The boy looked up from his play, giving Jill a jolt because Andrew Graham’s namesake looked like a miniature version of his father. Just then, a familiar voice called, “Andy, let’s go!”
Jill turned to see Paige Graham standing across the field by her SUV flanked by her two other children, the oldest in a little league uniform. Her middle son took off running toward the car and before Jill could stop her, Sophia bolted with him. “Paige!” she called, running fast across the field, her blonde hair flowing behind her like a kite.
“Sophia, come back!” Jill ran after her, Cosmo bulleting along at her side. When Paige Graham spotted them, her immediate reaction was to turn her back, opening the SUV’s rear door and ushering her kids inside.
Jill hadn’t seen her since that awful day last November when she’d confronted Paige on the soccer field. She had no desire to see her now. Paige’s husband hadn’t bled out in the empty house; the police rescued him in time. Andrew had done his best to deny his part in the whole sordid mess, but the police had plenty of evidence that corroborated Jill’s story, including Liz Galpin’s own journal entries. They were soon leaked to a tabloid. Senator Graham hired a top civil defense team, but even he couldn’t stop the stream of women who came forward to detail for the media the full extent of his son’s sexual aggression.
Jill ran faster to catch Sophia, grabbing her just before she got to Paige, but it was too late to turn back, too late to pretend she hadn’t seen her.
“How are you?” Jill said as Andy climbed into the backseat to join his brothers.
Paige closed the door on them. “We’re fine,” she said, Southern charm kicking in automatically, but the smile was small and tight, her eyes cold. She looked unchanged—the same beautifully coiffed hair and perfectly applied makeup, the same attention to detail in clothing that she’d always shown.
“I got a dog,” Sophia announced, reaching for the leash that Jill held. “His name’s Cosmo.”
Paige stared down at her for a moment, face expressionless, before shifting her gaze to Jill. There had been a change—Paige was thinner, her face harder. “What do you want, Jill?” she said, her perfect exterior cracking. “Haven’t you done enough damage to my family?”
“I didn’t do anything to you—your husband did that damage all by himself.” Facing disbarment and a slew of sexual harassment lawsuits, Andrew had taken down a favorite gun from his own collection and ended his humiliation, though not his family’s.
His widow’s face turned white, then red. She glanced around, afraid that someone had overheard, before leaning closer to Jill, hands twisting the wedding ring set she still wore. “You’re no better than I am, so don’t think you are. Standing here all smug with your bastard.” She hissed the word, voice shaking with barely repressed rage. Jill stepped back, pulling Sophia with her, but Paige followed. “You think I didn’t know?” She gave a harsh laugh. “Of course I knew. I knew about every single whore he bedded.”
Revulsion rose in Jill. She couldn’t believe she’d ever felt inferior to this woman. “I feel sorry for you.”
Paige kept talking as if she couldn’t hear her. “None of them mattered. I had the home and the children and the money. He came home to me.”
Jill turned her back, pulling her daughter and the dog away. Sophia glanced back over her shoulder and then up at Jill. “Why is she mad, Mommy?”
“Life didn’t turn out the way she wanted,” Jill said, struggling to keep her voice even. She felt an odd sort of pity for Paige. Her high expectations hadn’t been met, but then when were anybody’s? Jill thought of the album that Detective Ottilo had returned, of how she’d wept over the pages of Ethan’s short life, of how many other parents she knew turning the pages of the albums that she’d made for them. She’d wept again as she wrote a letter to her son, saying good-bye before tucking it in the album’s final pages.
When Jill was younger she’d believed that if she worked hard and planned with care that life would proceed in a sensible, orderly fashion, that she’d be guaranteed the family that she’d wanted complete with a matching set of perfect photos to celebrate every milestone. Except life didn’t work that way. Life was more often about what happened outside of the frame, on the margins. But love happened in the margins, too, and in the end love was the only infinite thing.
Jill clasped Sophia’s hand in hers and started back across the field, their little dog running ahead.
