Dedication
For you, Dad, with love
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Acknowledgments
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .* About the author
About the book
Read on . . .
Also by Valerie Geary
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
Lucy Durant stood on the roof of her father’s house with her toes close to the edge and peered down into a gaping black hole. It was almost midnight, the sky moonless, the front lawn drowned in shadows. Gravity nudged her shoulders forward. How easy it would be to let go, to tip and spin into oblivion. How high up was she? Twenty feet? Thirty? High enough for bones to shatter, though the darkness below was so concentrated it seemed that if she fell, she would fall and fall forever and never hit the ground.
A swell of laughter rose from inside the house. Glasses clinked. Jazz music filtered through the open attic window behind her. Four hours in and the engagement party showed no signs of being anywhere close to winding down. No one noticed her slip away. No one noticed her before that either, as she stood in the corner of the living room staring at her shoes. All the focus was on Robert and Marnie’s happily-ever-after. Which was fine with her, or should have been, and might have been, if they had picked any other day but this one. The fifth of December—ten years to the day that her brother went missing.
She had asked Robert to change the date. Any other Saturday, she’d pleaded, but Marnie insisted on the fifth. Marnie and Robert met five months ago on the fifth of July at 5:55 P.M. when the elevator they were riding in stalled between the fifth and sixth floors. They were stuck inside for fifty-five minutes before the fire department came and got them out. The number painted on the fire truck waiting outside the building was fifty-five. It was fate, Marnie liked to say. Her lucky number had always been five, and if that wasn’t a sign, she didn’t know what was. The universe brought her and Robert together, and now she wanted her fairytale ending, and whatever Marnie wanted, Marnie got.
“We’ve never made a big deal of it before,” Robert had said to Lucy when she brought up the potential awkwardness of an engagement party overlapping their unofficial day of mourning.
It was true. In years past, December fifth came and went without ceremony. Robert never brought it up, and a few times Lucy didn’t even realize what day it was until after it was already over and she was left with halfhearted guilt that she’d forgotten something so important. But there were other years when she was plagued with a dark inertia in the days leading up to and following the fifth of December. Years when she didn’t see the point of even getting out of bed. Ten years was a long time to miss someone and yet the hollow ache in her belly never seemed to lessen.
After her father refused to change the date of the party, Lucy tried to distract herself with preparations. She sent out invitations, helped decorate the house, and even offered to pick up Marnie’s five-tiered, eight-hundred-dollar engagement cake from the bakery the morning of the grand event. What happened next wasn’t her fault.
A street preacher had set up his pulpit a few steps from the bakery entrance. He stood barefoot on a five-gallon paint bucket that bulged and started to crack under his shifting weight. The sheet wrapped toga-like around his body was pink daises on a white background, dirty and stained along the bottom where the hem dragged. Eyes wild and darting, he spread his lips and bared crooked yellow teeth at a small crowd of curious onlookers. His coal-colored hair was unwashed, long and knotted down to his shoulders. White crumbs from some prior meal caught in the tangles of his thick beard. He smelled sour from too much sun, overripe and festering. Beckoning with fingers curling and uncurling, he said, “We are a part of something bigger than anything your small minds can even begin to imagine.”
Lucy paused on the outskirts of the crowd to watch. She’d stopped looking for her brother in the faces of strangers years ago, but this street preacher was about the right age, midtwenties, and though she never saw Nolan with a beard, she imagined it would look something like this, unkempt and curling at the ends. She studied him for a moment, noting the stooped shoulders and lanky arms, the familiar cadence of his voice, the fury and ache of a broken mind, a man-child suffering delusions of grandeur.
“I have been given a gift,” the street preacher said with a stoner’s smile. “To see the connections.” He fluttered his fingers away from his body, his hand a bird taking flight. “I know what is coming, and I am here to prepare the way.”
Then he turned his cold blue gaze on Lucy. His eyes like iced-over lakes, bottomless and ringed in dark indigo. Nothing like Nolan’s, which were baked-earth and warm.
The street preacher winked at her and in a singsong voice said, “You and you and you and me. The sun and the moon and the stars are free.”
Someone threw a handful of coins into a can at the man’s feet. The clanging sound jolted Lucy from her daze. She turned away from the preacher, embarrassed to have thought him anything like her brother, and went into the bakery where she paid for the cake without looking at it. Her hands shook a little as she carried the cake to her car. She drove fast, hoping speed might unravel the guilt knot forming in her throat. The street preacher was not her brother, but if he had been, Lucy wasn’t sure she would have said or done anything different. She would have walked by in the exact same way, pretending she didn’t recognize him, one among hundreds of vagrants in Los Angeles County looking for a quick handout. She still would have lowered her gaze and left him behind.
When she got home, Lucy delivered the cake to the kitchen. Marnie opened the lid and peered inside. She gasped, clutching one hand to her chest. “Oh, Lucy,” but her voice was not that of a woman delighted by a perfect engagement cake. Rather, she sounded quite despondent.
“What did you do?” Robert peered into the cake box.
