartfelt…the detailed physicality involved in caring for an elderly loved one is portrayed vividly and compassionately.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Favor

“This is a quiet book, but it packed a major punch for me…[Hart]’s a stunning writer, and this is a stunning book.”

—Super Librarian on The Space Between Us

“[A] haunting, devastating, heart-wrenching tale…this story will stay with you long after you reach the last page.”

—RT Book Reviews on Precious and Fragile Things

“Deeper is absolutely, positively, the best book that I have read in ages…the story line brought tears to my eyes more than once.… Beautiful, poignant and bittersweet…Megan Hart never disappoints.”

—Romance Reader at Heart, Top Pick

“Well-developed secondary characters and a compelling plot add depth to this absorbing and enticing novel.”

—Library Journal on Broken

Lovely Wild

Megan Hart

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To the wild at heart

who walk in grass with bare feet and catch the fireflies

To my children, my greatest achievement—

I love you more than anything else

And to Emily Ohanjanians

for helping to turn that book into this one, here’s to many more!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dedication

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

THIRTY-FOUR

THIRTY-FIVE

THIRTY-SIX

THIRTY-SEVEN

THIRTY-EIGHT

THIRTY-NINE

FORTY

FORTY-ONE

FORTY-TWO

FORTY-THREE

FORTY-FOUR

FORTY-FIVE

FORTY-SIX

FORTY-SEVEN

FORTY-EIGHT

FORTY-NINE

FIFTY

FIFTY-ONE

FIFTY-TWO

FIFTY-THREE

FIFTY-FOUR

FIFTY-FIVE

FIFTY-SIX

FIFTY-SEVEN

FIFTY-EIGHT

FIFTY-NINE

SIXTY

SIXTY-ONE

AFTER

Lovely Wild Readers Guide

Questions for Discussion

Listening Guide

Copyright

ONE

IN HER DREAMS, she is still wild.

But she’s not dreaming now. At the moment, Mari Calder stands at her kitchen sink rinsing out a pot in which macaroni and cheese is still stubbornly clinging. She takes the sponge, rough on one side but not so much that it will scratch the expensive, shiny pot, and she scrubs. Macaroni softens under the stream of hot water that turns her fingers red. White suds cover her hands, and noodles stripped of their cheesy orange coating swirl into the drain where they catch and swell.

They look like maggots.

Tenderly, Mari scoops them into her palm. She leaves the water running, the rush and roar of it nothing like the sound of a waterfall. She dumps the sodden, bloated macaroni into a trash pail overflowing with the similar dregs of meals left unfinished. She stands over the trash for some long moments, staring at the waste.

She’s never hungry anymore, at least not the way she used to be. Here in this house she has a pantry full of cans, jars, bottles and boxes. Waxy containers of chicken broth snuggle next to bags of exotic rice in multiple colors and boxes of instant mashed potatoes. Cookies, crackers and potato chips in crumpled bags shut tight against the air with plastic clips, or sometimes dumped without ceremony into tight-lidded plastic containers. Clear, so she can see what’s inside. So she can run her fingertips over the contents without actually touching them.

And always, always, snack cakes. They come wrapped in plastic, two to a package, in flimsy cardboard boxes. She likes the chocolate kind best, though she’ll eat any flavor, really. Her very favorites are the special ones that come out for holidays. Spongy cakes shaped like Christmas trees or hearts or pumpkins, covered in stiff icing she can peel away with her teeth. Mari buys them a box at a time, casually, like they don’t matter to her at all, but she never puts them in the pantry or in the special drawer where all the other snacks go. She hides them. She hoards them.

She doesn’t have to. Her fridge is always full. The freezers, too, both of them, the small one in the refrigerator here in the kitchen and the full-sized chest freezer in the garage. Sometimes, mostly at night when everyone else is asleep, Mari likes to stand in front of the freezer and peer inside at all the wealth she has collected.

Ryan never seems to notice or care how much food there is in the house. He comes home from work and expects—and finds—dinner waiting for him. No matter what kind of effort Mari has to make to provide it, she makes sure there’s always a full meal. Takeout or homemade, there’s always a meat, a vegetable, salad, a grain, a bread. Fresh bread. She can’t get enough. Mari usually makes it herself. She uses a bread machine to help her, but she’s still the one who fills the pan with carefully measured amounts of water, flour, sugar, salt, yeast. Every morning she bakes a fresh loaf, and every night they eat it.

Sometimes, Ethan helps her with the preparation. Kendra used to, but now she’s too busy with her cell phone or iPad, texting and tweeting and whatever it is teenage girls do. But Ethan is still young enough to like cracking the eggs and measuring the flour.

At eight, Ethan is still young enough for Mari to relate to. Oh, she loves Kendra, her firstborn, her daughter. They do girly things like shop for shoes, paint their nails, hit the chick flicks in the theater while Ryan and Ethan stay home. Mari loves her daughter, sometimes with a fierceness that takes her breath away...but she doesn’t really understand her.

It’s not that Kendra is unknowable. Even at fifteen, she still talks to her mom. Unlike her friends, whom Kendra has revealed barely speak to their parents unless it’s to complain. Sure, there have been some bumps along the way. Temper tantrums, pouty faces, arguments about curfews or grades. Mari supposes this is normal and is grateful it’s never been worse.

Kendra is knowable, she hasn’t grown away from them, hasn’t taken to painting her nails and lips and eyelids black or disappearing into her room to burn incense and listen to music with bad lyrics. It’s Mari who cannot quite seem to bridge the distance between the toddler with curly white-blond hair who liked to serve tea in plastic cups while wearing only a half-shredded pink tutu, and this tall, lanky and gangly teenager with iron-straightened hair the color of sand. Kendra might still sleep with an array of stuffed animals at the foot of her bed, but she’s already talking about college and moving to California to live on her own, about getting her driver’s license and access to a credit card. About growing up and growing away.

But Ethan, the boy who favors her. Him, Mari still understands. Because he’s only eight, not yet nine, though that birthday will sneak up on her before she knows it, and then he, too, will start to grow away from her. But for now she understands him because Ethan, like all children under the age of ten, is still mostly wild.

At the sink, Mari uses the sprayer to rinse the stainless steel clean. She turns off the water. Dries her hands. She looks out the window, over the tips of basil, rosemary and thyme she’s growing in her container garden on the sill. Out into the grass, which for the first time in as long as she can remember is getting too long. Ryan usually trims the grass so tight to the ground nothing living could ever possibly hide in it. In the spring, summer and fall he rides his mower every weekend, beer in hand. He might not be able to find the laundry basket, but the yard is somehow tied up in his manly pride. It’s not like him to leave the yard untended, but over the past few months he’s been working long hours. Coming home late. The weather has been rainy for the past three weekends, leaving him to sit inside on the couch watching a series of whatever random programs he finds when he taps the keys of the remote.

Now the grass would tickle her shins if she were to walk outside into it. So she does. Barefooted, step-stepping carefully from the wide wooden deck onto the slate patio and finally, at last, into spring-soft grass that bends beneath her toes and does, indeed, tickle her shins. Mari sighs. She closes her eyes. She tips her face to the late-afternoon light and breathes in deep.

She listens.

A bird chirps softly. A dog barks, far off. She hears the murmur of voices, a television or radio, from the neighbor’s house on the other side of the yard. A passing car. The squeak of bicycle wheels. There is sometimes the rustle of squirrels in the trees or rabbits hopping into the brush, but most of the wildlife in this neighborhood has been eradicated by family pets, loud children or exterminators.

These are the sounds of her life. She misses the sound of running water that had been the constant backdrop of her childhood. Two houses down, the Smithsons have a plastic waterfall set up in their backyard, but it’s too far away for her to hear. Mari used to have a container fountain on her deck, just big enough to grow a single water lily, but last winter she forgot to bring it in before the first freeze and the pump burned out. Ryan tossed the entire thing in the trash, and she hasn’t yet replaced it.

Her feet swish in the grass as she steps forward again. A twig crackles and snaps. Mari pauses. She breathes in deeply again, lashes fluttering on her cheeks, but none of this is the same as what she’s missing. This is not what she’s hoping to feel.

That she only gets in dreams.

She opens her eyes and looks at her yard. Ryan mows the lawn but won’t bother with weeding. They have a service for that. Mari hates to pull up what the Home Owner’s Association calls weeds and she calls wildflowers. She despises pulling up plants only to put down the chopped-up bits of dead trees. Mulching seems like the utmost waste to her. Ridiculous and expensive. She and Ryan fought about it when they moved into this neighborhood, but the HOA had rules about “curb appeal.” She notes the carefully pruned beds that should be beautiful and yet leave her cold, still wanting. Still suddenly desperate for something lovely. Something wild.

The only beauty Mari sees is in the far back corner of the yard, the one that butts up to the tree line and beyond that, the last farmer’s field that will be another subdivision by the end of the year. Tall oaks, weather-worn, defend her emerald-green and perfectly manicured lawn from the tangled, reckless patches of clover that edge the soybean field. Here’s where the gardening crew tosses the cuttings, the scrap, the leftovers. It’s where Ryan dumps the grass from his mower bag. It’s a shady place, a haven for small, running creatures. It’s hardly overgrown, but it’s the closest she can get to the forest. There’s a word to describe it that she once read in a book. Verdant. That’s what this place is.

There’s a fairy ring of mushrooms here, too, in the small, chilly bit of shade. They’re edible, though Mari knows better than to pluck them, rinse them and sauté them in butter. Her children won’t eat mushrooms no matter how they’re prepared, and Ryan will only eat the kind that comes in a can if they’re on top of pizza. Besides, nobody she knows eats mushrooms they find in their yard. As with many of her long-standing habits, it would be considered...strange. Mari touches the velvety cap of one and leaves it to survive in its small patch of soil.

This is where Ryan finds her, sitting on an old lawn chair he’s tried three or four times to toss into the trash. The plastic woven strips are frayed and sagging, molded to her butt, and the metal legs have rusted. Mari keeps it because it doesn’t seem like such a sin to sit on a chair like this one in this forgotten bit of backyard, while taking one of the newer, fancier deck chairs would. Ryan says nothing about the chair now. In fact, he says nothing at all.

Mari stands. “What’s wrong?”

She’s alarmed when Ryan’s mouth works but no words come out. Ryan is never without words. It’s one of the better reasons she fell so hard in love with him, his ability to always find a way to communicate with speech what she could only say with silence. She’s more alarmed when he gets on his knees to bury his face in her lap. Her hands come down to stroke the short, clipped ends of his pale hair. When she ruffles it, glints of silver shine in the gold. Ryan sighs, shoulders rising and falling, and his face is hot against her bare thigh.

“What’s wrong?” she asks again, neither of them moving until Ryan lifts his head to look at her.

“I have bad news,” her husband tells her, and not for the first time, her entire life changes.

TWO

BESIDE HIM, MARI slept. The peaceful in-out of her breathing normally soothed Ryan into sleep himself, but tonight he lay wide-eyed and wakeful. Unable to relax enough for dreams.

He could wake her. A kiss or two would do it. He turned his head to look at her. She lay facing away from him, the smooth slope of her shoulders and hips clearly outlined because she slept, as she almost always did, with only a sheet to cover her. She went to bed naked even in the winter. Hell, Mari would be naked all the time if she could get away with it.

He could push up behind her. Inside her. They’d move together the way they always did, and it would be good for both of them with hardly any effort on his part. It was one of the things he loved so much about her, her easy and effortless response. He knew it had nothing to do with his skill or his prowess, but that it was something innately sensual inside her. He was the only man she’d ever been with—Ryan knew this. But would she respond that way to any man? Or was he somehow special? Thinking of this depressed him so that he couldn’t even feel the twitch of an erection, couldn’t even lose himself in that small and simple distraction.

