Praise for The Things That Keep Us Here
‘A masterly novel of suspense, painting the kind of dystopian nightmare that none of us can bear to think about, made worse by the fact it may only be a matter of time before we face a similar scenario ourselves’
Daily Mail
‘An amazing achievement. What makes it work is that Buckley explores a global catastrophe with such a narrow focus, and with complex characters that we come to care deeply about’
Linwood Barclay
‘With crisp writing and taut pacing . . . this vivid depiction of suburban America gone bad is riveting’
Library Journal
‘Carla Buckley’s debut The Things That Keep Us Here stunned me. Here is an apocalyptic novel as topical as today’s headlines, yet as intimate as a lover’s touch. A brilliant debut that deserves to be read by everyone’
James Rollins
‘A knockout debut of the decade’
LA Times
‘Utterly engrossing. The Things That Keep Us Here is the book guaranteed to keep you up all night, as you follow one family’s pulse-pounding journey through the worst that can happen and beyond’
Lisa Gardner
INVISIBLE
CARLA BUCKLEY
For my husband, Tim, with all my love
CONTENTS
Cover
Praise
Title page
Dedication
PROLOGUE
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
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Author Biography
Also by Carla Buckley
Copyright
PROLOGUE
I HAD BEEN TRAPPED IN THIS MISERABLY HOT SPACE for nine weeks, six days, and fourteen hours, with all the windows and doors locked and the shades drawn. Everyone I knew was out swimming or boating or just having fun, but not me. I was pacing from one room to the other, picking up magazines and tossing them down, turning on the television only to switch it off again. It had seemed like such a good idea back in March: sell the house and move to where we knew no one and no one knew us. But now I realized I’d only traded in one prison for another.
When the key finally rasped in the lock, I was kneeling by the narrow window, my face lifted to capture any stray breeze that decided to drift across the sill. I pushed myself up as the door swung open, and there was my sister.
“Finally,” I said.
“Hey, you.” Julie locked the door behind her. “So, what have you been up to all day?” Her eyes were clear, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t still been crying. Julie was a master at protecting me.
“Your dryer was making weird noises, so I unplugged it. And your mailman has the hairiest legs I’ve ever seen.”
Your. Not our. The accusation lingered in the air. So many balls I’d tossed her way. Which one would she bounce back? But she surprised me. “I got you something.” Reaching into her backpack, she handed me a book.
A thin, spiral-bound book with a flexible cover. I glanced at the title. Knitting for Beginners. “Give me a break.”
“Dana, we talked about this.”
“No, you talked about this.”
She sighed, dropped her backpack on the floor. “I just hate that you’re just sitting here, watching TV all day.”
“I don’t watch TV all day. Sometimes, I stare at the ceiling.” And count the hours until this will all be over.
“My point exactly.” She dangled a plastic bag by one finger. “I got you some yarn, too.”
“Just . . . stop. I don’t want to learn to knit. It’s the stupidest thing I ever heard of.”
She put her arm around my shoulders and gave a gentle squeeze. “Okay,” she said, after a moment. “You hungry?”
Why did I feel a prick of loss when she turned away to make supper?
The plastic bag sat untouched beside the book all night and into the next day. I fashioned a clothesline by tying string from doorknob to doorknob, which worked fine until I tried to hang up a pair of jeans. The closet door flew open; the brass knob smacked the wall and clattered to the floor. One more thing for Frank to deal with when he got back from Afghanistan. He’d be thrilled.
Mid-afternoon, the next-door neighbor came home, her pickup rattling up the driveway. The truck door slammed, then all was quiet. She’d gone inside her house. In a few minutes, she’d reappear to stretch out on a bright orange towel in her backyard to sun her legs, a beer bottle balanced on the grass beside her. Her phone would ring and her giggling would skip across the yard. Later, her boyfriend would visit and the two of them would go somewhere in the pickup, maybe one of the few local bars, maybe the lake. Or maybe they’d fire up her small Weber and the spicy aroma of roasting bratwursts would seep into Julie’s small, steamy kitchen and make my mouth water.
What was our old next-door neighbor doing now? Not yet five o’clock, so Martin would still be at work. But his arrival home would be noisy and full of purpose. The slam of the car door, followed by the rumble of the garage door along its tracks. The growl of the lawnmower as he fired it up to cut first his grass, then ours, topped off by the chatter of the trashcans as he dragged them from the curb back into place behind our houses. He’d be humming as he wound up the garden hose, then stop and smile when I appeared with lemonade. The tang of cut grass would rise around us and the mosquitoes would swarm. He’d swipe his face with a handkerchief and take the glass, ask if I was doing my homework, or whether I was planning to tackle the weeds any time soon.
I’d left without even telling him goodbye.