The lilac fondant was cracked straight down the middle. The tiers had slumped and shifted, exposing decadent chocolate cake and glistening raspberry filling. Lucy tried to push the cake back together, smooth the frosting with a butter knife, but another crack appeared, and then another, narrow fault lines spreading ruin.
She tried to explain. “There was this street preacher and this crowd, they were blocking the sidewalk. I had to push to get through.”
She didn’t mention anything about the man reminding her of Nolan because her father had made it clear that today was Marnie’s day, and there would be no talk of what happened ten years ago, nothing depressing, nothing unsavory, nothing upsetting, end of story.
Marnie sighed and when she looked at the cake a second time, tears gathered on her lashes.
“We could cut it up before the guests get here,” Lucy suggested. “Arrange each piece on a plate with those pretty little purple flowers from the garden. What are those called?”
“Pansies.” Robert picked up the cake box.
“Right, pansies.” Lucy smiled at Marnie, but received nothing in return. “It’s a little unconventional, but I doubt anyone will even notice, or if they do, they certainly won’t care once they st
art eating. I’m sure the cake still tastes good. It’s just a little cosmetic damage, that’s all. I’m sure it’s still delicious.”
As she spoke, Robert carried the entire cake across the kitchen and dumped it in the trash.
Lucy started to protest, but Robert held up a hand to silence her. “I refuse to serve this mess to my guests.”
“Robert . . .” Marnie started, but he silenced her too.
“I’ll call Donna. She’ll be able to find us something.”
Donna was the woman catering the event. She was good at her job, the best, and expensive, but Lucy didn’t know how even she would manage this minor miracle of finding such a high-quality cake at the last minute. Robert wasn’t going to bother Lucy with the details, though. He shooed her out of the kitchen like she was a child. “I think you’ve helped enough for one day. Why don’t you make yourself scarce until the party starts? And try not to screw anything else up tonight, okay? Do you think you can do that?”
She would certainly try.
Lucy stayed in her room until the first guests arrived a little after eight. Then she wandered downstairs. A table near the front door quickly filled with expensive bottles of wine and flawlessly wrapped gifts. On a smaller table in the center of the room was an exact replica of the cake Lucy had ruined. She went over to see if it was real, but a tall woman wearing a tuxedo shooed her away. Marnie swirled from person to person, a shimmering rainbow of lilac and blue, her elegant dress hugging tight to her curves, her hair done up in a regal twist, her three-carat diamond engagement ring polished and dazzling, her smile even brighter. She kissed cheeks and giggled and charmed and swept Robert and everyone else up in her youth and gaiety. She had been a ballerina once, or so she claimed, and she moved like one now, with grace and a complete awareness that the whole room was watching her.
Everyone but Lucy dressed like they were attending a red carpet event. Long, flowing gowns and sparkling jewels, neatly fitted suits, ties, and polished shoes. Lucy was out of place in black skinny jeans and a baggy navy blue knit top, her russet-colored hair pulled into a nothing-fancy ponytail. But at least she was comfortable. This had been Robert’s one concession, a way to ease whatever small amount of guilt he felt for scheduling his engagement party on December fifth: Lucy could wear whatever she wanted. She might have disappeared against the wallpaper, a Prussian blue floral pattern, had it not been for her neon pink and green running shoes, which clashed with everything. Marnie made a face when she saw them, but said nothing.
It was ridiculous, this superstition of Lucy’s, this refusal to wear anything else on her feet. No flats, no sandals, absolutely no stilettos. Even slippers or going barefoot for long periods of time made her uncomfortable. She knew it was stupid, with no basis in reality, but she still did it, comforted by the tight laces and cushioned heels, knowing that if all other modes of transportation failed, at least she’d have on the right shoes. At least she could run like hell.
Lucy tucked herself in a corner and watched the house fill with people she didn’t know. She recognized a few of Robert’s business associates, but couldn’t remember their names. They didn’t bother to reintroduce themselves; they didn’t even notice her. Robert had told her to invite a few of her friends. He’d said it as if she had so many to choose from. She talked to the barista at the coffee shop down the street sometimes, about books and the weather and the woman who came in every day and ordered nothing but foam, but an invitation to her father’s engagement party seemed too friendly, too personal for someone who only talked to her because she was hoping for a bigger tip. There were people in her running group, but they, too, were little more than casual acquaintances with running in common and little else. So maybe she was antisocial. So maybe she liked it this way. By distancing herself, she didn’t have to talk about personal things, nor was she barraged with the inevitable questions about family and siblings and what she was like when she was a kid. She never had to explain.
The volume of the party increased as more people arrived and then started in on their second and third drinks. Chandeliers threw gold prisms onto freshly waxed oak floors. Someone wondered loudly enough for everyone else to hear, how it was possible for such a beautiful young woman to be marrying such an ugly old man. Someone else answered that money had a way of making anyone handsome. Robert and Marnie laughed with the rest of the room. Then she squeezed him around the waist, looked into his eyes, and said, “I guess love makes you crazy. Because that’s what this feels like. Crazy, out of my mind, out of this world, love.”