Too bad his dick hadn’t felt that way a year ago, when Annette Somers had strutted her way into his office with half the DSM-IV listed in her file as diagnoses. All the classic symptoms, traits and characteristics of at least three different mental illnesses, along with hints of half a dozen others. Knowing she knew how to play the game hadn’t kept him from being played.

It was too much of a cliché, but here he found himself in the awkward, not to mention financially disruptive situation of having been placed on probation at reduced salary by his practice. Worse was the very real possibility that not only could he lose his license, but Annette’s husband, Gerry, had been making noise about malpractice.

Even if eventually it all worked out and he didn’t lose his job, money was going to be tight for a while, no question. They’d have to cut back. Way back. The kids wouldn’t be happy, especially Kendra, but they’d just have to understand that this summer there couldn’t be a pool membership or that expensive sleepaway camp. No horseback riding lessons. They could cancel their cable TV if they had to, he thought. Cut back on dinners out. It could work. It would have to work.

In the dark, Ryan swallowed against a surge of sourness. For a moment he thought about shaking Mari awake to see if she’d bring him an antacid, but he stopped himself with the barest brush of his fingers along her shoulder. She would get up, if he asked her to, but it wasn’t going to make him feel better.

Maybe he could get a teaching position. Maybe he could go back to school for a new career, something like software engineering or website design. Maybe he could run away to Europe and become a heroin addict.

Maybe he could finally write that book he’d been thinking of writing for years.

The idea wiggled, a worm on a hook, in his brain. He had his dad’s notes. All the files, the hours of film and video. Just because the old man had never taken advantage of the gold mine didn’t mean Ryan couldn’t. Or shouldn’t. In fact, wouldn’t it be something his dad would want Ryan to do? And who better to put it all together, to make something out of his dad’s life’s work, than Ryan? After all, the only man who knew Mari’s story better than his father was, of course, Ryan himself.

Eased a little, he sat back in the dark, scarcely realizing he’d sat up in the first place. Yeah. The book. Even if all the rest of this turned out okay, if he got reinstated, kept his license, dodged the malpractice suit...even if all of that worked itself out, now still might be the time to write the book. What had his father always said about a door closing while a window opened?

Beside him, Mari stirred and murmured in her sleep. Ryan was used to her sleep talking, usually half-formed sentences and mumbled phrases that made little sense. Sometimes, more rarely, she moved her hands in those fluttering motions that he knew were language but which he’d never been able to interpret. Remnants of her childhood slipping out in unconsciousness. If he woke her too roughly, she’d come awake instantly. No rubbing of eyes, no yawns. Instant clarity. She’d probably be halfway across the room, too, hands up to protect herself but eyes wide. And silent, even those silly, muttered phrases gone. She wouldn’t remember what she’d been dreaming. She never did. Well, she said she never did, and Ryan had no reason to believe she’d lie. Nor did he have any real interest in prodding those memories. He wasn’t a Freudian psychiatrist; dreams were of little use to him.

He listened now, though, trying to make out what she was saying. Her low chuckle quirked his own smile. Mari had an infectious laugh as easy and free as the rest of her impulses. He loved that about her. Envied it, too.

His smile slipped away. What would she do when she found out everything, the whole truth? She hadn’t questioned him when he’d said he was being threatened with a malpractice suit. That had happened before, more than once. It was part of being a doctor. Probation meant he’d still go to the office every day, so he’d downplayed that part of it. She wouldn’t notice anything different about his schedule. But the rest of it, the part about Annette, what would she do about that? She wouldn’t leave him. How could she? He was all she’d ever known. The second most important man in her life, and once his dad had died, the most and only. She wouldn’t leave him. She couldn’t.

Could she? Oh. God. Could she really?

His hands fisted in the covers, a blanket and quilt for him because even with the summer-weight flannel pajama bottoms and T-shirt, he was still too cold to sleep without blankets.

All he’d told her was that there was some trouble with a patient at work, and she hadn’t pressed him for answers. She never did. That was something else he loved about her.

If Ryan said the sky was green, Mari could be counted on to give it a curious glance and a shrug, a smile. To go along with it. Not that she couldn’t be stubborn, because she could hold tighter to an idea or a desire than anyone he’d ever known. When Mari wanted something, she sewed herself up tight inside it, so whatever it was she’d set her sights on became a part of her. Inextricable. It was just that she so rarely wanted something hard enough to hold on to it that way.

So, she wouldn’t press him for answers about what had happened. What was still happening. He could give her any number of explanations, and she’d accept them the way she’d always done because he’d never given her reason to doubt him. She trusted him.

Sometimes, Mari’s trust in him was a weight Ryan wasn’t sure he could carry. Sure, he’d always liked it that way, pitying his buddies whose wives controlled the bank accounts, their sex lives, hell, what their husbands wore. What cars they drove. But that trust was a huge responsibility, too.

Lying in the dark beside her and hearing the soft whistle of her breath, that low chuckle that told him she was dreaming again, inside that place he could never go, Ryan wanted to wake his wife and tell her everything. Confess. Spill it out, no matter what might happen. He wanted to turn to her, take her in his arms, kiss her until her eyes opened and she focused on him.

But then somehow the alarm was going off. He’d slept without knowing it. Daylight filtered through the windows, brighter than he expected, and in the sunshine the truth suddenly didn’t seem as appealing as it had in the dark.

THREE

THE BOY IN front of her looks very seriously at the glass measuring bowl, ducking so he can see directly into it. From this angle, his face is distorted through the glass. All big eyes and twisted mouth. He’s concentrating fiercely, pouring exactly the right amount of oil.

“Is this enough, Mama?”

Mari eyes the red line on the glass bowl. Shimmering golden oil inside it. And her boy, looking up at her now as though the answer to this question is very, very important. She supposes to him, it is.

“Looks good to me, honey.”

“Now the eggs?”

“Now the eggs.”

Ethan carefully takes one egg. Then another. He cracks the eggs into the small glass cup the way Mari taught him and checks each yolk carefully before dumping it into the oil. As far as she knows, her son has never cracked open an egg and found a half-formed fetus inside, but Mari has. The eggs she ate in childhood weren’t like the kind you get in stores, all of them candled to make sure they’re okay before they’re shipped off to market. Chickens penned with roosters often had eggs with babies waiting inside. Mari always cracks them first into a separate container.

“Three eggs. A third of a cup of oil.” Ethan reads this from the cookbook, one finger pressed to the stained pages. A massive volume, over five hundred pages, it’s the only cookbook Mari’s ever owned. It had been a gift from her adopted father, who’d considered cuisine as much a part of her curriculum as reading or writing. An important life skill, he’d said, to be able to make more than boxed macaroni and cheese. Being able to cook a decent meal was part of being an adult. “Quarter cup of water. We forgot the water.”

“Go ahead and add it.” Mari doesn’t hand it to him, knowing he wants to do it himself.

Ethan adds the water. “It says we should mix it.”

“Yep. Put it in the bowl and turn it on. Low,” Mari emphasizes, because Ethan’s been known to flip the speed to high and spatter the kitchen with batter.

He giggles. Her heart swells with love for her boy who reminds her so much of herself. Yet who all too soon will become entirely more foreign to her than that mixer.

Already his legs and arms are growing longer. His fingers and feet bigger. If she were to press her hands to his, palm-to-palm, his would be nearly the same size. Sooner than she knows it, he will be a teenager like his sister. After that, a man.

And what will she do then? When she can no longer hold him on her lap. When she is not the one he comes to for fixing boo-boos and putting together toy trains that have fallen apart. What will Mari do when her boy turns into something else?

She doesn’t understand men. Never has. Probably never will. Sometimes she will stare at the damp towel tossed on the bathroom floor instead of hung neatly on the hook and wonder how Ryan, who was raised by a woman for whom there was no such thing as being too neat, can stand being such a slob. How he can blow his nose so raucously in the shower like he’s the only one to use it, or leave his dirty socks in a pile by his favorite recliner until at last, frowning, he comes to her wanting to know why the sock drawer is empty. It’s because he never had to pick up after himself, of course. His mother never made him. Nobody had done that for her; she’d learned early on how to take of herself. Clutter and mess disturb her, remind her of bad days long past. Mari can’t stand to live in filth.

If Ryan’s asked to clear away a dish or return a gallon of milk to the fridge after drinking from it, he gives Mari a blank look as though she’s asked him to perform an unexpected brain operation. Asked to fold towels, he leaves them rumpled and in leaning stacks, not neat piles. She has learned over the years to simply move behind him, tidying, a silent force he doesn’t even notice but would surely miss if it were gone. Her job, she supposes. To keep the house together, her husband and children organized and on track. Her job, Mari thinks while watching her son, to make sure her children are capable and responsible human beings who can cook and clean and take care of themselves.

Ethan, lower lip pulled between his teeth in concentration, lifts the measuring bowl and prepares to pour the contents into the metal one he needs to use with the mixer. Slick fingers, a hard tile floor. All at once there is glass and oil and eggs all over, and a small boy’s cry echoes in the kitchen.

“Mama, I’m sorry!” Ethan moves toward her with one hand out before Mari can stop him.

“No, Ethan—”

Too late. One bare foot comes down on shattered glass. He cries out again, this time in pain. There is blood.

Blood, and the low, harsh panting of a dog’s breath. Four punctures in the back of her hand, but pain all over her. The dog growled, lunging again, and Mari didn’t take a second to think about it. She kicked, hitting it in the jaw. The side. The dog yelped and fled, but she stood with her wounded hand cradled against her and watched the blood spatter on the floor until everything tipped and turned and she ended up on the ground, her burning face pressed to the cool, smooth surface....

“Mama!”

Mari is no longer frozen. That long-ago time, those long-ago sounds and smells, don’t fade away. They simply vanish. Pushed aside as she leaps across glass to lift her boy.

She settles him on the kitchen island and plucks the shard from the sole of his foot. She twists to drop it in the sink, careful to avoid the glass on the floor with her own feet. Mari grabs a clean dishcloth from the drawer, folds it into thirds and presses it to the wound.

“It hurts,” Ethan says.

“Let me take a look.” Mari lifts the white cloth, stained now with red. The wound is oozing too much blood for her to get a good look, but it appears that the glass has sliced a long section of Ethan’s foot, and the skin is flapping across the cut.

“Shh,” she murmurs. Presses the cloth against the wound. “This might need stitches.”

She could do it herself, of course, but Ryan would frown on that. Taking Ethan to the hospital will take time and expense, and ultimately, nobody can do a better job at tending her child’s hurts than she can—but nevertheless, it’s not what’s done. Just like picking mushrooms from your yard, sewing up your son on the kitchen table is bound to lead to whispers and looks of the sort Mari should be used to, the way she’s accustomed to blood, but would like to avoid, anyway.

“Nooo!” Ethan wails, and she hushes him as the back door opens.

“Gross!” Kendra, incredibly, stops midtext to stand in the doorway and stare at the bloody, oily, eggy puddle on the floor.

“I cut myself,” Ethan offers through tears.

“I have to take him to the place where they fix people when it’s an urgency.” Mari says this matter-of-factly, but Kendra’s already blanching, turning her face. More like her dad than her mom, that’s for sure.

“Emergency,” Kendra corrects. “I think I’m gonna puke!”

“Text your dad, please,” Mari says. “Tell him I’ve taken Ethan to the hospital.”

“Do I have to go, too?”

Mari thinks, knowing she’s always been able to trust her daughter who might have a flair for drama but who’s still a good kid. “No. But nobody’s allowed to come over. Don’t answer the phone unless it’s me or Daddy. Don’t answer the door. Don’t use the stove.”

It’s a little overkill, but Mari’s not thinking quite straight. The smell of the blood is teasing her head into spinning again, and she blinks away the past. Focus. Focus. This is now, she thinks. I am here.