I’d told Mrs. Gerkey goodbye, though. She’d blinked in surprise, clutching my last paycheck as though by not handing it over she’d keep me tethered there. I’d shrugged away the questions in her pale blue eyes. It wasn’t as though I’d ever promised her anything, not in so many words.
Julie had picked out sunshine yellow yarn, a big fluffy cloud of it, impossibly soft. The book had drawings, each step diagrammed and numbered. How hard could it be?
By the time the key scraped the lock, my palms were sweaty and I’d gnawed my lower lip raw. As Julie stepped into the front hall, I hurled the knotted mess aside, the needles clattering to the floor, humiliated that she’d caught me trying—and failing miserably—at something so absurdly simple. Or maybe something else was weighing on me. “Why don’t you get me a book on how to fix dryers?” I snapped at her. “You know. Something easy?”
After retrieving the needles as they rolled across the floor, Julie sank beside me on the lumpy couch. Her
eyes looked tired but she patted my knee and smiled. Then she took up the jumbled mass of yarn. “You know, Mom always wanted to teach you to knit.”
At the mention of our mother, something shifted inside me. I’d been thinking about her a lot lately. “I didn’t know she could knit.”
Julie nodded. She began pulling apart the tangles, winding the bright yarn around her finger. “And crochet. She made those potholders, you know.”
Right. The white ones with red flowers, made of string, deceptively delicate. You could pick up a flaming skillet with one, which I had done once while burning French toast, and not even feel the heat.
Julie had wound the yarn into a ball and now held the knitting needles loosely in one hand. “Okay,” she said, her gaze meeting mine steadily. “What does the first page say?”
Grudgingly, I opened the book. “You’re supposed to cast on. Like fishing, but not.” Fishing would have been a lot easier. Drop the line into the water and just wait. Fishing made me think of Joe, but I shook that memory away and focused on what Julie was doing. Her fingers were slim and long, capable of almost anything. She’d gotten our mom’s hands, whereas I must’ve inherited our father’s, stubby and square. I hated to think of anything else I might have gotten from him.
“See?” She drew the length of yarn around the tip of the needle and back down. Her shoulder pressed against mine, her voice assured and soothing. She smelled of soap and sun, a hint of lemon. “You hold the yarn like this. And when you bring it around, it makes a little loop.”
“I tried that.” And succeeded only in having the yarn snarl itself into a knot.
“Maybe you were winding it around from in front instead of behind.” Julie looped the yarn around in careful knots, every one exactly the same shape and size, lined up like little blossoms on the metal knitting needle. She twisted her wrist and the yarn flew free and the needle was once again bare. “Here,” she told me. “You try it.”
She cupped my hand around the needle, curving my fingers around it, then draped the yarn around my left forefinger. “Not too tight,” she warned, guiding my reluctant finger. “That’s it.”
She was frowning down at the sun-colored yarn. Her lashes were long and dark, the small bump at the bridge of her nose just like mine. Her blonde hair waved back from her forehead, held by the brass butterfly clip I’d given her for her birthday, all I could afford. I dropped the needles into my lap and sagged against her. “I’m scared,” I whispered.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” she promised.
“I know.” She never had. For five years, she’d been sister, mother, and father to me. She’d been everything and she’d asked for nothing in return. I pressed my cheek against the soft cotton of her sleeve. I had to tell her, but I couldn’t. The words just wouldn’t crawl past the stone lodged in my throat.
“After supper,” she said, “we can try purling.”
“Sounds like a disease.”
She laughed, a tinkle of pure happiness, and the stone tumbled down my throat and nestled securely in my heart.
There are different kinds of prisons, some with walls and floors and doors, and others built even more sturdily out of things you can’t see—love and hope and fear.
A week later, I went into labor.
ONE
[DANA]
IT’S A GREAT LINE TO STOP GUYS FROM COMING ON to you in a bar. They ask, So what do you do for a living? They expect to hear, I’m in sales or I’m a paralegal. If I’m wearing my black boots with the stacked heels and maybe some lipstick, they might push me into the lawyer category, or the owner of a little boutique. They never expect to hear the truth. I blow up buildings, I say, and sip my wine. After hearing that, they usually back away a little. Which is good. I don’t like to be crowded.
The crowd that morning was staying far away, lined up all along the twelve-foot chain-link fence encircling the lot, their faces curious and belligerent, the police forming an uneasy barricade between them and me and the building I was going to destroy. A hand-printed banner danced above their heads. You might not think it, but bringing down a building can be a controversial thing. People don’t like change. It makes them worry about what’s headed their way next, and whether it’ll be any worse than what was there before.
Dingy clouds were doing a slow roll along the horizon. Chicago in mid-May could be unpredictable. “How far away does that look?” I asked my foreman.
Ahmed squinted. “I’d say we got a couple hours, maybe three.” His broad face was washed in early morning light.
