But all she said was “Why not?”
Still in her dress—a vivid print, now decorated with grass stains and Carla Scout’s chocolate fingerprints, which was one reason Tess had chosen a vivid print—she watched her daughter’s eyes flutter and close, fighting sleep with every fiber of her being. The girl didn’t want to miss a thing. Once her eyelids were finally shut, Tess noticed they had a purplish cast, as if her beautiful blue eyes were shining through. The girl was gorgeous. She was impossible. She was everything. Why had Tess done this to herself? Why had she handed all her happiness to this small, impetuous creature? Was there any rational case for parenthood, or did the universe trick you into it? What if she failed her? What if she did something that Carla Scout could not forgive? If she lost her daughter, what would she do to get her back? How far would she go? Would she kill someone who stood between her and her child?
Tess remembered Emmett Verlaine, curled up like a potato bug on Kitty’s floor. Yes.
Crow had fallen asleep, but he awakened when Tess climbed into bed and spooned him.
“That was fun,” he said. “Why did we wait so long?”
“It never seemed to matter. Being married. And then it did. Because of Carla Scout. But then there was never time. Because of Carla Scout.”
“Yet we found time. We pulled this together in two weeks. When you wanted to find time, you found it.”
“Are you saying we didn’t get married because I wasn’t really committed to you?”
“No. I’m saying there’s always time for what you really want. For what we want. We may never have as much money as we’d like. And our days may seem overfull, but if we want something, anything, really desire it, I have to believe that we can figure out a way to get it. A trip to Europe. A bigger house.”
He flipped over so he and Tess were face-to-face.
“A bigger family?” she asked.
“Is that what you think I want? Or is it what you want, Tess?”
“I think it’s what I want.”
“You should be sure.”
“I’m never sure about anything. I wasn’t sure about you, remember?”
“It will be harder.”
“I know.”
“Exponentially harder.”
“I know.”
“It—”
“Oh, shut up and let’s make another one.”
Author’s Note
Blame mom-brain. I can’t remember everyone who helped me with this book. Probably because everyone helped me with this book. Husband, family, friends, neighbors, people on social media, former colleagues. My agent, my editor, everyone at William Morrow. The team at Faber & Faber. The FLs. The moms on William Street and the moms on Eighth Street. Some dads, too, particularly the one who helped me fact-check a detail about Inwood.
The stay-at-home writer and the stay-at-home parent have a lot of interesting overlaps. This book is dedicated to my nanny, who has no overlaps with the nanny in this book. When my daughter was born, a lot of people happily predicted that I would no longer write at the same pace. They were wrong. Sara Kiehne deserves most of the credit.
Laura Lippman
Baltimore, 2014
About the Author
PHOTO BY JAN COBB
Since LAURA LIPPMAN’S debut in 1997, she has been heralded for thoughtful, timely crime novels set in her beloved hometown of Baltimore. Now a perennial New York Times bestseller, she lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her family.
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Also by Laura Lippman
After I’m Gone
And When She Was Good
The Most Dangerous Thing
The Girl in the Green Raincoat
I’d Know You Anywhere
Life Sentences
Hardly Knew Her
Another Thing to Fall
What the Dead Know
No Good Deeds
To the Power of Three
By a Spider’s Thread
Every Secret Thing
The Last Place
In a Strange City
The Sugar House
In Big Trouble
Butchers Hill
Charm City
Baltimore Blues
Credits
COVER DESIGN BY MARY SCHUCK
COVER PHOTOGRAPH © BY LIZ DALZIEL / TREVILLION IMAGES
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
HUSH HUSH. Copyright © 2015 by Laura Lippman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-208342-5
EPUB Edition February 2015 ISBN 9780062083449
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