Kendra’s already tapping her dad’s number into her iPhone, a much-coveted birthday gift that never leaves her side. “Got it.”

“Mama? Will it hurt bad? The stitches?”

“Yes. But they’ll give you something so it doesn’t hurt so much.”

“A shot?” Ethan’s lower lip trembles; a bubble of clear snot forms in one nostril.

“Yes. A shot, probably.”

“Nooo!”

“You can have the shot, which will help the pain,” Mari says, “or you can choose to not have the shot and take the pain when they stitch you. Up to you, buddy.”

Other mothers coo and coddle. She knows this because she’s seen it on playgrounds with scraped knees and during playdates when her children played with other children and she was left to make conversation with their mothers. Other mothers tell “little white lies” to ease their children’s fears. Maybe those are better mothers than she is, Mari’s never sure. All she knows is that lying rarely ever serves any good purpose, and she’d personally rather know if there is going to be pain than be told not to expect it when it is surely coming.

Ethan is much like his mother. “Okay. I’ll take the shot.”

She hands him a tissue for his nose and calls out to Kendra, “Honey, don’t come in here until I get back, okay?”

“No worries! Gross!”

Mari laughs, shaking her head, and gives Ethan a wink. He smiles back. Mari finds her purse, her keys, her wallet with the insurance card inside. Ethan helps her wrap some masking tape around the dishcloth to keep it on his foot. Then she lifts her boy, his arms around her neck. She presses her face briefly to the sweet boy scent of his hair, closing her eyes. For now, he’s still hers.

FOUR

ALONE IN THE HOUSE.

Kendra couldn’t remember the last time she’d been here without someone else. The first thing she did was lock the doors. Kendra’s friends bragged about their parents leaving them alone and the sorts of things they got up to when they did. Most of it was bullshit. If the kids in her class did half as much drinking and messing around as they said they did, they’d all be in rehab or pregnant.

Some of it was true, though. Last week there’d been a party at Jordan Delano’s house, and three girls got so drunk they ended up posting naked selfies on ZendPix. So stupid and gross. But that was the sort of thing kids did when they were left alone. It seemed as if almost all the kids in her class had parents who both worked, or moms who, if they didn’t have jobs, spent a lot of time at the gym or getting massages and mani-pedis. Kendra had been in an accelerated private kindergarten, and was almost a year younger than the rest of her classmates. Most of them had already passed their driver’s tests. Lots of them drove brand-new cars, sixteenth birthday gifts meant to make up for the fact they were left to themselves so much, she thought.

Her dad would never buy her a car. He’d say she didn’t need one, not when she had her mom to take her where she needed to go. Kendra’s mom was almost always home. She’d never had a job. She didn’t volunteer for charity or politics. She didn’t spend hours on yard work or doing crafts, either. She cleaned a lot. And she cooked. She was always there when Kendra needed her, and when she didn’t, too.

Her mom didn’t get on her case about boys or clothes or even grades like Sammy’s mom did, always wanting to have “a talk” with Sammy, like she ever really listened. Kendra’s mom was always there for her, though, ready to listen. No matter what Kendra needed to say. She’d always liked that.

Other mothers wore designer clothes, or at least outfits that matched. Shirt, shoes, belt, purse. Kendra’s mom wore tank tops and sheer, flowing skirts, and the only time she wore shoes was if she had to. Her purse didn’t bulge with makeup or a hairbrush or coupons or anything like her friends’ mothers kept in their bags. Mari didn’t even wear makeup. She was smaller than other mothers. Kendra had grown taller than her in sixth grade. And Mom didn’t care about a lot of stuff other moms did, like working out at the gym or going to church.

She was still more beautiful than any other mother, so much so that it was kind of embarrassing. Hard to live up to, too. There were times Kendra looked in the mirror at the mess of her face and wondered why she’d had to end up looking like her dad instead of her mother.

Her phone buzzed from her pocket. “Dad.”

“What happened?”

“Ethan cut his foot on some glass. Mom took him to the hospital.”

Dad sighed, and Kendra imagined him pinching the bridge of his nose with his eyes closed. “Shit. Is he okay?”

“There was blood everywhere.” Kendra made a face.

“Did she say she wanted me to meet her there?”

“I don’t know, Dad.” God, he could be so annoying. “Why don’t you call her and ask her?”

“I did. She didn’t pick up.”

“She’s probably okay,” Kendra said. Mom often forgot her phone or turned off the ringer. But her mom could handle just about anything, while it was another family truth left unspoken that her dad mostly...couldn’t. Or maybe just didn’t.

“Yeah. Well, if she calls, tell her I have some stuff I need to handle here and I’ll be home a little later.”

The call disconnected, and Kendra put her phone back in her pocket. Alone in the house, she thought, wishing for a second she was the sort of girl who’d invite everyone over for a party. Tear everything up, get wasted, make out with whoever she wanted. That’s what her dad might’ve done, she thought suddenly, when he was young. But not her mom. Her mom would’ve been good and done what was expected of her. And that’s what Kendra did, too.

FIVE

“MARI? MARI CALDER, right? Ethan’s mom.”

Mari turns with a half smile she was taught long ago was considered polite. “Yes?”

The woman in front of her looks as though she stepped out of one of the magazines Mari reads every month but rarely enjoys. Perfect hair, perfect outfit. Perfect smile that makes Mari cover her own mouth with her hand in reaction, though her teeth are no longer gray and broken and jagged.

“I’m Lorna. Davis?” The woman pauses. “Bev’s mom.”

Bev. Beverly. Beverly Davis... Mari vaguely recalls a girl with curly red hair and a set of sprouting buckteeth. She is in Ethan’s class.

“Oh. Yes. Bev.” Mari nods, wondering how it is that Lorna Davis knows who she is.

“Bev told me Ethan had an accident. Is he okay?”

“He’ll be fine.”

“Good. Kids,” Lorna says with a laugh and shake of her head. “It’s amazing any of us survive childhood, am I right?”

Mari has mastered the social smile, but laughing at something she doesn’t find funny is a skill that still escapes her. “Children are capable of surviving a lot.”

It wasn’t quite the right answer. She sees that in Lorna’s blink, her raised brow. The woman recovers quickly.

“Right. Yes. And thank goodness it was just a cut, not something worse, am I right?”

“You’re right,” Mari says.

Lorna nods. They stare at each other there in the bandage aisle of the pharmacy. Mari has a package of gauze pads and antiseptic wipes in her hand. Lorna’s small basket contains mascara, feminine deodorant spray, skin lotion, a beauty magazine.

“You know, you should think about coming to one of our Mommy’s Day Out meetings,” Lorna says suddenly.

It’s Mari’s turn to blink. “Umm...”

“You don’t work, am I right?”

“I take care of my kids,” Mari says.

Lorna laughs. “Oh, yeah, which is a full-time job, I know that. I feel you. I just started back to work last year, part-time. Gets me out of the house, but leaves plenty of ‘me’ time.”

There’s a silence that goes on too long, until Mari says, “What’s Mommy’s Day Out?”

Lorna’s eyes gleam. “Oh, we get together once a month at someplace really delish for lunch. Then sometimes a spa treatment, manicure, something like that. We have a great place we go to that does this amazing chi rejuvenation or a sugar scrub or hot stone massage, really everything they do there is fantastic. It’s a chance for us to get together away from the husbands and kids, you know what I mean? If I didn’t have my ‘Mommy’s’ days, I’d lose my mind.”

Mari shudders involuntarily at the thought of suffering a massage, of being touched so intimately by a stranger. “I like spending time with my kids.”

“Oh...of course. Me, too. I love my kids. Of course.” Lorna puts a friendly hand on Mari’s arm. “Just, you know, they can drive you crazy. You know what I mean?”

The touch makes Mari’s skin crawl, but she doesn’t back away. Mari puts on that same polite half smile she’s practiced for so many years. She will never be a social hugger, but she’s learned to tolerate a lot.

“Of course. Well, I’ll think about it.” Mari holds up her packages. “I should get home.”

“Oh, right.” Lorna pauses, expectant.

Mari has no idea what she’s waiting for and the silence stretches on until she nods and smiles and ducks away from Lorna, who stares after her.

In the car, she thinks about what she will say if Lorna actually does invite her to a Mommy’s Day Out. It might be nice, she tells herself as she lines up with the other mothers in the school parking lot, each car inching forward slowly, though the kids haven’t been dismissed yet. To do something with other women. Have some...friends.

Except it wouldn’t be nice. It would be strange and awkward. For them, not so much for her. Mari gets along with most anyone. It’s other people who usually don’t know how to react to her.

“You’re too honest,” Ryan told her once, long ago, in the very beginning when things between them were fresh and new and still strange. He’d tangled his fingers in a strand of her dark hair, pulling it along his much lighter skin to show the contrast between them.

“You’d like me to lie?”

“I don’t think you know how to lie,” had been his answer, and he’d kissed her.

It isn’t that she doesn’t know how. It’s that she doesn’t see the point. Lies are secrets, and there’s no use for them, either.

“Hey, honey,” she says when Ethan at last limps to the car and slides into the backseat. “How was school?”

“It was okay.” He shrugs, clicking his seat belt. “Can we get cheesesteaks from Pat’s for dinner?”

Pat’s, King of Steaks, isn’t on the way home. In traffic, it will take them an hour or so to get there and back. Still, Mari looks at her son’s hopeful face and doesn’t have the heart to say no. His grin and shout of laughter when she nods is enough to make her laugh, too.

Small things, she thinks as she pulls away from the school. That’s what matters. Small but beautiful things.

SIX

THE NUMBERS DIDN’T add up. Ryan had figured them four or five times, and every time, no matter how he worked them, they still turned red. He’d gone online to check balances and shift some money, but there was only so often he could do that. The checks coming in were too small, and eventually might stop coming at all. He’d have to do something, and soon.

He could tap into the money his dad had left Mari. The funds had been meant for her to go to college, if she could, or at least to live on her own in case she wasn’t able to support herself. She hadn’t done either of those things. She’d married Ryan as soon as she’d turned eighteen, and he’d taken care of her ever since. Ryan checked the balance in the account now, as always with a somewhat sour taste in the back of his throat at the amount that had accumulated.

It wouldn’t be hard to get her to agree to use it. He’d pulled from it before. The down payment on this house, for example. And he hadn’t felt bad about that, because providing Mari with a home of her own had been exactly what his father had meant the money to do. And once, they’d taken the kids to Disney World, a trip that in Ryan’s opinion had been six grand tossed away. Ryan didn’t like sweating and dealing with hordes of sticky, screaming kids, so the trip had been something of a nightmare for him. Mari and the kids had loved it, though. That was something, and giving her that experience, something she’d been lacking in her childhood, had been a perfect use of the money, too.

Even after dipping into the account twice for two big expenses, there was still plenty left. There’d been donations, fund-raisers and grants in addition to what Dad himself had set aside. Dad hadn’t known, of course, that Ryan would be able to provide her with anything Mari ever wanted or needed. He’d wanted to make sure Mari would never have to worry about money because he knew how little the concept of it meant to her. Some people who grew up poor became misers, others spendthrifts. Mari simply didn’t understand money. She just saw it as numbers.

It was Ryan who’d suggested the Disney trip. Who’d bought her the fancy iPhone that, as far as he knew, she barely used. Ryan wanted HD cable television with all the premium channels, the fastest internet. The fancy car that came with the fancy payment, too. All numbers, when you broke it down.

And now, the numbers didn’t add up.

Technically, her account was separate from the one they kept jointly, but of course, Ryan knew Mari’s passwords and PINs. Just like he knew she never checked the balances. He looked again at the balance in Mari’s account. The numbers stared at him smugly. He only needed a thousand or so to cover the credit card bill for this month.