The guy was a wizard when it came to reading the weather. If he said two, maybe three, we’d be standing in a downpour come four. Two hours was good, three better. “We might just make it, then.”
He nodded. “Have you heard from Halim?”
Another worry. “Halim will be here.” Of course he would, but he hadn’t answered any of the six calls I’d placed to him that morning. As decorous as my partner was, he could also be a player. He loved blondes, and Chicago was full of them. But he’d never crossed that line with me. I wouldn’t have stuck around if he had.
A shout. Something sailed through the air and clattered onto the cement near my feet. A beer can. A policeman moved forward and the onlookers jostled.
Ahmed curled his lip in disgust and kicked it with his boot.
“Least it wasn’t a bomb,” I told him.
“Don’t say these things.” Ahmed looked stricken.
Implosions are wrapped tight in superstition: wind the detonation wire clockwise; rap the front doorjamb before entering; wear the same pair of boots from the beginning of a job until its completion, and if a lace breaks, replace it with a borrowed set. Most of all, don’t ever joke about explosives, especially when hundreds of pounds of the stuff lie only fifteen feet away.
My cellphone vibrated. Halim? But no, the caller ID read PRIVATE CALLER. The caller had tried earlier, around six-thirty, and I was tempted to flip it open and let off a little steam at some telemarketer no doubt waiting to chirp good morning on the other end. But chances were it would just be a recorded call and it would take ten seconds for me to disconnect. Seconds I couldn’t afford to waste, not with that storm roiling toward us. Fitting the hardhat onto my head, I told Ahmed, “I’m starting the walk-through.”
A troubled look. “Without Halim?”
He didn’t think I could do it. Didn’t matter. I was still the boss, even if it sometimes felt in name only. “Start clearing the site.”
The broad marble steps of the gracious old building seemed to sag beneath my boots. The old girl was ready to come down. She’d been up for a long time and weathered more than her share of storms. She was ready to go.
Shoving aside the heavy wing of fabric draped around the lower floors, I stepped over the threshold into pungent darkness. The interior sprang into view beneath the beam of my Maglite. Hard to believe hundreds of families once lived here, walked these floors. Everything that could have made the place a home had been yanked down and hauled away: walls, ceilings, floors, and window glass. All that remained was bare concrete, rafters, and the skeletal outlines of two staircases. The air hung heavy and blue, dust spiraling lazily down from the open ceiling in ghostly strands like Mardi Gras beads. I spun on one heel, seeing past the empty windows and crumbling columns, hearing the mumbles of long-ago residents, the babies’ cries, and the laughter. The old girl held her breath, waiting. I’m coming, I told her. Hold on.
The clop of boots. Halim emerged from the shadows, his slim frame tidy in navy chinos and a crisp white workshirt. “Sorry I’m late,” he told me. “I got an overseas call from my brother.”
I looked at him with both relief and annoyance. So not a pretty girl he’d met at a bar, but something far, far worse. “How much this time?” I asked him.
He pursed his lips. He wanted to tell me it was none of my business how much money he lent his loser brother, but in point of fact, it was my business. Very much so, ever since we pooled our reso
urces and started Down to Earth three years before.
“Don’t worry.” He glanced around. “We should get started, eh? What with the storm moving in.”
“A thousand? Two thousand?” The business account only had three and change, but the frown on his face told me plainly that it now held nothing. “Halim.” I felt a pinch of fear. “Tell me.”
“A temporary setback,” he said. “We finish this job and all will be fine.”
It was the last time. Tomorrow morning, I’d be meeting with the bank manager to make sure any checks drawn on our business account in the future required both our signatures. But there was nothing I could do about it now. “I’ll take the eastern half.”
No railing along the staircase, the bottom riser chewed to rubble to discourage trespassers, the support walls smashed to pieces. Testing my weight with each step, I climbed to the twenty-sixth floor, winding past the narrow Chicago streets, to the furled tops of the trees, until finally the sleepy skyline spread before me. A month ago, I would have been gasping. Today, I made it in one long trek, with only my thigh muscles protesting the effort.
Streamers of sunlight spooled through the empty windows. Amid the drab grays and browns were daubs of neon yellow paint marking the load-bearing columns, and dense cobwebs of yellow, pink, and orange tubing. Colorful and deadly. I traced the lines up to the crevices we’d chipped into the columns and then packed with dynamite. The connections looked good. Untouched.
Halim walked toward me from the other direction, and we exchanged places silently, our worlds shrunk to fluorescent strands, electrical tape, and metal clips. We descended two floors to the next dynamited level.
The buzz of a jet overhead, the shrill blast of a policeman’s whistle below. The protestors were growing more belligerent. Great. As if we didn’t have enough to deal with, outracing the storm. Shouts sailed up.
Again, Halim and I crisscrossed paths; again, we retraced each other’s steps.
Outside, a Bobcat started with a rumble.
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