Dear Ethan,
I have tormented myself with asking why you had to go. Why, when so many children are born and thrive did you have to die? Why, when other people abuse their children and take them for granted, did you, who were so longed for and so adored, have to slip away like a forgotten guest at a party?
But “why” is the wrong question. The right question, I’ve come to see, is not why you had to die, but how you ever came to be in the first place. Life is so fragile and such a great mystery. It is beautiful and terrible and more often than not both of these things at once. I don’t know why you had to go, but however brief your life it did have meaning. You were wanted and cherished and I treasured every day I had with you. I will never forget you.
Your spirit will live on in me, your dad, and most of all your sister. I see you in her every day, but she has her own life to live and I can’t tether her to yours. I have your album on a place of honor on a shelf, but please don’t judge me a bad mother if it gathers some dust. I need to let you go, just a little, so I can live. I know that we will meet again some day and when that day comes, you’ll have to forgive me if I want to spend all of eternity holding you.
Love forever,
Mommy
acknowledgments
Thank you to Leslie Williams, whose love and devotion to her children helped inspire this book. Thank you, also, to Abby Leviss, who writes so poignantly about loss on her blog, Missing Maxie. And thank you to the Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep (NILMDTS) organization and the work of all bereavement photographers, whose generous service to grieving families also inspired this novel.
Thank you to the Fox Chapel Police Department and especially Sgt. Mike J. Stevens and Officer Richard Klein for patiently talking me through police investigative techniques and the particulars of major crimes investigation in Allegheny County. Any mistakes are entirely my own.
Thank you to Pittsburgh readers for indulging my creativity with the geography of my adopted hometown: I’ve added street names and places that don’t exist in the ’Burgh.
Thanks to my lovely and talented agent, Rachel Ekstrom, and all the wonderful people at the Irene Goodman Literary Agency (IGLA). Thank you to my two editors extraordinaire, Jaime Levine and Anne Brewer, and the incredible team at Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Press; I’m privileged to be one of your authors.
A special thank you for the support of my writing pals, especially Nicole Peeler, Annette Dashofy, Meredith Mileti, Shelly Culbertson, Kathryn Miller Haines, Lila Shaara, Meryl Neiman, Nancy Martin, Kathleen George, and Heather Terrell who read early drafts, brainstormed plot complications, helped me navigate social media, and in general served as sounding boards for this book. You’re some of the smartest, funniest women I know.
And for their encouragement, thank you to my friends and walking buddies, Lisa Lundy, Mary Lou Linton-Morningstar, Marilyn Fitzgerald, Sharon Wolpert, and especially Donna Wallace, who was an early reader and champion of this novel.
Finally, the most heartfelt thanks to my husband, Joe Mertz, and our children, Joe and Maggie, for your constant love and support.
ALSO BY REBECCA DRAKE
don’t be afraid
the next killing
the dead place
about the author
REBECCA DRAKE moves to hardcover with her breakout psychological thriller, Only Ever You. She is the author of three other suspense novels, Don’t Be Afraid, The Next Killing, and The Dead Place, as well as the short story “Loaded,” which was featured in Pittsburgh Noir. Rebecca is an instructor in Seton Hill University�
�s Writing Popular Fiction M.F.A. program. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with her husband and two children. Find more at RebeccaDrake.com. Or sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Part I: Before
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
Part II: After
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by Rebecca Drake
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
ONLY EVER YOU. Copyright © 2016 by Rebecca Drake. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Ervin Serrano
Cover photograph by Mark Owen/Trevillion Images
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Drake, Rebecca, author.
Title: Only ever you / Rebecca Drake.
Description: First edition.|New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015043224|ISBN 9781250068910 (hardcover)|ISBN 9781466877702 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Missing children—Investigation—Fiction.|Mothers and daughters—Fiction.|BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women.|FICTION / Suspense.|GSAFD: Mystery fiction.|Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3604.R3553 O59 2016|DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015043224
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First Edition: March 2016
Only Ever You Page 33