He should ask her, first. It was her money. But he knew she’d just give him one of those quizzical looks and a smile. She’d never deny him. He’d just do it and tell her a little later. Or better yet, he’d just replace the money when he started getting his full paychecks again. She’d never know. It wouldn’t matter. It wasn’t as if they were going bankrupt or anything.

A quick tap-tap of the keys and it was done. A thousand dollars shifted from Mari’s account to the joint one. It nicely covered the upcoming bills, with a little left over in case he needed to hit the ATM for some cash. It all worked out just fine.

Ryan had just closed the browser when his wife came in. He swiveled in his office chair to find her holding up two glasses of red wine. She smiled as she closed his door.

She kissed him before she gave him the wine. She smelled good. She tasted good. Rich and earthy, like wine but so much better. She settled herself on his lap, straddling him, careful not to spill.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.” Ryan took a glass and sipped it. “That’s good.”

“I read about it in that magazine you subscribed to. It got a great rating. I saw it at the liquor store and figured I’d pick up a bottle.”

The wine cost, by his best guess, about forty bucks a bottle. Ryan winced. “It’s really good. Thanks.”

“You like it?” She sipped and swallowed. “I do.”

He did like it; that was the problem. Probably more because he knew the price tag. Behind him, the computer monitor cast an accusatory glow around them. Ryan ignored it.

“I like it a lot.” He inched her closer. “Where are the kids?”

“Ethan’s asleep. Kendra’s video chatting with someone.”

“Who?”

Mari shrugged. “Different person every time I go into her room.”

“Boy or girl?”

She gave him that look. That tender, amused look. “Both?”

Ryan frowned. “Not that Logan kid. The one with the pierced lip?”

“Honey, I don’t know. Anyway, what difference does it make? She can’t get pregnant from a video chat, thank goodness. She’s going to talk to boys, Ryan. It’s part of being a pretty fifteen-year-old girl. If she didn’t have boys wanting to talk to her, you’d worry about that.”

He didn’t want to admit that was true. “I don’t like that kid.”

“Because he has long hair and paints his fingernails?” Mari laughed. “You’re such a prepper.”

She meant preppy, but he didn’t correct her. “She should be in bed. It’s almost eleven. Doesn’t she have to get up for school tomorrow?”

“Yes. But she knows that it’s on her if she’s tired in the morning. She’s not a dummy. Besides, they have three half days this week, and then they’re done for the summer. You know they won’t be doing anything in class, anyway. And don’t you have to get up early for work tomorrow? Isn’t it your early day?”

Twice a month for the past ten years, Ryan had been volunteering his time at the Sexual Abuse Resource Center, offering free counseling. He went in two hours before work to see patients. But with the investigation going on about Annette Somers, he’d thought it would be best to step down from that volunteer position.

He hadn’t told Mari and now faced with the chance, found himself unable to.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“Don’t hit the snooze button three times,” she warned him. “I might have to poke you. Hard.”

Ryan put his glass on the edge of the desk and used both hands to anchor her on his lap. He tipped his face to look up at her. “Poking permission granted.”

His wife sipped more wine and set down her glass, too. “I can’t believe it’s almost summer. I’m not sure I’m ready for it. I still haven’t figured out about camp. I’d like them both to go at the same time, but the one Ethan likes is shifted a week earlier this year. Oh, and Kendra’s riding instructor called to say they were changing lesson times. Ethan says he wants to learn to play the guitar, so I don’t know when we’ll fit that in. What’s the name of that place where your friend’s son took lessons?”

“Yeah...about that...” Ryan’s mouth, still thick with the flavor of red wine, dried. His tongue stuck in place. He swallowed heavily. “Maybe the kids need a break from some of that stuff this year. I mean, studies are showing that kids are so overscheduled these days.”

Some of the wives of Ryan’s friends never stopped moving. Multitasking queens, never still. Some of them were pluckers, forever picking at imaginary bits of lint on their husbands’ shirts. Others were texters, chatting briskly even as they held a series of entirely different conversations with their fingers. Bustlers.

Mari had a stillness that was more than quiet. She could go perfectly motionless and silent. She could almost disappear. Ryan almost always found this calming. She did it now, looking him over, and this time it didn’t soothe him.

“I thought you liked it when the kids were kept busy.”

“You could get a break, too. Why should you spend your summer playing chauffeur?” He spun his chair with her still on his lap to gesture at the computer. “Sign them up for the library reading program. And hey, they have that free bowling program at the Cinebowl.”

“We do those things every summer. But the kids look forward to those other things, they’re not chores.” Her head tilted slightly, her brow furrowing. “Kendra loves the riding lessons, and Ethan is already talking about the guitar thing. They both like camp, too, because they see their friends from other years there. And I don’t mind driving. I mean...it’s what I do. I’m their mother. It’s my job. Would you rather I spend all my time getting massages at the spa?”

The brittle tone in her voice set him back for a second. “No.” Definitely the opposite with the financial situation they were in.

“My kids don’t make me crazy,” Mari said quietly. “I like doing things with them. And for them.”

“I know. But you shouldn’t have to spend all your time driving them around from activity to activity. It’s summer. We should be focused on simpler things. And with you running around all the time, we get too much takeout.”

Her lips quirked in amusement. “I thought you liked Pat’s cheesesteaks.”

“I do.” He did, that was true. But a simple dinner for four had added up to almost forty bucks. “It’s better when you make dinner, that’s all.”

“So...your idea of my having the summer off includes me keeping the kids entertained and cooking even more dinners? Great.” She tilted her head to give him a curious look. “That sounds really relaxing.”

“No. No, that’s not what I mean.” He took her hand and brushed the knuckles across his lips. “I just think it might be better to cut back on some things. That’s all.”

“Is it money?”

Ryan wondered if the reason Mari hardly ever questioned him about anything was because somehow, some way, she just...knew.

She pursed her lips. “How much less are you getting?”

Damn it, she cut to the heart of things when she noticed them. Ryan put on a neutral face and lied. “I’m at 85 percent of my salary, that’s all. Just during this investigative period.”

“That’s not so bad, is it?” She looked over his shoulder at the computer screen, but all she’d see was his aquarium screensaver. She looked back at him, serious eyes, serious mouth. “But if you want me to cut back on expenses, I can do that.”

He knew she could. Hell, Mari had survived the entire first eight years of her life living at a level so far below poverty he wasn’t sure it could even be registered. Mari could trim the fat of their lives so close to the bone there’d be hardly anything left.

“No, babe. We don’t have to do that. It’ll be okay.” He said it with more confidence then he felt; a moment later he forced himself to believe it. To forget about the money he’d just transferred. “This’ll pass. No problem.”

Mari ran her fingers through his hair, then cupped his chin in her palm, forcing him to look into her eyes. What she saw there, Ryan could not have said, but whatever it was seemed to satisfy her because she nodded and kissed him. She held him in her arms, the warmth of her familiar and arousing.

“It’s only for a little while, anyway. Couple of weeks. A month, tops. Just until we get this stupid investigation out of the way,” Ryan said.

Mari nodded. She believed him, and why not? She always did. She always would.

SEVEN

MARI STANDS IN the pantry. The shelves groan with the weight of cans and bags and boxes. She runs her fingertips over them, mouthing the names of all the good things but not speaking aloud. Beans, rice, pasta. She can make a hundred meals from these ingredients. Enough to last for months even if she didn’t go to the grocery store for that long.

This comforts her, the sight of this wealth. The cool wood and shadows soothe her, too, even if she has to take only two steps to get back into the brightly lit kitchen. She closes her eyes, breathing in the scent of spices. She can smell the brown paper bags stacked carefully in the rack, ready to be reused. The biting stink of ammonia in the bottle toward the back, and also of vinegar closer to the front. A bottle of floor cleaner is supposed to smell “flower-fresh” but doesn’t.

“Moooom!”

Mari sticks her head out of the pantry. “What?”

Kendra jumps, startled, at the kitchen table. “What are you doing in there?”

“Thinking about what to make for dinner. What do you want?”

Kendra must want something from her mother, but she doesn’t say what it is. The idea of dinner distracts her. “Can we order pizza?”

“No.” Mari thinks of Ryan’s words from a few nights before when she’d brought home the cheesesteaks. “I can make some.”

Kendra makes a face. “Forget it. I’m going over to Sammy’s house, then.”

Samantha Evans has been Kendra’s best friend since first grade. She lives a few houses down the street. Her parents have been on the edge of divorce for years, and neither are probably home now. They both work. They both stay out of the house a lot so they don’t have to see each other. Mari would prefer it if the girls came to spend time in her house where she can keep an eye on them, where she can do her meager best to give Sammy some semblance of normal family life—but she understands that two teen girls want to spend their time in independence, such as it is.

Besides, Sammy’s parents usually seem to leave her money for pizza.

“Just you and Sammy?”

Kendra looks faintly scornful. “Of course. Who else would come over?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that boy...what’s his name? Logan?”

Kendra bites her lip gently. But then she shakes her head, her hand going unconsciously to the pocket of her jeans where her phone buzzes. Ah, Mari thinks. She does like him. But something has gone wrong.

“Sammy’s parents don’t let her have anyone over when they’re gone. Just me.”

“I know what they allow and don’t allow, Kendra. But I also know they’re not home and it can be tempting....” Mari trails off before she can spout more daytime drama admonitions. Aware more than ever that Kendra is living a life completely different than Mari’s teenage years. “I just want you to be safe. That’s all.”

“Mom. C’mon. We’re going to watch TV and stuff. Her mom said when she got home from work she’d take us to the mall and see a movie. I can sleep over. Is that okay?”

“What time is her mom supposed to be home?”

A shrug. “Dunno. Seven?”

It’s a Friday night. School’s out for the summer. Sammy lives just down the street. Mari thinks she ought to protest more, but without the allure of pizza, a trip to the mall and a movie, what does she have to hold her daughter here? Ryan has already said he’d be home late again. It’ll just be her and Ethan.

“Call me when you get back to Sammy’s house tonight.”

Kendra’s grin lights up her face. Mari sees herself in that grin and is relieved to feel that connection. For a moment, she remembers the weight of a sleeping infant in her arms, the sweet smell of Kendra’s fuzzy baby head. Time is passing too fast. But isn’t that what time does?

Mari makes pizza, anyway. She and Ethan eat it on the back deck. The cut on his foot left a scar, but he’s healed fast enough that he barely limps. She watches him build with Lego blocks as she flips through a parenting magazine she bought from the school fund-raising campaign. Nothing in it seems relevant to her, but she tries hard to pay attention to it, anyway. She pages past glossy photos of mothers and children posed around platters of decorated cupcakes, modeling hand-printed T-shirts. She skims the articles, skipping the words and phrases that give her trouble. She can read competently enough. It’s the lack of context that confuses her.

When the fireflies come out to dot their tiny yellow brightness against the backdrop of night, Mari calls Ethan away from his toys and hands him an empty canning jar. Together they stalk the lightning bugs and capture them until the jar is full.

“Hold it up,” she tells him. “Aren’t they lovely?”

“We can’t keep them,” Ethan says solemnly. “Wild things deserve to be free. Don’t they, Mama?”

“They do. But we can hold them for just a little while, right?”

He laughs and holds up the jar. “Yep. Then we’ll let them go.”

“Let’s have some ice cream.”

“Hooray!” Ethan dances, forgetting that lovely wild things also don’t like to be shaken around in their glass houses. The bugs swirl and dip, falling off the jar’s slick insides.

