Whisper Me This

by Kerry Anne King

  PRAISE FOR KERRY ANNE KING

  Praise for Whisper Me This

  “Rich in emotions and characters, Whisper Me This is a stunning tale of dark secrets, broken memories, and the resilience of the human spirit. The novel quickly pulls the reader onto a roller-coaster ride through grief, mystery, and cryptic journal entries. At the heart of the story is an unforgettable twelve-year-old, who has more sense than most adults, and her mother, Maisey, who is about to discover not only her courage, but the power of her voice. A book club must-read!”

  —Barbara Claypole White, bestselling author of The Perfect Son

  “Moving and emotionally taut, Whisper Me This is a gut-wrenching story of a family fractured by abuse and lies . . . and the ultimate sacrifice of a mother’s love. King once again proves herself an expert with family drama. A triumph of a book.”

  —Emily Carpenter, author of The Weight of Lies and Burying the Honeysuckle Girls

  “Kerry Anne King writes with such insight and compassion for human nature, and her latest novel, Whisper Me This, is no exception. The families on which the story centers have secrets they’ve kept through the years out of concern for the damage that might be done if they were exposed. But in the end as the families’ lives become intertwined and their secrets come inevitably to light, what is revealed to be the most riveting heart of this book are the gut-wrenching choices that were made in terrifying circumstances. One such choice haunted a mother throughout her lifetime and left behind a legacy of mistrust and confusion and a near unsolvable mystery. Following the clues is an act of faith that sometimes wavers. There’s no guarantee the end will tie up in a neat bow, but the courage of the human spirit, its ability to heal, is persistent and luminous throughout the pages of this very real and emotive story. I loved it.”

  —Barbara Taylor Sissel, bestselling author of Crooked Little Lies and Faultlines

  Praise for I Wish You Happy

  “Laugh, cry, get angry, but most of all care in this wild ride of emotions delivered by Kerry Anne King. Brilliant prose inhabited by engaging characters makes this a story you cannot put down.”

  —Patricia Sands, author of the Love in Provence series

  “Depicting the depth of human frailty yet framing it within a picture of hope, I Wish You Happy pulls you in as you root for the flawed yet intoxicating characters to reach a satisfying conclusion of healing. King’s writing is impeccable—and her knowledge and exploration of depression and how it affects those it touches makes this a story that everyone will connect with.”

  —Kay Bratt, author of Wish Me Home

  “Kerry Anne King’s Rae is a woman caught between the safety of her animal rescue projects and the messy, sometimes terrifying reality of human relationships. You’ll never stop rooting for her as she steps into the light, risking everything for real friendship and love in this wistful, delicate, and ultimately triumphant tale.”

  —Emily Carpenter, author of Burying the Honeysuckle Girls and The Weight of Lies

  “Kerry Anne King explores happiness and depression [and] the concept of saving others versus saving ourselves in this wonderfully written and touching novel populated by real and layered people. If you want to read a book that restores your faith in humanity, pick up I Wish You Happy.”

  —Amulya Malladi, bestselling author of A House for Happy Mothers and The Copenhagen Affair

  “It’s the horrible accident that forms the backbone of the plot at the beginning of I Wish You Happy that will take your breath and have you turning the pages. The hook has a vivid, ripped-from-the-headlines vibe, one that will have you wondering what you would do, how you would respond in a similar situation. But there are so many other treasures to find in this story as it unfolds. From the warm, deeply human and relatable characters to the heartbreaking and complex situation they find themselves in, this is a novel to savor, one you will be sorry to see end. Sometimes funny and often very wise and poignant, I Wish You Happy is a reading journey you do not want to miss.”

  —Barbara Taylor Sissel, bestselling author of Crooked Little Lies and Faultlines

  “Kerry Anne King has written a novel that will grab you right from page one and then take you zipping along, breaking your heart and making you laugh, both in equal measure. It’s a lovely story about how we save ourselves while we try to save those around us. I loved it!”

  —Maddie Dawson, author of six novels, including The Survivor’s Guide to Family Happiness

  Praise for Closer Home

  “A compelling and heartfelt tale. A must-read that is rich in relatable characters and emotions. Kerry Anne King is one to watch out for!”

  —Steena Holmes, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author

  “With social media conferring blistering fame and paparazzi exhibiting the tenacity often required to get a clear picture of our lives, King has created a high-stakes, public stage for her tale of complicated grief. A quick read with emotional depth you won’t soon forget.”

  —Kathryn Craft, author of The Far End of Happy and The Art of Falling

  “Closer Home is a story as memorable and meaningful as your favorite song, with a cast of characters so true to life you’ll be sorry to let them go.”

