Shadow Garden
Page 1
PRAISE FOR
THE GOOD DAUGHTER
“Alexandra Burt expertly weaves a rich tapestry of a story that is surprising at every turn and impossible to put down. I was incredibly impressed with her ability to take seemingly unrelated threads and connect each one to the core of the story. Excellent read!”
—Rena Olsen, author of The Girl Before
“Stunning. Every landscape, from rural Texas to the dark past of the characters, is intricately and beautifully crafted, pulling you in from the very first page to the very last. Rarely do we get to enjoy psychological suspense with such extraordinary descriptive narration. It’s a wonderful read!”
—Wendy Walker, bestselling author of All Is Not Forgotten
“An eerily beautiful novel. . . . Alexandra Burt fills the Texas woods with her haunting prose and multiple layers of faithfulness, blood ties, and betrayals. The suspense draws you in those woods and keeps you there until the final page.”
—Kathy Hepinstall, author Blue Asylum
PRAISE FOR
REMEMBER MIA
“As riveting as Gone Girl, but with an even sharper emotional edge, this story . . . will pull you in from the very first page. The fast-paced plot, psychological intrigue, and engrossing twists will have you flipping pages faster and faster as Estelle’s memories are gradually uncovered and piece by jagged piece the puzzle comes together.”
—Kelly Jones, author of Lost and Found in Prague
“Remember Mia is a twisty, gripping read—beautifully written and impossible to put down.”
—Meg Gardiner, Edgar® Award–winning author of Phantom Instinct
“If you enjoy books that pull you in from the beginning and keep you so fully engrossed that you think about them even when you are doing other things, [this] is a book that you should not miss.”
—Fresh Fiction
Berkley titles by Alexandra Burt
REMEMBER MIA
THE GOOD DAUGHTER
SHADOW GARDEN
BERKLEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2020 by Alexandra Burt
“Readers guide” copyright © 2020 by Alexandra Burt
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Burt, Alexandra, author.
Title: Shadow garden / Alexandra Burt.
Description: First edition. | New York: Berkley, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020002034 (print) | LCCN 2020002035 (ebook) | ISBN 9780440000327 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780440000334 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Domestic fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3602.U7694 S53 2020 (print) | LCC PS3602.U7694 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002034
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002035
First Edition: July 2020
Cover art: Figure in landscape by Arcangel/Katya Evdokimova; Face by Shutterstock/Nina Skarga
Cover design by Emily Osborne
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
Praise for Alexandra Burt
Titles by Alexandra Burt
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Part I
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
Part II
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
Part III
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Readers Guide
About the Author
To Long Goodbyes
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
—WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
PART I
HELL
There is no greater sorrow than to recall
happiness in times of misery.
—DANTE ALIGHIERI
1
DONNA
Through the thicket of trees, the faint amber lights of a building appear. The sign catches me by surprise as if it isn’t meant to be seen by just anyone. Like a hurried deer crossing the road it materializes, and below it, bushy sky-blue hydrangeas the size of human heads thrive.
Golden letters come into focus. Shadow Garden.
How strange. All these years I’ve lived here but I never knew this place existed.
“You think I’ll get better soon?”
I turn and look at Edward, my husband. I shouldn’t notice the heavy metal-alloy femoral head in my left hip but it weighs me down in more ways than one. Since the accident things have been difficult between us.
Edward stares straight ahead. His face hadn’t been touched by a razor in months, not until this morning, when he decided to stop hiding behind a full beard. I study the profile of the face that has emerged, exposed and on the verge of being unfamiliar. A spot by his upper lip, a small blood-speckled wound from the razor blade. His fitted suit is no longer snug and I resist telling him to have the garment altered. I have become good at swallowing my words by vis
ualizing pulling an imaginary zipper across my mouth.
A gate shuts behind us. I search for words to accurately explain myself but I’m distracted by shiny kaleidoscopic grackles of purple, green, and blue iridescence foraging with long dark bills. They peck at shamrock-green grass blades, have taken over the walkways and the shrubberies, they dot the lawn, sit perched on rims of copper fountains, bobbing their heads. As we pass them, the flock scatters off into nearby trees. In the fading light, their yellow eyes stand out in the otherwise emerald landscape. They settle nearby, invisible to the eye, but their calls are unnerving, like the sound of buzzing power lines.