Mari takes it from him as he runs ahead of her into the house. She sets the jar on the deck railing as she goes inside to scoop large bowls of ice cream for them both. Whipped cream. Fudge sauce. She loves sweets, even if her teeth ache in memory of past indulgences. She should limit herself and, she supposes, Ethan, too, to one scoop. But she can’t help it. Even with the memory of thousands of dollars and dozens of hours of dental work to repair the damage done to her teeth through childhood neglect, Mari can’t resist.

Ryan comes home as she and Ethan have settled into chairs on the deck. The sweep of headlights illuminate the backyard for a second as he pulls into the drive, then it’s all dark again except for the jar of tiny living lights. A square of light appears as he opens the door from the garage into the laundry room.

“Hello?”

“Out here!” Mari turns in her chair to greet him with a smile. “Want some ice cream?”

“No, thanks.” He kisses her briefly and ruffles Ethan’s hair.

“Dad, look at the fireflies.”

“I see. Where’s Kiki?”

“She went to Sammy’s. Her mom’s taking them to a movie. Then she’s sleeping over.”

This is a normal conversation. Mother, father, son. Ice cream on a new summer night, fireflies in a jar. It could’ve come right out of the pages of a magazine. It’s everything she was taught to believe and want, right there in front of her. And she deserves this, doesn’t she? This normal life?

“She’ll never be right, Leon. She’ll never be normal. You have to realize that. I know you want to keep working with her, but—” The woman in the sorrow suit shook her head.

No, not sorrow. The color of her suit was called navy, and the skirt Mari wore was the same. She didn’t like this skirt. Too tight at the knees. It meant she couldn’t run. Couldn’t jump. Couldn’t crawl. Had to sit up straight like a good girl, a nice girl.

Normal girl.

* * *

“Is it time for us to let them go, Mama?” Ethan, mouth smeared with chocolate, hair standing on end, holds up the jar.

Inside it, fireflies wiggle and flash. They’re so pretty, all gathered there. Mari looks out to the yard, then beyond that to the fields just past the tree line. There, in the knee-high crop are thousands—no, millions, if it’s possible, of fireflies blinking out their mating signals.

She stands. “Oh, look at how many there are.”

Ryan’s already gone inside the house, turning on the lights. Ruining the view. Ethan oohs and aahs with her, though. Together she and her son run through the grass toward the trees, hand-in-hand.

“Let them go now,” Mari says.

Ethan unscrews the lid. He shakes the jar until the bugs inside realize their freedom and drift upward. Out of the glass, into the night. Into the field, where they blend in with the others, until at last the jar in her son’s hand is empty. His hand slips back into hers as they stare out at the field.

This, she thinks, is her real life. Her normal life. Short minutes tick-tocking out in the darkness, watching fireflies. These moments of small beauty, shared with her boy. This is where she was always meant to be.

EIGHT

IT WAS A FARCE, and Ryan knew it. As soon as Annette Somers’s husband brought the case against him, every doctor in the practice knew it would probably ruin him. They’d pretended they were behind him, of course. Putting him on leave from seeing patients, giving him the shit work to do, dictating notes and culling files. They couldn’t outright fire him, not without proof he’d done what Gerry Somers said he’d done. Most of them had faced malpractice suits in their careers, it seemed to be the way medicine was going, everyone entitled to believe they deserved something they didn’t, that doctors weren’t allowed to make mistakes, not ever. But this was different. This was a matter of ethics, and while his partners might cluck and shake their heads, Ryan knew not a one of them was going to risk being pulled down along with him.

Not that he blamed them. If it had been one of them, he’d feel the same way. It still royally sucked, though. Walking into the office with a smile for the secretary, even though he had no patients to see. Holing up in his office to stare at the walls or sift through old case files. Taking calls from his lawyer who assured him this would all be resolved without too much hassle.

Mari had packed him a lunch this morning. Sandwich, chips, a pear, a juice box, for god’s sake. One of those snack cakes she loved so much. That stopped him for just a second. She hoarded those snack cakes as if they were gold. The fact she’d put one in his lunch—the fact she’d made him a lunch at all, when she knew he always ate lunch out—told him a lot about what she’d noticed about the situation he’d so carefully tried to keep from describing in full detail.

It was too much to sit in this office any longer, doing make-work while he waited for the ax to fall. Ryan took the lunch bag and slipped on his sunglasses. He passed a hand over his hair and straightened his tie. He didn’t bother telling Ceci the secretary where he was going or to hold his calls.

Rittenhouse Square Park, only a few blocks from Ryan’s office, was a popular place at lunchtime. Joggers, moms pushing strollers, men in suits just like his staking out primo spots on the benches. Ryan snagged a bench and opened the lunch bag to stare inside without interest. Really, he’d have preferred a greasy cheesesteak from Pat’s, “wit” onions and Cheez Whiz. Then a hard workout later to keep it from settling on his gut. Instead, he had a turkey sandwich on whole wheat with fat-free mayo, tomato and lettuce, a piece of fruit, a snack cake and a damned juice box.

He’d asked her to cut back, but facing the results of his wife’s efforts, Ryan wanted to punch something. Or run for a long, long time, until everything about him ached and he wore holes in his socks and left bleeding blisters on his feet. Instead, he put the bag next to him on the bench and tipped his face to the late-spring sunshine.

His father would’ve been ashamed of him.

Oh, it wasn’t like they’d ever been close. Ryan had been his mother’s son, her pride and joy. Her best work, she liked to say, which was sort of a laugh since she hadn’t ever had a job. It had just been the two of them for a lot of years while his father spent hours at work. In the lab, with patients. His research. He’d left his wife and son to their own devices, showing up late for dinner or not at all, completely clueless and unaware of the silence in the house that grew over congealing meatloaf and cold mashed potatoes. When he did show up, he talked about himself, his discoveries, his breakthroughs and his studies. Always himself.

Eventually, Ryan’s mother had simply stopped setting a place for her husband. More than once, Ryan had come into the kitchen at night for a bedtime snack to find his father standing at the sink, a plate of leftovers in one hand and a beer in the other.

They’d never been close, but it hadn’t been a terrible relationship. When Ryan decided to go into psychiatry, Dad had been there to support and advise him, steering him away from the world of academia and into a more practical path.

“It’s where the money is,” Dad had told him over glasses of decent Scotch that Ryan was too young to drink, one night late after Mom had gone to bed. “You’re going off to college, then med school, that’s great. But don’t end up like me, begging for scraps to keep working. Don’t be a researcher.”

It was the first time Ryan had tasted liquor. The taste of it would always bring back the memory of that night, the first time his dad had talked to him man-to-man. His father’s hand clapped to his shoulder. Dad’s bleary gaze. The feeling the entire world was opening up to him, just turned eighteen and ready to conquer.

And now look at him. What the hell had happened? What had he done?

He’d messed up. Big-time.

But...the book.

His father had spent years on research. Compiling data, theories, proving them right. Or wrong. He’d scrabbled for money to fund his work and in the end had made almost nothing from it. But he had left behind a legacy.

Ryan sat back again, thinking hard. Excitement stirred inside him, tender shooting sprouts that promised to grow into something more. A book about his father’s work was a sure thing. Guaranteed to be a bestseller, he knew it.

Beside him on the bench, the paper bag rustled. With a frown, Ryan poked it. He had the right to share his father’s work with the world, no question of that. But did he have the right to share the story of his dad’s greatest success?

It wasn’t Ryan’s story to tell. It was Mari’s. If he asked her, he thought, picking up the crumpled paper lunch sack, she would certainly say yes.

But if he didn’t ask her, she couldn’t say no.

The man who shuffled up to him then looked homeless. Wild hair, scruffy beard on pale cheeks. Cargo pants loose on his hips and hanging low, no belt, mismatched shirt. Ryan flinched automatically, expecting a wave of stink, but this guy didn’t reek of booze or piss. That was something to be thankful for, anyway. The guy looked hungry, though.

Ryan wasn’t in the habit of giving handouts, especially cash. Let them buy their booze and drugs on someone else’s dime. He held up the lunch bag, though, thinking he could do a good deed and then have an excuse to grab some lunch that suited him better.

“Hey, buddy. My wife packed this for me, but you can have it.”

“My wife used to pack me lunch.” The man’s gravelly voice rasped on Ryan’s ears. “What do you think of that?”

Ryan’s fingers crumpled the brown paper lunch bag. Shit. Why’d he always manage to attract the confrontational ones? “I don’t—”

The man laughed, tossing back his head for only a couple seconds before fixing Ryan with a fierce glare. “You don’t have a clue who I am. Do you?”

Uncomfortably Ryan looked from side to side, but if anyone in the park was bearing witness to this drama they had the good sense to pretend otherwise. Also, he noticed uneasily that the man looked unkempt, but not necessarily unhinged. “Should I?”

“You should, since you screwed my wife and then killed her.”

Shit. Shit and damn and double damn. Ryan stood, lunch bag forgotten. He towered over Gerry Somers, but the other man didn’t even back up enough to give Ryan room to take a step. Trapped between his former patient’s husband and the bench, Ryan had the sick feeling he was going to have to get physical.

“I didn’t kill your wife.”

“You might as well have. What the hell kind of doctor are you, anyway?” Gerry spat to the side before fixing Ryan with another long, hard stare. “You knew all about her. Knew her problems. And you screwed her, anyway. What did you think would happen?”

Ryan flashed back to a memory of Annette, naked, breasts pendulous and swaying as he watched her in the mirror. Taking her from behind. Then with her on top. She’d gripped him with her insides, riding him frantically, shouting when she climaxed. A slow trickle of sweat slid down his spine.

“Your wife had a lot of problems. I wasn’t her first doctor. She came to me with a lot of issues, and I’m sorry I couldn’t help her with them.” Ryan swallowed and looked into the man’s eyes. “But it’s not my fault she killed herself. She was no longer in my care at the time and hadn’t been for six months.”

Gerry blinked rapidly without moving away. Ryan pushed gently past him to put distance between them. The man turned to follow him, grabbed at Ryan’s sleeve to stop him.

“She said she was going to leave me for you. Did you know that?”

Ryan had not. He swallowed again, thick saliva against an uprush of bile painting the back of his tongue. “She was delusional. She had transference issues. She’d had them before. You know she did. If you know anything about her at all...”

“I knew everything about her! I knew when she came home stinking of you!” Gerry leaned to sniff dramatically at Ryan’s neck. “Fancy-ass cologne. How much you pay for that?”

“I’m really sorry about your wife, but I can’t talk to you any more about this. My lawyer—”

“Oh, right. Your lawyer. Well, let me tell you something, Dr. Calder. Your lawyer isn’t going to be able to do shit for you. I’m going to take everything you have. I’m going to ruin you.”

“Don’t threaten me,” Ryan said without much heat.

Gerry laughed and backed up, finally. His eyes gleamed. He scrubbed at his mouth with the back of his hand. “No threat. The truth. You’re going to pay for what you did. I’m going to see to it.”

Gerry took another few steps back, then turned on his heel and stalked away, leaving Ryan to stare after him. The sun beat down, suddenly too much. His stomach lurched again. He tossed the uneaten lunch into the trash and headed back to his office.

In the waiting room, neutral beige and hung with paintings of seascapes, Ryan found out just how determined Gerry Somers was. Normally after lunch there were at least three or four patients waiting their turn in the sea-foam green and mauve chairs. Not today. Today Ceci was sobbing quietly behind the glass window while Ryan’s partner Jack Kastabian patted her shoulder. Two cops with notepads turned when Ryan opened the door.

Someone, and it wasn’t hard to figure out who, had spray painted Dr. Ryan Calder Is A in red, dripping letters on the waiting room wall. Across one of the bland seascapes, he’d scrawled Wife Fucker.

Ryan felt his knees wanting to go weak, but he locked them to keep from sinking into one of the chairs. The world went a little gray around the edges of his vision. He heard the roaring of surf that had nothing to do with the ocean.