  —Sonja Yoerg, author of House Broken and Middle of Somewhere

  “Kerry Anne King’s tale of regret, loss, and love pulled me in, from its intriguing beginning to its oh-so-satisfying conclusion.”

  —Jackie Bouchard, USA Today bestselling author of House Trained and Rescue Me, Maybe

  “King’s prose is filled with vitality.”

  —Ella Carey, author of Paris Time Capsule and The House by the Lake

  ALSO BY KERRY ANNE KING

  Closer Home: A Novel

  I Wish You Happy: A Novel

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Kerry Anne King

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503901957 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1503901955 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781503900769 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1503900762 (paperback)

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  First edition

  For David—my partner in all things, my best and most trusted friend

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  COLVILLE, WASHINGTON

  Chapter One

  KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Leah’s Journal

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Leah’s Journal

  Chapter Eleven

  Leah’s Journal

  Chapter Twelve

  Leah’s Journal

  Chapter Thirteen

  Leah’s Journal

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Leah’s Journal

  Chapter Sixteen

  Leah’s Journal

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eight
een

  Leah’s Journal

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Leah’s Journal

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Leah’s Journal

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Leah’s Journal

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Leah’s Journal

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Leah’s Journal

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Leah’s Journal

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Leah’s Journal

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Leah’s Journal

  Chapter Thirty

  Leah’s Journal

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Leah’s Journal

  Epilogue

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Whisper me this, my darling, my love

  The song of the moonlight, of stars up above.

  Whisper me truth, love, and whisper me lies,

  Warm days of winter, cold summer skies.

  Whisper me anger, whisper me rain,

  Whisper me flowers, then whisper me pain.

  When I come to die, love, then whisper me this

  The shape of a memory, the truth of a kiss.

  Whisper me, whisper me, whisper me this

  A lifetime of memories, and one final kiss.

  COLVILLE, WASHINGTON

  1982

  Chapter One

  My parents’ bedroom has always been off-limits.

  Not that anybody has ever said to me, “Do not enter this room without permission.” There’s no Keep Out sign on the door. The list of rules my mother wrote out and stuck on the refrigerator with a magnet does not say Stay out of my bedroom.

  The bedroom rule is both unwritten and unspoken, but I know it as surely as I know the sky is blue and grass is green. It’s one of those things I shouldn’t need to be told.

  Marley knows the rule as well as I do, but Marley doesn’t care about the rules. “It’s the Forbidden Kingdom,” she says, squeezing my hand. “We must be brave.”

  Today we are playing explorers, willing to risk cannibals, lions, and even our mother in our quest for hidden treasure. Marley says we are fearless adventurers, but I’m scared. My knees feel funny, and I hear my heart beating in my ears. When I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror hung above the long, low dresser, I look like a little kid, not a bold warrior princess in disguise.

  “Maybe we should conquer some other land,” I whisper, but Marley is braver.

  “I wonder what’s in there?” She waves toward the two big white doors that take up nearly one whole wall of the room.

  I gasp. “We can’t go in there.”

  “Sure we can. We just need the right magic words to say to break the sealing spell. And don’t you even think about abracadabra or bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.”

  “Not a good idea, Marley.”

  I look over my shoulder. The bedroom door is firmly closed, but is not much of a barrier between us and parental wrath. I hold my breath. Listen for footsteps. I hear the hum of the electric heater out in the hall. Wind in the trees outside the window. The sound of the television, muted by distance.

  Marley, unafraid, lays a hand on the closet door. Nothing happens. No electric zing. No lightning. No earthquakes.

  “Behind these doors lies the Cavern of Secrets,” she intones. “Treasures await, stored long ago by dragons. All we must do is speak the word of opening and the treasure is ours.”

  Curiosity builds in me. All my life I’ve caught only glimpses of this room, usually through the half-open door. It reminds me of the place in church where the minister stands, spotless and sacred and off-limits to kids.

  The dark wooden furniture. The giant bed with its perfectly smooth bedspread. The curtains, always closed and blocking out the light. My own small self, reflected in the mirror, is the only thing out of place.

  As for that closet, it could contain anything.

  “Well, open it, then,” I say, all my caution evaporating in a rush of need. Whatever lies behind those doors is important and necessary to my survival. I’m sure of it.

  “You have to do it,” Marley says, stepping back.

  This is the annoying thing about Marley. She has all the best ideas, but once she’s talked me into trouble, she always makes me take the necessary action. That way, I’m the one who gets in trouble while she is—poof!—nowhere to be seen. Certainly nowhere to be punished.

  “I don’t know the magic word.”

  “Yes, you do,” Marley says.

  And then, all at once, I do know. I leave my spot by the door, my feet sinking into the carpet with every step, little tufts of cream and gray fibers tickling the spaces between my toes. Raising both arms in the air, like the picture in my Bible storybook of Moses making a path in the Red Sea, I proclaim, “Adventure! Adventure’s the word.”