I look out the car window so Edward doesn’t see me tearing up. He hates tears. They unravel him, do him in. He’s been composed so far, at least on the outside, but that’s nothing to brag about; he’s a surgeon, it comes to him naturally.
That name. Shadow Garden. How overly dramatic, as if ripped from a Victorian horror novel. It isn’t until I’m shown the grounds that it grows on me. It has the feel of an Ivy League university surrounded by a vastness of jade, mint, olive, and sage—any hue of green the eye can imagine.
Shadow Garden is nothing to shake a stick at. It sits on a majestic estate of almost forty acres of hiking trails tucked away in the countryside at the end of a rural road. To call the estate a garden, even in a remote sense, is an understatement: The grounds are a burst of potted plants, bushes, shrubberies, and trees shading the paved walkways. Crape myrtles rise between the buildings, slender, with sinewy, fluted stems and mottled branches and bark that sheds like snakeskin.
“I guess I’ve turned into an old shrew, griping all day long,” I joke but to no avail. Earlier, when I struggled down the stairs and limped over to the car, his eyes were fixated on me, watching my every step. He hasn’t looked at me since. I wonder what he thinks of me shuffling around without any strength and confidence, and maybe he’s run out of compassion. Just look at him staring straight ahead as if I’m not even here. “Did you hear me?”
“Bones heal, dear. That’s what bones do. They fuse,” Edward says as the corners of his lips form the imitation of a smile.
“You’re the doctor, you ought to know,” I say with a slight hint of sarcasm, but truth be told, it isn’t my bones I’m worried about. I wish I could talk to Edward like I used to. I want to tell him how terrified I am. “I worry about Penelope,” I add, barely a whisper.
His head swivels toward me when I mention our daughter.
“Marleen will be with you. No need to worry.”
Marleen. My housekeeper. My steadfast soldier. Years ago, Edward and I traveled to Egypt. We toured a temple and the guide told us about a human entombed with nobility to serve them in the afterlife—a retainer sacrifice. Metaphorically speaking I’m a cast-off given a servant.
Later, Edward stands awkwardly blocking the front door. “I have to leave now,” he says, and I blink the tears away.
“I don’t understand why all this is happening,” I can’t help myself and before I know it, the words have escaped my mouth. They rest between us with all those other weighted things we have accumulated in the past.
Edward remains silent. I reach for his hand, which hangs lifeless and cold by his side. He seems jittery but maybe I’m reading too much into it.
“You’ll be back to your old self in no time,” Edward finally says without making eye contact.
Thirty years of marriage and I can read him like a book. Even he doesn’t believe the back-to-your-old-self thing. The fabric between him and the truth is nothing but a smokescreen. As thin as paper. An illusion. The truth is our marriage is over and Shadow Garden is my consolation prize. That’s the gist of it.
As I see Edward off, the lampposts flicker, and for a moment the night is so dark, it seems capable of devouring me. Like being swallowed whole.
2
DONNA
I tug at the crisp white sheet clinging to the corner of my vanity mirror. Yanking at it, I center the fabric. The sheet disturbs dust, which threatens to settle on every surface of my bedroom.
“I don’t understand what this is all about,” Marleen reprimands me as if I’m an unruly child. Her eyes pan back and forth between me and the mirror.
“This isn’t nearly as dramatic as it looks,” I say and reassure her I’m in great spirits. Just in case she thinks otherwise.
I’ve explained the entire mourning affair to Marleen but it must have gone over her head. My friend and neighbor, Vera Olmsted, told me about holding shiva for seven days, during which one shrouds all mirrors, but I’m Methodist and there’s no need to follow the rules exactly. Loss comes in many forms and my state of mourning has to do with my marriage. For the longest time I counted on a reconciliation but months have passed and not a single phone call from Edward. Not one visit. And my daughter, Penelope, I haven’t spoken to her either.
Voices drift toward me through the open window—a child, giggling, high-pitched, pit-a-patting, racing down the walkway with a joy that only children possess. A mother’s voice responds gently, wait, slow down, hold my hand. I crane my neck to get a good look at them—the girl is about five or so—and seeing her is comforting at first but then reality sinks in.