“Ryan,” said his other partner, Saul Goldman. “We need to talk.”

NINE

“HE’S TOTALLY INTO YOU.” Sammy said this so confidently that Kendra had to roll her eyes.

“Sure he is. That’s why he spent the whole study hall talking with Bethany.” Kendra shrugged, swiping the screen of her phone to check for notifications from ZendPix. Sammy had sort of bullied her into sending Logan a selfie, but that had been more than an hour ago. He’d opened it, but hadn’t replied. “That’s why he’s ignoring my ZendPix. Shit, Sammy.”

Kendra wanted to cry. It was bad enough that Logan knew she liked him, but now he knew she knew that he knew...So now it was this big freaking mess. So embarrassing. It had been better when they were just friends. At least then he’d paid attention to her. Ever since Sammy’d told Logan’s best friend, Rob, that Kendra wanted to get with him, he’d been acting weird.

“He likes you. Rob told me he did.” Sammy leaned to grab a handful of pretzels from the bowl on the floor, then tossed one in her mouth. She crunched, still talking, which grossed Kendra out. “And besides, it’s totally obvious.”

“It’s not obvious to me.” Kendra groaned and rolled onto her back to stare at the stick-on plastic stars attached to Sammy’s ceiling. The fan blades whirring around made them seem to pulse and vibrate, which made her head hurt. She closed her eyes.

“My mom said we could order pizza. You want pepperoni and mushroom?” Sammy poked Kendra with her toe.

“I think I’m gonna go home.”

“What? Dude, no!” Sammy frowned and sat up. “Why? Are you mad? Don’t be mad, Kendra, God!”

She wasn’t mad. Well, a little. Still mostly embarrassed. “I’m not. I just don’t feel like having pizza for dinner. My mom’s making chicken parm.”

For a second, Sammy’s face fell, and Kendra felt like shit for rubbing her friend’s nose in the fact that her parents had left her alone again. But then Sammy tossed her hair with a shrug, so they both could pretend she didn’t care, and it was cool between them even though Sammy had kind of ruined Kendra’s life for now.

“He does like you,” she said again in a lower voice when Kendra was leaving. “I’m sorry he’s being a jerk about it.”

“That’s what boys do, right? Be jerks?” Kendra said, like she had tons of experience, when they both knew Sammy’d almost lost her virginity last summer and Kendra, so far, hadn’t even been French-kissed.

Sammy looked wistful. “Yeah. I guess so.” She brightened. “Hey, I have an idea. Let’s invite them over!”

“Who?”

“Rob and Logan!” Sammy was already whipping out her phone and scrolling to dial.

Kendra tried to grab it from her hand. “No way!”

She wasn’t fast enough. Squealing, Sammy rolled over the bed to bounce upward, phone triumphantly in hand. “Yes, way!”

“Your mom and dad said—”

Sammy’s face twisted. It was the wrong thing to say. Kendra had lost this battle, for sure.

“Eff them,” Sammy said coldly. “They’re both out screwing other people right now. They think I don’t know. Shit, they each think the other one doesn’t know. So as far as I’m concerned, I can have a few friends over.”

Kendra didn’t know what to say. She knew things with Sammy’s parents were bad, but not like that. Other people? She didn’t even want to think about her parents doing it with each other, much less anyone else.

So that was how she found herself in a dark room, lit only by a few candles, sitting across from Sammy with a Ouija board between them. Rob sat on one side, Logan on the other. The boys had found the liquor cabinet and helped themselves to peach schnapps with dust on the bottle, mixed with some orange juice. Kendra refused it, the smell turning her stomach.

Sammy’d had a whole glass already. Her eyes gleamed. She was acting weird, all jerky and hectic, like she was hopped up on something. It was because of the boys, Kendra thought, watching her. She was showing off.

“Spirit, is there someone in this room right now you have a message for?” Sammy intoned before breaking into a giggle.

YES

“What’s the message,” Logan said.

SAMY, spelled the board. LOVES

Sammy took her hands off the planchette so fast the plastic piece spun around and almost scooted off the edge of the board balanced on their knees. “Not funny, Kendra.”

“I didn’t do anything.” Kendra looked at Rob and Logan. “I didn’t!”

Rob nudged Sammy. “Sammy loves...who?”

Under Kendra’s fingers, the planchette jerked toward the letter L. She took her fingers off it immediately. Sammy stared at her. Rob, teasing, snatched up the planchette and settled it back into the center of the board.

“C’mon, let’s ask it something really freaky,” he said. When nobody answered him, he looked up. “What? C’mon!”

“I’m going to go home.” Kendra stood. The room spun a little, which wasn’t fair since she hadn’t even had a sip of booze. She stared down at Sammy, her best friend.

Sammy was slowly turning green. She got unsteadily to her feet and headed for the small powder room off the rec room. “I’m going to puke.”

“Can’t handle her alcohol,” Rob said with a shake of his head. “Lightweight.”

Kendra looked at Logan. They’d been friends since fourth grade, when Miss Beatrice had made them work together on the project about El Salvador. In sixth grade he’d been with her when her sled went out of control in the park and she hit a tree. Logan had been the one to walk her home. In eighth grade, they’d gone to their first formal together, as friends, but he’d bought her a corsage and she’d bought him a boutonniere, and his mother had taken pictures. Hers had forgotten the camera. Kendra still had one of the pictures in her top drawer, under her socks. She’d been looking at it a lot more, lately.

“I’m going home,” she said and didn’t wait another second for anyone to try to stop her.

Not that any of them did. Sammy was busy yakking, Rob was raiding the liquor cabinet again. And Logan...Logan didn’t like her in that way.

Her phone buzzed from her pocket as soon as she got out the front door. It was Sammy. Kendra swiped to read it, though she wanted to ignore it.

Don’t be mad

Kendra typed as she walked. When?

Last year. When you were at camp. But he really likes you. I swear to God!

So Logan was the guy Sammy had almost gone all the way with, not some stranger she’d met at the beach like she’d said. It made sense. Kendra could hardly be mad, in a way, since it wasn’t as if she and Logan had a thing going on. She understood why Sammy would’ve wanted to get with him, and why she hadn’t told Kendra about it.

But she didn’t understand why Sammy would’ve lied about Logan liking Kendra.

She didn’t answer the text, her stomach sick and churning, her throat tight and hot. Her face felt stretched. Like if she blinked too hard it would crack and fall off. A mask.

“Hey, Kiki. I thought you were staying over at Sammy’s.” Mom appeared in the kitchen doorway as Kendra put her foot to the stairs. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Kendra started to say, but the words got lost in a sudden uprush of tears.

Her mom’s hand squeezed her shoulder, guiding Kendra to the dining room table. “Sit.”

Kendra sat. Mom sat next to her, saying nothing. Waiting while Kendra sobbed, handing her a napkin when the snot ran too freely. When Ethan wandered in, Mom murmured for him to go away and leave them alone, though he did pause to give Kendra a bewildered look first. When the tears tapered off, Kendra blew her nose and waited for her mom to ask her what had happened.

Instead, her mom got up and disappeared for a moment, returning with a crinkling package she opened. She handed Kendra a pack of chocolate snack cakes from her secret stash without a word. Kendra stared at it for a moment, then took a bite. It wasn’t very good, but she ate it, anyway.

Her mom at last said quietly, “Do you want to talk about it?”

That was the last thing Kendra wanted to do, yet she opened her mouth and spilled out her guts, anyway. “...And I know she says he likes me, Mom, but he doesn’t. Not like that. He must like Sammy.”

“Why? Because he fooled around with her?”

“Well. Yeah.” Kendra swiped at her face.

Mom laughed softly. “Kiki...I know you don’t need me to tell you that boys will take chances when they get them. It doesn’t mean they love the girl they take them with. Or even like her all that much, sometimes. And even if he did, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t also like you.”

“She’s my friend,” Kendra said miserably.

“He’s your friend, too. Both of them have been for a long time.”

Kendra looked at her mother. “Is that supposed to make it better?”

“I don’t know. Does it make it worse?”

“No.” Kendra took a deep breath, considering what her mom had said. “Not worse. But not better.”

“Maybe it won’t get better,” her mom said, “for a while.”

They sat in silence for a minute or so. Kendra’s mom took her hand, squeezing the fingers. Kendra squeezed back.

“Did you ever like a boy who didn’t like you back?” Kendra asked.

Her mom coughed a little. “Umm...no.”

“Because you were pretty,” Kendra said sourly, looking at her mom’s thick dark hair and vivid blue eyes. In her wedding picture, she looked like a movie star. Kendra’s own hair had been blond and curly as a kid, but now it was just straight and plain and sort of brown.

Her mother looked surprised, eyes wide, mouth dropping. “Pretty, me? No. Oh, Kiki.”

“Ugh, Mom, you were so pretty.” Kendra scowled.

“Not when I was younger.”

“When you married Daddy you were pretty,” Kendra said.

Her mom nodded after a moment. “I guess so. He thought so, anyway. And your dad’s the only boyfriend I ever had.”

Kendra wasn’t surprised. She’d known this, even though knowing it and really believing it weren’t the same thing. “Really?”

Her mom looked uncomfortable, which made Kendra wish she hadn’t asked. “Yes. Really.”

“Wow,” Kendra said when the silence between them grew too big. “That’s...”

“It’s what it is,” her mom said firmly and stood, clapping her hands together. “Dinner is almost ready. Let’s set the table. And after dinner, I need to run to the mall. We can look at those sneakers you wanted.”

It felt a little bit like bribery, but if so, Kendra didn’t mind. It was what some parents did when their kids felt bad about something. Bought them stuff. It was what some of them did to distract their kids from asking questions, too. Whatever her mom’s reasons, a new pair of shoes couldn’t take away the sting of realizing Sammy and Logan had been together.

But it helped.

TEN

THE FIRST DAYS of summer vacation are the best. The kids haven’t had time to get bored, they still have their annual trip to the beach to look forward to and sleeping in is still a luxury and not yet a habit that will need to be broken when school starts again. It’s only been a week, though, and they haven’t yet settled into any routine. Now Mari’s not sure they will.

Because this year, Ryan’s home.

This is bad for several reasons. One is because Ryan isn’t used to the way things are in the house when he’s not there. He snaps at the kids for watching too much television and manufactures chores for them to do in the name of “helping” her, though Mari has the house utterly under control. She neither needs nor wants her children scrubbing toilets and changing sheets, no matter how little she cares for the tasks herself. She’s told him this before, when Ryan says the kids need more responsibility and she says, let them be kids. Teaching them to take care of themselves and turning them into their personal maid service isn’t the same thing. He’s either forgotten their previous conversations or doesn’t care. Or maybe, she thinks, listening to the muffled sound of Ryan lecturing Kendra on something Mari knows their daughter will ignore, Ryan simply believes himself to be the better parent.

On another day, another time, this thought would slip away from her with no more than a blink and wink of effort. Today, with her husband still home after a week and a half, Mari’s patience is worn to transparency. They rarely argue. The house and the kids have always been her domain. Now without the respite of Ryan leaving for work, Mari finds herself chafing under his constant suggestions and advice. Never mind that he’s never cleaned a toilet, scrubbed a floor or folded a basket of laundry in his life, now he knows just how it should be done. She hasn’t quite snapped at him. Not yet. It will surprise him if she does, and she’d rather not.

There’s another reason it’s bad that Ryan is constantly home. It means something has changed in their lives. It’s been a long time since she felt this way—uncertain of what is coming next or how to handle it.

There is a way to relieve the sting of this anxiety. Mari stretches high, fingertips searching the back of the cabinet, behind the special Thanksgiving table decorations she usually forgets to use on the table. There. She snags a package of snack cakes, chocolate, shaped like hearts. The wrapping is gone in seconds, the sweet creamy cake clutched in her fist.