  Again, it seems like nothing happens, but the incantation works. When I lay my hand against the closet door, it glides open with only the whisper of a sound, revealing a secret room that looks to my eyes more like a store than a mysterious kingdom full of treasure.

  Rows of clothes hang neatly on hangers, all lined up by color. On one side, shirts and suit jackets. On the other, dresses and blouses. On the floor, shoes. Boxes, neatly stacked, all sealed shut with packing tape. More items are arranged on shelves above the clothes racks, too high for me to reach or even see clearly for the most part, but I recognize a badminton racket. And there’s a stack of gifts, brightly wrapped in Christmas paper.

  A spicy fragrance tickles my nose.

  Marley is on her knees in the back corner of the dress side of the closet, in front of a suitcase.

  It’s just an old brown suitcase, but it makes my insides feel jiggly. All at once I don’t want to play anymore. I want to run back to the safety of my own room and crawl under the covers. But I’m a brave explorer, so I slide the door closed and tiptoe over to join her.

  “Open it,” Marley says.

  The jiggling in my middle spreads to my hands. I clasp them behind my back and shake my head. “It’s an evil suitcase. We should leave it alone.”

  Marley gives me a withering glare. “Don’t be chicken.”

  So I take a big breath and drop to my knees beside her. My hands are shaking, but I manage to press the buttons on both latches.

  Click. Click.

  I lift the lid.

  Nothing jumps out to bite me. On top is a layer of blue tissue paper that crinkles as I set it carefully aside.

  Beneath it, neatly folded, is a white dress. It’s made of shiny, slippery fabric and is covered over with lace.

  “Silk,” Marley says. She knows all the words, even though she’s only seven minutes older than me. “Or maybe satin.”

  These are words we learned from reading time with Mom.

  At school they are teaching us reading, but only easy words and boring stories about mice and cats. We already know all the letters and the way they fit together to make words. We don’t say this. If Mom finds out, maybe she’ll stop reading stories at bedtime and tell us to read our own.

  Bedtime is my favorite Mom time. She’s not too busy to hug me then. She doesn’t have a list of chores for me to do, and she doesn’t quiz me about the names of countries I’m supposed to be memorizing or make me count to a hundred or recite Bible verses.

  She snuggles up with me in my bed, both of us holding the book, and reads me stories by the light of my bedside lamp. She never reads to Marley, but it’s still Marley who remembers all the words, even the hardest ones.

  Last night Mom read “Cinderella,” the one from a big, fat book with Grimm on the spine, not the one from the glossy picture book, where the stepsisters have pointy noses and Cinderella looks so ligh
t on her feet she might drift up into the sky.

  I can only pick out some of the words in that book. Marley says grim means dark, and for sure, there are lots of dark words on those pages.

  Silk and satin are there, but also hideous. And orphaned.

  “What if we were orphaned?” she asked me, the night Mom read “Hansel and Gretel.”

  “They weren’t orphaned,” I told her. “Their father was still alive.”

  “Maybe they would have been better off orphaned,” she says, “since he wanted to kill them and all.”

  Her words made me feel like I feel now, shivery and shaky. It’s not the witch in the gingerbread house that scares me; it’s the idea of my parents not wanting me anymore. When I wake screaming from nightmares and Mom comes to soothe me with hugs and soft words, it’s always from the same dream. Always she asks, “What were you dreaming, little one? Tell me.”

  And always I tell her, “I don’t remember.”

  And always it’s a lie.

  But I’m not dreaming now. I’m with Marley and we are safely hidden in the forbidden closet. The dress doesn’t look anything like the pictures in the “Cinderella” book, but I do think the word silk suits it just fine.

  “Put it on,” Marley says. “You can be Cinderella.”

  “I don’t want to be Cinderella.”

  “What about Princess Leia? That’s even better.”

  We haven’t seen the Star Wars movies. Mom says we’re too young. But we’ve heard about them from other kids. Lacey at school has a picture book all about the story, and we’ve seen Princess Leia in her white dress, carrying a gun through the spaceship. Leia is much more exciting than Cinderella and balls and dancing.

  Still.

  “We’ll get in trouble.” My hands are already smoothing the material, though.

  “Nobody will know.”

  Underneath the dress are two small pink blankets and one blue stuffed bear. The bear is a twin to the one sitting on my bed, the one that goes with me into dreamland every night.

  Wrapped in one of the blankets is a picture. Marley and I stare at it, trying to make sense of the image. A girl holds two babies bundled in pink blankets. The girl has my mother’s face, but she’s wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt and has long, loose hair hanging down almost to her waist. She wears lots of blue eye shadow and thick mascara.