* * *
• • •
When Penelope was five, we lived in Florida at the end of a cul-de-sac. I search my mind for fond memories of the bungalow but all I know is I wouldn’t set foot in it today. A crooked fire hydrant in the front yard and a small square patch of grass. Every time the air conditioner kicked in, the lights flickered on trembling currents due to faulty wiring. We were able to afford the house because the interior was dated and overhead power lines cut through the backyard, mere feet away from the porch. Metal towers loomed above us and I often wondered if it was safe to live there.
For hours on end, Penelope played with her dollhouses, scooting across the cheap carpet until her knees turned pinkish red from the friction. She’d sit with what I interpreted as sharp concentration but as time passed I saw it for what it was: an obsession, a way of soothing herself. She rearranged plastic dolls and dainty accessories and when I interrupted her, she’d snap her head back and flip her ponytail by weaving her fingers through her hair, whipping it around.
Penelope—we called her Pea as a baby and toddler, Penny as a child, Penelope starting as a teenager—never made friends easily. She didn’t care for other children. It sounds callous, but it wasn’t so much her not liking others as her enjoying her own company. I found what I thought was the solution to her isolation and bought her an outdoor playhouse, hoping it would attract children from the neighborhood. I had an image of Pea and her friends having tea parties and tucking their doll babies in strollers, playing dress-up and wearing princess dresses.
I didn’t read the description and the playhouse arrived in hundreds of pieces of wooden shapes with numbered and lettered plastic stickers and a bag of screws, nails, and hex keys. That Edward was going to put the playhouse together was wishful thinking on my part; he has not so much as hammered a nail in the wall.
I found a handyman in the Yellow Pages who put it together the very next day. After he left, Penelope stared at the house for a long time, then circled it as if she was pondering its intended use. “Go on,” I said and watched her step inside as I stood on the back porch and beheld the structure: the scalloped cedar shingles, the cast-iron bell, the stained-glass window in the door which allowed plenty of sunlight to sneak inside, where a delicate heart-and-swag stencil pattern adorned the walls.
Penelope disappeared within the structure and a sudden gust of wind slammed the playhouse door shut and the stained-glass pane shattered though it took me some time to connect cause and effect. Penelope screamed and I ran to find her with a gaping cut from the tip of her index finger down the palm of her hand to her wrist. The cut bled so profusely, I was unable to staunch the bleeding. I rushed her to the ER and Edward did the su
tures himself and eventually all that was left of that day was a faint white line in my daughter’s palm. It seemed to float, to sit above her skin. Penelope didn’t so much as shed a tear. She knew no pain. I say that without judgment, that was just the body she lived in.
There was something about Penelope, something that made me—
Outside my window heavy footsteps sound. More laughter. I got you. Stop being silly. The voices grow weak, then fade, swallowed by the lush landscaping until there’s nothing but silence spilling into my room. There one moment, gone the next.
In the blink of an eye. That’s my go-to comment when I encounter families in the park outside my window. “Children grow up so quickly,” I say and smile though I shudder when small sticky hands reach for me. I bury my hands in my pockets and add, “Before you know it, they are grown. In the blink of an eye. Gone.”
Like my daughter, Penelope. My husband, my entire life. Gone.
My mind bends in on itself, pondering my role in it all. There’s a lesson in here somewhere, but what the lesson is I don’t know.
3
PENELOPE
That playhouse. Penelope knew what her mother was trying to do: like the man in the book, the Pied Piper, she wanted children to march into the backyard and up the wooden steps into the miniature house with shelves and benches and tables. Those kids might appear but not a single one of them would stick around.
It wasn’t her earlobes, which were flatter than any lobe she had ever seen—not even her parents had them and how she got them, she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t comprehend biology or genetics or inheritance quite yet but was told she had her mother’s fine hair and her father’s nose, so everything about her came from them but her lobes were a puzzle to everyone.
But that wasn’t what made her different.
There was the accident in the cul-de-sac. A girl fell off her bike, having just learned to ride, still clumsy and off balance, teetering left and right. Penelope watched her glide across the concrete and come to rest against the curb. She imagined the girl’s skin scraping against the asphalt and there was a lot of blood though Penelope’s father later explained to her that head wounds always tended to bleed profusely. It wasn’t the fact that Penelope had remained calm when the blood collected in the sidewalk dip—the very hollow in which a puddle formed and she jumped after a rain shower—it was the fact that all the kids who saw the blood gasped and turned pale. Even the boys backed up and one began to cry.