They gave her hot, wet mess in a bowl, she dug her fingers into it, it burned, she tossed it down. They came with yelling hands and faces, open mouths. When she told them what happened, they took her hands and held them tight so she could not speak. They gave her a spoon, instead.

They made her normal.

Mari stops herself from shoving the cake into her mouth. Her jaw aches. Her throat closes, making it hard to swallow. She finally manages to throw the cake into the trash, then has to drink from the faucet to wash away the taste of her own desperation.

She’s never without her secret stock of snack cakes, but it’s the first time in a long, long time that she’s wanted to eat one that way. Gobbling and desperate. Mari closes her eyes for a moment, then shakes off the desperation.

Rough time, she thinks fleetingly before focusing on the cupboards in front of her. Tea, coffee, spices. Containers of candy sprinkles and cake decorations from Kendra’s fascination a year or so ago with making fancy cupcakes. Luxuries, not necessities, and at seeing this, the excess, calm should wash over her, but it doesn’t. Nobody should be able to survive very long on rainbow jimmies and silver marzipan buttons. But it’s surprising what people can survive on.

Kendra stomps into the kitchen, scowling. “Mom. Can’t you talk to Dad? God!”

Mari turns from her silent contemplation of the bounty in her cabinets. Kendra sees this and sighs. Her arms fold across breasts larger than her mother’s (the result of better childhood nutrition or genetics, who knows?). For a second, Mari sees a woman in front of her instead of a girl and she’s more ashamed by how threatened she feels by this than the fact Kendra’s embarrassed by her kitchen quirks.

“Mom! Hello!”

If Mari has her way, Kendra will never know what it feels like to want for anything, much less a meal. She doesn’t explain herself, though. She and Ryan have never talked to the kids about the way Mari grew up. Ryan, she thinks, is happy not to be reminded, and Mari is certain she wouldn’t be able to package her life into a shape her children could possibly understand.

“What do you want me to talk to him about?”

“He’s just... Gah!” Kendra throws her arms wide, infuriated in the way only teen girls can manage. “He’s all over me about my room. And being on the phone! He said I had to get off my computer, too. That I had to find something to do. Well, Mom, being on my computer is doing something.”

Mari looks to the ceiling. Silence from upstairs. “Your dad’s under some stress right now, Kiki.”

Kendra bites her lower lip. “His job.”

“Yeah. His job. So let’s try to give your dad a break, huh?”

“What happened?”

Ryan is experienced at parental white lies; Mari doesn’t know how. “He’s been put on probation.”

“What did he do?” Kendra says flatly.

“There was some trouble with a patient.”

The girl sags, head drooping. “Sammy says she heard that Dad got in trouble. She heard her mom talking about it.”

Sammy’s father is also a doctor. Family medicine, not psychiatry, but Mari supposes the medical community, even in Philadelphia, might be small enough that rumors spread. From what she knows of doctors, they like to talk. So do doctors’ wives. And daughters, apparently.

Ryan is in trouble, and with something more than a frivolous malpractice suit. Mari isn’t sure just how much, or what kind, or what for, though she knows it has something to do with a patient who died. Suicide comes along with the job, Ryan told her long ago, the first time one of his patients killed himself. Doctors have to be prepared for it. He’d cried back then, horrified and ashamed of what he must’ve felt to be a huge personal failure. He hadn’t wept this time.

“Sammy says her dad said one of dad’s patients is the woman who jumped in front of the SEPTA train.”

“You heard about that?” Mari is startled and shouldn’t be. Kendra’s plugged in to things Mari’s always hearing long after the fact.

“Yeah. Everyone at school was talking about it. Logan—” Kendra’s voice cracks for a second before she clears her throat and continues “—said his older sister was on the train when it happened. They made everyone stay on until they could get her out. She was squished.”

Mari wrinkles her nose. “Kiki.”

“That’s what Logan said.” Kendra doesn’t seem to take any glee in this morbid news, but she’s not terribly disturbed, either.

The parenting magazines would say Mari should be concerned at her daughter’s lack of compassion, but since she’s well acquainted with how easy it is to find distance from tragedy, she can’t be. “So you and Logan are talking again?”

Kendra skips that question. “Squished right between the train and the platform. She made everyone late.”

Mari shakes her head, at last finding reproach. “She died. Be kind.”

“Sorry. But was she? Dad’s patient?”

“Daddy’s patient got squished by a train?” Ethan has appeared from the basement where he’s been playing video games with the sound turned low and the lights off to escape Ryan’s attention. The strategy had worked so well Mari had forgotten he was there. “What?”

“It’s going to be okay,” Mari says. “We’re going to be all right.”

Both of her children turn to look at her with nearly identical expressions. She might expect a hint of doubt from Kendra, who’s growing up too fast and has naturally begun doubting all adults, but not from Ethan. Still, both of them have turned to stare with half-open mouths and raised brows.

“What?” Mari says.

“You...” Ethan starts to tear up. At eight he thinks he’s too old to cry but hasn’t yet mastered the ability to hold back tears.

“Lame,” Kendra mutters and crosses her arms again. “Really lame, Mom.”

Mari repeats herself. “What?”

She tries to think of what reason they have for such shock. Her voice echoes back at her. What she said moments ago. The tone of her voice. Then, she understands.

Ryan’s always been the one to tell the kids about the Tooth Fairy, Santa, the Easter Bunny. Myths of childhood Mari never learned from experience and therefore couldn’t share. This is the first time she’s ever consoled them with a statement she’s not sure is true.

“Oh, God!” Kendra bursts into sobs. “It’s bad! It’s really bad, isn’t it? Is he going to jail? Did he do something that bad?”

Mari wasn’t terribly put off by Kendra’s bland description of the dead woman’s demise, but she is disturbed by how easily her daughter assumes her father could be guilty of something worthy of jail time. “Kiki. No. Daddy’s not going to jail.”

“But it’s bad, isn’t it?” Kendra’s sobs taper off, and she swipes at her eyes, smearing her mascara.

Ethan’s crying silently, silver tears slipping down his cheeks. Mari gestures and he moves close enough for her to hug. She reaches to snag Kendra’s wrist, even though the girl’s not much for hugs anymore, and pulls her close, too. The three of them hug tight. Mari’s arms are still long enough to go around them both. She holds them as hard as she can.

Her children have never really known anything terrible, and she will do whatever’s necessary to make sure they never do. “It’s going to be fine. I promise.”

They both sniffle against her. They both pull away before she’s ready to let them go. Ethan rubs his nose with a sleeve while Kendra has the sense to use a tissue. Mari looks again at the ceiling. Somewhere above is her husband, the father of her children.

“I’ll be back,” she says. “You two take some change from the jar near the phone and walk down to the Wawa for some slushies.”

She doesn’t need to tell them twice. It’s a privilege their dad would squawk about; even though he wants them to “get out of the house and do something,” walking a few blocks to the convenience store isn’t one of them. The world’s a dangerous place, Ryan says. Mari knows he has no real idea of what that means.

He’s locked himself in his office, where she hears the shuffle and thump of him pulling open drawers. When she peeks inside she sees he’s pulled out half a dozen file boxes from his closet. The papers are spread out all around him and he’s bent over them, studying them so fiercely, he doesn’t even notice she’s opened the door until she raps lightly with her knuckles.

“Ryan?”

“Yeah, babe.” He pushes his hair back from his forehead.

The sight of him looking so rumpled when Ryan is always so put together lifts another current of unease inside her. “What are you doing?”

He gives her a smile so broad, so bright, so full of even, white teeth, there is no way she ought to be afraid. “I’m doing it. I’m going to do it.”

“Do what?”

“I’m finally going to write a book.”

Mari isn’t sure she ever knew Ryan wanted to write a book. Frankly, she can’t recall ever seeing him read a book. Magazines, yes. Medical journals and Sports Illustrated and Consumer Reports when he’s on the hunt for some new toy. But books? Never.

“What kind of book?”

His gaze shifts just a little, cutting from hers to look over the piles of folders and papers. “A case study.”

“So, not fiction.” That made more sense to her.

“No.” Again, that shifting gaze, the cut of it from hers. “But that’s not the best part, babe. This is even better.”

He holds up a folder. The front of it says Dimitri Management Rental Properties. She doesn’t know what that means, but something about it doesn’t sit well. “What?”

“C’mere.” Ryan gestures, and Mari goes.

He settles her onto his lap and nuzzles against her, hiding his face for a moment before lifting it. His eyes are shiny bright, his smile, too. He looks so much like his father that her breath catches. Ryan doesn’t notice.

“You know I love you, right?”

“I hope so,” Mari says. “You married me.”

He laughs a little too loud for the space and for being so close to her. “And you know I’ll always do my best to take care of you, right?”

Something twists deep inside her. “I know that.”

His hand tightens on her while the other puts the folder on the desk. “And you trust me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

“We’re going to move.”

Alarmed, Mari shifts on Ryan’s lap to look into his eyes. “What? Where? Why?”

“Just for the summer,” he says quickly. “Someplace that’ll be great for the kids. For us, too. A place that’ll be perfect for me to write and for you all to just get away from the city.”

She doesn’t point out that they don’t exactly live in the city. “Ryan. What aren’t you telling me?”

“I don’t want you to worry,” her husband says. “Let me take care of this.”

“What about our house?”

“I’ve arranged to rent it to a psych fellow.”

“And where are we going?” He’s taken care of everything, made all the arrangements, but she still has to ask.

Ryan draws in a deep breath. “Pine Grove. Babe, I’m going to take you home.”

ELEVEN

MARI HAD MADE dinner. Nothing special. Pasta with sauce and some salad from the cold box...no, the refrigerator, she reminded herself. She’d set the table. Two plates, one. Two. She stopped herself from counting them out on her fingers. When she caught herself singing under her breath, she stopped herself from that, too. Leon didn’t like it when she sang. He said it distracted him.

He enjoyed the food, though. “You’re becoming quite the little cook.”

His praise, as always, warmed her. She wanted to stretch herself like a barn cat, rub herself beneath his hand. But Leon never touched her. Not since she was small.

He asked her about her studies. What lessons she’d completed. Had she practiced her handwriting? She must get better at cursive. Had she read the book he’d left for her on the desk?

“I tried.” Mari pushed pasta around on her plate, her belly full but appetite not sated. Sometimes, she felt like as long as there was food in front of her, she would eat it until it made her sick.

“What do you mean, you tried?” Leon’s fork spattered red sauce on his white shirt, which Mari will put in the laundry later to soak so that it doesn’t stain. “I expect more from you than trying. You can do better than that. It’s not too difficult for you. You’re a smart girl.”

She has explained in the past, or tried to, that it wasn’t that the books he chose for her were too difficult. She could read the words. She could understand the meanings. She simply couldn’t understand what they were about.

“Anne of Green Gables is a classic,” Leon continued. “All girls your age should read it.”

Anne of Green Gables was about a girl with red hair who is adopted by a family who really wanted a boy. Mari supposed Leon thought she might be able to identify with the concept of being adopted, and in a way she did. But the rest of it, the talk of clothes and school and friends and love...that, Mari did not comprehend.

She said nothing. She ate her dinner and packed away the leftovers carefully, letting her fingertips dance over the plastic containers stacked in the refrigerator when Leon couldn’t see and tell her to keep her hands still. She washed the dishes and put them away, and she remembered not to sing under her breath.

“My son,” Leon said from the kitchen doorway. “Ryan. He’ll be here in about an hour.”

Leon had spoken many times of his son. He’d shown her pictures and video movies of Ryan as a child. Leon had even given her some of Ryan’s old things, not like they were hand-me-downs but as though they were precious gifts she should be honored to claim.