The room heaved one great, affectionate sigh. Robert dipped Marnie in his arms and kissed her like they were teenagers again, young, in love, not caring who watched. A wolf whistle, a toast, the party swirled on.
It was too much for Lucy. The music, the glitter, the sequined bodies and made-up faces, the smell of alcohol on everyone’s breath, Marnie’s little speech. After the day she’d had, seeing her father with Marnie like this, the two of them happy, living in the present, unconcerned with the past, it cracked open some part of her and she had to escape. She needed fresh air. She carried a tumbler of ginger ale up the stairs two at a time to her attic bedroom and then crawled out the dormer window onto the gently sloped roof where she could finally be alone.
Lucy doubted any of her father’s friends knew very much about Nolan, doubted how much even Marnie knew. Robert was a self-made man, a rich man, who made his money buying, selling, and investing in tech companies, who lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, who owned a second house in Aspen, who drove a Mercedes or sometimes a Porsche, who still had all his hair and rugged good looks and was about to marry a former ballerina half his age. From the outside, his life was perfect. It was no wonder he kept his shame of a son to himself. Lucy was embarrassment enough. Twenty-four years old, still living with her father, working as his part-time secretary, no college education, no boyfriend, no prospects.
Despite the late hour, the sky above her was a wash of murky sienna, a purée of marine fog and city lights that blotted out most of the stars. Planets like Venus and Mars, as well as a few of the closest, brightest stars were still visible, though they, too, were watery and pale and hard to see. She used to know these handfuls of dots by name, and others that weren’t visible here, too dim to break through the pollution blanketing Los Angeles. As a girl, she’d lived in a place much darker than this, and on warm summer nights she and her brother would lie on their backs for hours tracing constellations with their fingertips. Too much time had passed since then, and she’d made no effort to remember. Their names, their stories lost to her now.
Across the street, the neighbor’s motion-sensor lights snapped on, illuminating a closed garage door and empty driveway. Lucy scanned the street and sidewalk and the narrow alley between the neighbor’s house and the one next door, but didn’t see anything that might have triggered the lights. A minute later, the lights snapped off again, returning the driveway to darkness.
She took a sip of ginger ale, then swirled the ice so it clinked against the sides of the glass, regretting now not taking the flute of champagne her father had offered earlier. She was careful about avoiding alcohol, afraid of how it changed her, the ways it muddled her brain and made her too much like her mother, but today was a day she wouldn’t mind forgetting. It wouldn’t be so bad to wake up tomorrow with no memory of this party and Marnie’s ruined cake, or of the madman who looked too much like her brother. It wouldn’t be so bad to drown out the words playing on repeat in her head, pulsing to the rhythm of the music below: ten years today, ten years today, ten years today.
She was about to climb back inside, go downstairs, find something fiery and strong to mix with her soda, toast to forgetting, and chug, when the power cut out. A loud pop and then the whole block went dark. Up and down the street, the neighbors’ porch lights turned off simultaneously, their houses descending into shadows. The music downstairs stopped, and the guests let out gasps of surprise.
Blackouts wer
en’t unusual, especially during hot summers when everyone ran air conditioners at full blast, but it was December and temperatures had been average, if a bit cooler than normal. There had been no squealing tires, no metallic crunch, no indication anyone ran into a power pole either. From her vantage point, Lucy could see over the rooftops to the surrounding neighborhoods where lights still blazed. Only this street, a string of houses to the left and right of her father’s, was shrouded in darkness.
The power wasn’t out for long. Enough for a few bewildered blinks, and then another pop sounded and the streetlamps flickered and hummed to life again. The porch lights flared bright all at once. The music downstairs exploded. Saxophones and trumpets picked up right where they’d left off. The guests cheered, a sweeping crescendo followed by clinking glasses and heady laughter.
Lucy tried to laugh it off, too, but something caught her attention at the end of the driveway near a row of hedges separating their lawn from the sidewalk. Something crouched in a sliver of deep dark where the streetlights didn’t reach. Maybe not, maybe her eyes were playing tricks on her. Then the shadow moved. It shuffled forward a little and then retreated, as if it sensed her watching. A raccoon. It was just a raccoon. What else could it be? But even as she thought it, another part of her brain screamed that it was too big to be a raccoon. Much too big.
She stared at the shadow, waiting for it to move again, willing it to shuffle into the light so she could see its black-rimmed eyes and fur-covered face, confirming its raccoon-ness, but the shadow stayed low, all features concealed. The longer she watched, the more she began to doubt herself. There was nothing there. A blacker shred of night and that was all. Her mind running wild because her father was getting remarried, and today was December fifth, and she’d run into that street preacher who had reminded her, and her brain was finding patterns, making shapes, turning emptiness to substance, filling the world with monsters.
Lucy hurled her tumbler toward whatever-the-hell thing, real or imagined, was hiding in the bushes. The throw fell short. The glass struck the concrete driveway dead center with an explosive crack and splintered to a million tiny pieces, the shards below more visible than the stars above.
Everything We Lost Page 1