I didn’t read the whole thing, but it didn’t come across to me as some kind of veiled confession. It seemed to me Conrad was merely milking his own experience for material. It struck me that what Conrad was really doing was ripping off Brett Stockwell a second time. The first time, he’d stolen the boy’s novel. The second time, he’d exploited the boy’s misfortune to write another.
Ellen, whose contacts in the publishing world are much better than a landscaper’s, hears that the book has been deemed unreadable. That, however, does not necessarily make it unpublishable. Time will tell whether Conrad has a posthumous bestseller.
“You remember what I said a while back,” Ellen said, tipping her head back onto the headrest.
“Which thing?” I said.
“When Derek was in jail, about how we were being punished for things we’d done,” she said.
“I remember. You still feel that way?”
“Look at what we’ve done, between the two of us,” she said. “How horribly wrong good intentions can go. I tried to help Brett Stockwell, and it backfired, destroyed people’s lives. You scribbled your name in a book, gave a girl a number to call if she wanted help . . .”
“And the Langleys ended up dead,” I said. “Because Drew went to the wrong house to seek revenge.”
We both thought about that for a moment. I wondered whether Ellen was thinking what I was thinking, that maybe we were cursed or something.
“Where will we go?” she said finally. “After I go in there”—she jerked her thumb at the house—“and do my thing.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe no place. Maybe there’s no point. You can leave a place behind, but your secrets will just follow you. Maybe the best thing to do is stay put and ride it out.”
“I don’t want to wake up another day and see the Langley house.”
She had a point there.
“What about Derek?” she asked. “You think he’s going to be okay?”
“He’ll manage. He’s tougher than we give him credit for.”
Ellen powered down the windows, killed the engine. “You saw what he did this morning, didn’t you?”
“What?” I said as hot, humid air rushed into the car.
“He took one of your paintings, that one you did of the Berkshires, from the shed and put it on the wall in his room.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
Decorating his cell, I thought.
“He saved our lives,” I said. “When Drew was distracted by Conrad.”
Ellen reached over and held my hand, gave it a squeeze. “I’m going to send my résumé to a whole bunch of public relations agencies. All over the country. And if I can’t get something from that, I’ll try something else.”
“I’m sure wherever it is, there’ll be grass to cut,” I said.
“Do something else,” Ellen said. “You could teach art. Work in a gallery. Go back to painting.”
“We’ll see.”
Ellen took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, preparing herself.
“You ready?” I asked her.
She glanced at me and tried to smile. “As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Because there’s going to be a lot of fallout from this. For you. For Conrad’s estate, his publisher, a whole lot of people.”
“Sometimes, even if it takes ten years to get around to it, you have to do the right thing,” Ellen said, and got out of the car.
Together, we walked up to Agnes Stockwell’s door to tell her that she needn’t feel guilty any longer, that her son, Brett, did not kill himself, that he was an acclaimed and published author, that he had died trying to save my wife’s life.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
All I did was write this thing. A number of others made it happen.
In the U.S., many thanks to Irwyn Applebaum, Nita Taublib, Danielle Perez, and everyone else at Bantam Dell. I’d also like to thank everyone at Orion in the U.K., in particular my editor, Bill Massey.
And to my agent, Helen Heller, way to go.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LINWOOD BARCLAY is a former columnist for the Toronto Star. He is the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including No Time for Goodbye and Stone Rain. He lives near Toronto with his wife and has two grown children. His website is www.linwoodbarclay.com.
ALSO BY LINWOOD BARCLAY
Bad Move
Bad Guys
Lone Wolf
Stone Rain
No Time for Goodbye
TOO CLOSE TO HOME
A Bantam Book / October 2008
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2008 by Linwood Barclay
Bantam Books is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barclay, Linwood.
Too close to home / Linwood Barclay.
p. cm.
1. High school students—Fiction. 2. Family—Crimes against—Fiction. 3. Murder—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9199.3.B37135T66 2008
813’.54—dc22 2008005943
www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-553-90568-7
v3.0
Too Close to Home Page 39