In fact, a few of the things he gave her were precious to Mari. Not the cast-off football jersey that didn’t fit and still smelled slightly of sweat. And not the boxes of plastic bricks she’d never really learned to put together to make something bigger. But the stuffed bunny, fur worn off on the ears and the tail entirely lost—that she loved. That she still slept with next to her at night though at fifteen she had abandoned all her other dolls and stuffed toys. Leon, who hadn’t asked her to call him father but encouraged the use of his first name, had given Mari that toy when she was much younger and had nothing left of her life before. Later, there were fancy toys and brand-new dresses, brought by well-meaning people who had no idea of what she held as valuable. But the bunny that once belonged to Ryan was something Mari would forever hold precious and dear.

In the year and a half since she’d been living here, she’d never even known Ryan to call the house. There’d been some trouble with Leon’s wife when he decided to give Mari a permanent home. Mari didn’t know the whole story, had only caught bits and pieces overheard in shouting conversations on the phone late at night when he thought she was asleep. She knew the doctor’s wife didn’t want to become a mother to some random, cast-off girl nobody else wanted, and she couldn’t say she blamed the former Mrs. Doctor Calder. After all, Mari’s own mother hadn’t wanted her, either.

It might’ve been the trouble with Ryan’s mother that kept him away, or something simpler. He’d been in college, then med school. He was a grown-up. With a girlfriend, Leon said with a small curl of his lip that told Mari exactly what he thought of that. And though Leon had kept many of Ryan’s things and felt free enough with them to give them away, he’d also been honest about the fact he wasn’t very close with his son.

Mari, Leon often said, was a second chance.

Since Leon Calder was the only father Mari had ever known, he was her only chance.

But now Mari stood in the kitchen, in shadow, watching Ryan come in from the outside. He stamped his feet to get the snow off his boots. Brushed it off his shoulders. It was melting in his blond hair, leaving rivulets of water trickling down his temples and making puddles from the hems of his pants on the floor.

He didn’t see her, and she didn’t want him to. Mari went quiet; she went still. She was silence. Not a breath, not a sigh, not a blink. And Ryan passed by her little corner of shadow and headed for the living room, calling out for his dad.

She had time to run upstairs and hastily comb through her hair. Put on clean clothes. She didn’t have many pretty things. Leon preferred her to dress in something like a uniform. Appropriate clothes, he said, because he wanted nobody to say there was anything inappropriate going on. People already had enough reason to whisper, he said, though he’d never explained exactly what that meant. Mari didn’t like the plaid skirt, the white blouse, the saddle shoes and knee socks. She’d rather have the sorts of clothes she’d seen the kids on TV wearing. Jeans and sneakers. Now, though, she wished she had something pretty. Flowy. Something soft, like a princess would wear.

For the first time, she understood why Anne cared about what dress she wore to impress Gilbert Blythe.

When she crept down the stairs again, her heart pounding, Mari saw Ryan in the living room with his dad. They were drinking from glasses filled with Scotch. Ryan didn’t look very much like his father, but they both turned at the same time and she saw there was something very much the same in their smiles.

“Ryan,” said Leon, “this...is Mari.”

“Hey, little sister,” Ryan said. “What have you done?”

“Nothing,” Mari answered and was confused when Ryan choked with laughter. “What?”

“She doesn’t know Billy Idol, Ryan.”

“Oh. Right.” Ryan nodded like he understood, but the quirk of his smile said he didn’t. Not really.

He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. He was her brother, Leon said, but there was nothing brotherly about the way he looked at her.

Mari wanted him like some girls wanted rock stars or movie stars or TV celebrities.

Later, when Leon had gone to bed and Mari was still in the kitchen scrubbing the floor because of the mess Ryan’s shoes had made, he found her. “Hey. What are you doing?”

She looked up at him. “Cleaning. I don’t like it to be dirty.”

“My dad makes you clean like that? Doesn’t he have a housekeeper?”

“I don’t mind.” It had never occurred to her that it was something to be ashamed of, taking care of Leon. After all, he’d taken care of her.

“Pretty girl like you shouldn’t be up late scrubbing the floor. You should be out having fun.” Ryan’s gaze had cut away from her before sneaking back like a dog looking to steal from the table.

The next time he came home with a pink T-shirt with a unicorn covered in sparkles on the front of it. It wasn’t a princess dress, but Mari would eventually wear it to shreds. He took her to the movies, which she hated, too dark, too loud, the chemical scent of the popcorn butter distasteful. He took her to a restaurant, and she liked that much better, especially when she got a giant sundae for dessert. Three days he spent at home, three days he spent teasing her into laughter and making her shine.

“You take care, kid,” he told her on the day he left and chucked her under the chin.

She watched him walk to the car, her hand raised in a half wave that was the best she could muster, considering the thought of him leaving her so soon was enough to make her want to curl in a ball beneath the blankets and cry.

A day later, he called the house to talk to her. Not to his father, who handed her the phone with a raised eyebrow, but no comment. Mari took the phone curiously, uncertain, but the moment she heard Ryan’s voice, everything that had seemed dark became light.

For two years, Ryan was there when she needed someone to talk to, though in truth she often did more listening than speaking. He taught her how to drive. Ryan was there when Leon didn’t understand what a young girl needed—pretty clothes, not dowdy uniforms. Trips to the park and the zoo and the mall instead of being kept at home and out of sight. Ryan was the one who told his father that Mari needed to be allowed to wear mascara, get her ears pierced, if she wanted to. To look and act like other girls her age, even if she’d grow up to be a different sort of woman. He was her champion, her advocate.

He was her prince.

And then, Leon died.

She was not surprised when it happened, though it was sudden. One moment he was sitting in front of the meatloaf she’d cooked for dinner, asking her about her studies—she was a month from finishing the homeschooling courses that would give her a GED—and the next he was facedown in the mashed potatoes. A few hours after that, the man who’d given her a life had lost his.

Death was nothing new to her. She’d seen it on the farm with chicks and puppies and kittens, and her grandmother, too. Some part of her had been waiting for Leon to abandon her since the day he’d taken her home. She wept, of course, at the loss. Leon had saved her...but he’d never been her savior, had he? Not really.

She had a prince for that.

The night before Leon’s funeral, Ryan came home late. Mari was waiting for him in the living room in front of the fireplace. She didn’t know about seduction, but it turned out she didn’t have to. She wanted him and now she had him.

Eight months later, they were married.

* * *

Beside her sleeping husband, Mari thinks of all this now. How some choices were made for her and some she’s made for herself, but that the whole of her life has led her to this man, this house, this space. This life. And it’s a good life, full of love and so much more than she’d ever have guessed she could have.

If Ryan says they need to go back, he must have a good reason. And if she trusts him, as she’s always done, then she also has to trust that everything will be all right. When he tells her he’s taking her home, he has no real idea of what that means to her and never has. She doesn’t want him to know. But she trusts Ryan as much as she loves him, and that means Mari will follow him wherever he thinks he needs to go.

Ryan is not the first man to rescue her, but Mari has always believed he would be the last.

TWELVE

IT WOULD’VE BEEN a total cliché for Kendra to hate her parents for this. They’d taken her away from her friends, the pool, all the stuff she’d been looking forward to this summer. Her riding lessons. She’d been planning to do the adult summer reading program for the first time, and it was a better one, because the little kids get stuff like coupons for Rita’s Italian Water Ice and Subway, but when you did the grown-up program you got entered for gift certificates to Amazon.com and places like that. She’d already put together her reading list, and though her dad had promised there’d be a library where they were going, Kendra knew it wouldn’t be the same.

She totally should’ve hated them. Her dad, because it had been his stupid idea. Her mom for going along with it the way she always did, not even asking any questions. Not even complaining. It would’ve been too easy to blame her parents for ruining her life when all it really meant was she had to spend a few months in some country town while her parents got their act together. That wasn’t life. That was just the summer.

It could’ve been worse.

Or maybe not, she thought as her mom at last pulled up in front of a peeling, white-painted farmhouse with a sagging front porch and windows like dead eyes. This looked pretty gross. They got out of the car at the same time as her dad and Ethan got out of his. Dad gave her and Mom a gigantic, toothy grin.

“Well? What do you think?”

“I think it stinks.” Ethan put a hand to his nose. “Pee-yew.”

“It’s a skunk,” Mom said in a quiet voice. “That’s what they smell like.”

“Smell that, kids? That’s a skunk!”

“Dad,” Kendra said, “you don’t have to sound so excited.”

Her dad grabbed her mom’s hand. Then he kissed her. Kendra turned away.

Still couldn’t hate them.

Across the raggedy field that could hardly be called a yard, in the woods, something moved. The leaves, mostly green, turned pale sides up like the wind had ruffled them, but the weeds and grass were barely moving.

The inside of the car had been cold enough for her to need a sweatshirt, but out here within seconds her armpits started sweating. The sun was bright enough that she had to put up a hand to shield her eyes—monkeybrat had totally wrecked her favorite sunglasses and she hadn’t gotten to the mall to replace them before Dad packed them up to bring them here. Kendra blinked against tears she blamed on the sun, even though maybe it was really because of something else. Her vision blurred, and she blinked hard to clear it, trying to see what had caught her eye.

Ethan made a face. “I don’t like it here.”

“Shut up, monkeybrat.”

Ethan sighed heavily and kicked at the dirt under the toe of his sneakers. “I don’t have to.”

Kendra looked over her shoulder. Her mom and dad were still next to the car, their heads bent in conversation. Neither of them looking this way. “I saw something in the woods.”

“Like what?” Ethan looked up. “Dad said we could get a dog.”

“You don’t want a dog, not really. You’ll have to clean up its poop and stuff.” Kendra took a few steps away from the car toward the field and the woods beyond it, not really paying attention to her brother.

“Not out here, I won’t. He can poop in the yard or in the field. I want to call him Zipper.”

At this, she looked at him. “Zipper? Why would you want to name the dog that?”

Ethan shrugged. “I just like it. And you’d like a dog, Kiki. I bet you would, anyway.”

Kendra looked again at the car, where her parents were leaning toward each other, faces serious. Her father’s mouth moved while her mom stayed as silent as she had for the entire trip. Her dad’s hand went out to caress her mom’s hair.

It felt sort of creepy to watch them like that, like maybe they might start to make out again or something, so Kendra looked once more at the house. It sat at the end of a really long lane, the trees so close on either side that it had been like driving through a tunnel. Only one other house on the lane, and it had been much closer to the main road. To the side of the driveway was a crumbling sort of garage or barn off to the right, and beyond that the field of tall grass and wildflowers. The trees came right up to the edge of the field, and beyond that, a mountainside littered with scrubby pines.

“I don’t like this place,” Ethan muttered again, scuffing at the driveway and sending up a small cloud of dust.

“It’s only for the summer. Dad said.”

He snorted. “Yeah, right. I bet we have to live here forever.”

A shiver tickled down her spine at that. Being the new girl in a new school was the sort of thing they made movies about, but something about this place told Kendra she wasn’t going to meet some super hot jock who’d totally fall in love with her even though she didn’t fit in with the rest of the cool kids. The problem was, at her own school she already was one of the cool kids. At least cool enough. She really didn’t want to start over. Not out here in the middle of nowhere.

Nothing moved in the field or in the trees beyond but a couple of birds that took off into the sky. Kendra shaded her eyes again to follow them. Her dad came up behind her to squeeze her shoulders until she pulled away.

“Isn’t this great?”

“Mom, are you okay?”

Her mom was also looking toward the woods, and when Kendra spoke to her, it took her a few seconds to turn. “Fine.”

She moved closer to Kendra and put an arm around her shoulders. Together they looked across the field, into the trees. Lots of shadows there. Whatever she’d seen moving could still be in there, just hidden.

Something shivered inside her.

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