The Light Before Us

by Stephanie Vercier

  The Light Before Us

  Stephanie Vercier

  The Light Before Us

  Copyright © 2017 by Stephanie Vercier

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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

  For my beautiful Mother

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  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

  Epilogue - Part One

  Epilogue - Part Two

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by Stephanie Vercier

  About the Author

  Prologue

  NATALIE

  THREE YEARS AGO

  “So, you’re really going to make me stay for this?” This being yet another one of my father’s extravagant work parties.

  The question was for my mother who primped in front of the full-length mirror inside of her closet, a closet that was probably larger than most peoples’ living rooms.

  “Oh, for god’s sake, Natalie, stop being such a child. If making an appearance wasn’t good for business, we wouldn’t be asking you to do it!” She talked through her bee-stung lips, smoothing her cream-colored satin dress over the curves of her hips before sliding her diamond-ringed fingers along her salon-blonde hair and then toying with the sapphire necklace that hung precariously close to her surgically enhanced, spray-tanned cleavage. “Your father didn’t become a member of the most prestigious plastic surgery clinic in Seattle by himself—he did it with our support—and besides, everyone is going to want to see you, to see what a beautiful young woman you’ve grown into.”

  Oh, sure.

  She made it sound like a family reunion when the guest list was mostly comprised of women—and men—who’d gotten plumped or pruned, snipped or stitched, invited to tempt and tantalize another chunk of invitees who were still considering their first procedure or adding to an already long list of body modifications that had made my father a very wealthy man.

  The vast majority of any interest bestowed upon me came from people who thought I’d gone under my father’s knife, that the very talented Dr. Lincoln Bouchard was responsible for the smooth slope of my nose, the fullness of my lips or my big, wide blue eyes.

  “There’s a word for eyes like yours,” Dad liked to say with a twinkle. “And that word is expressive.”

  Looking expressive and not frozen or paralyzed was something my father’s clients valued, right along with big boobs and trim waists. My own decently sized breasts, long legs and curvy hips didn’t get as much commentary as my eyes, and I figured it was because I was only eighteen, and people weren’t supposed to go around asking eighteen-year-old girls if their plastic surgeon fathers had done their boobs. But not everyone was stopped by that small measure of decorum.

  Queries about any part of my body used to make me run away in embarrassment—I mean, I’d only been about thirteen the first time I’d been asked by some random lady at one of these parties how I liked my new nose, a nose that wasn’t any different than the one I’d been born with. When I’d mentioned it to Dad, he just said to smile whenever someone asked something like that and to tell the asker that anything was possible with plastic surgery.

  So, that’s what I’d done in the last couple of years, taken such questioning in stride, confirming to anyone who asked that whatever body part in question was indeed crafted by my father, not adding that it was his DNA, not any of his surgical instruments, that made me look the way I did.

  I rolled my eyes at my mother and leaned against the frame of the door to the closet and crossed my arms over my chest. I hated the fact that I was already dressed to the tens in a formal summer dress and heels when all of my friends were likely in shorts and tank tops and grabbing their favorite bikinis for a weekend at the lake.

  “Don’t give me that look,” Mom snapped, turning her eyes away from the mirror. “You think all of this is free?” She extended her arms and looked around her closet where beautiful, expensive clothes hung, just like they did in my own wardrobe. “Appearance is everything. And what your father needs today is for everyone to see a beautiful wife and a beautiful daughter and to be entertained—”

  “You expect me to entertain them too?” I interrupted, knowing how entitled and bratty I sounded, but I didn’t care. Wearing a short dress and heels and doing my make-up as well as they could at a Sephora counter and pretending I’d gone under my father’s knife was one thing, but having to come up with something witty to say to these people was quite another. All I wanted was a day to be free and have fun instead of spending it being a walking false advertisement for my father’s business or following the strict game plan my parents had for my life.

  “I’ll expect you to stand on one foot and sing the national anthem if that’s what’s asked of you.” She eyed me with all seriousness, not a single ounce of kidding in her voice.

  And if I were to somehow balk at the idea of fulfilling my exemplary daughter duties, Mom would make me pay for it in a way that was fully supported by my dad. She’d find a way—she always did.

  “You going to cut off my credit cards like you did the last time I misbehaved?” I asked, raising my eyebrows, wanting to gauge just what kind of punishment I might receive and whether or not attempting to skip out on today would be worth it.

  She laughed softly. “Or perhaps we’ll just cancel your slot at Stanford and send you off to the Peace Corp for two years.”

  The threat of yanking me out of college before I’d even begun made me stand at full attention. “You wouldn’t,” I said, lacking conviction because I knew my parents all too well.

  “I would,” she answered with a slight, even smile. “Now help zip me up, dear.”

  And just like a dutiful daughter, I did.

  I’d do everything else she, or my dad, asked of me too. I could roll my eyes and cross my arms and argue with them until I was blue in the face, but my parents always won. Being eighteen and having graduated high school, I should have been stronger, more independent, but I wasn’t.

  I was weak, and I hated myself for it.

  It was a beautiful June day, breaking a long stretch of gloomy, cool ones that we here in the Pacific Northwest liked to refer to as June-uary. I’m sure my friends were having a great time at the lake while Mom and Dad showed off the vast landscaped grounds of our six-thousand-square-foot house in the foothills east of Seattle, grounds that were kept beautiful by a small squadron of landscapers. I’d never seen my father mo
w any part of the huge lawn or pull up a single weed, and the only gardening I’d ever witnessed my mother doing was cutting the stems of several flowers that she then arranged in a vase. I remember her throwing them out the next morning—she said they weren’t symmetrical enough. After that, she’d only ordered her flower arrangements from a florist that was as obsessed with perfection as she was.

  And because I was their daughter, their one and only child, I hadn’t ever risked getting dirt under my nails either, nor had I been expected to lift a finger where any type of physical labor was concerned. Not only was I exempt from raking up leaves or helping to shovel the very rare snows that fell during the coldest of winters, I’d also never had to clean my own room or organize my own drawers or cook my own meals. Cynthia, our housekeeper, had done absolutely everything with an ever-present smile on her face, like doing for us was what she lived for.

  “Why are you all the way over here by yourself?”

  The voice belonged to Cynthia, and I’d startled slightly at her sudden appearance, as if my thoughts had conjured her.

  “Just trying to avoid the crowd,” I said, forcing myself to smile even though I was still annoyed at being stuck here when I should have been off at the lake with all of my friends.

  She’d found me in what I called the peace garden, a space with a small cobblestone patio and bench, surrounded by ornamental trees, flowering bushes and a variety of blooms that overlooked the final portion of a man-made water feature that ran the entire length of the property. It began as a waterfall and koi-filled pond near the main house before running into several creeks and other ponds before ending here where the water would re-circulate underground and find its way back to the beginning.

  “Your mother asked after you,” Cynthia said, sitting next to me on the bench. “She won’t be happy if she can’t locate you.”

  “I know that.” Mom’s threat about sending me off to some foreign country to volunteer for two years hadn’t been forgotten, though I had considered it might not be the end of the world. I might have even learned how to cook. “I just wanted a few minutes… to steel myself.”

  Cynthia placed her caramel-colored hand on my knee. “I know it can be hard to always be on,” she said, offering a smile, her teeth bleached as white as my mother’s. “But it is so much better than the alternative, honey. Before I had this job, I’d been working three to make less than I do here, and then I’d been treated like garbage. Your parents are good people, Natalie, and they reward perfection.”

  This hadn’t been the first time Cynthia had alluded to the story of her past life with me, how she’d been married to an unworthy man and had worked herself to exhaustion just to afford a crummy apartment outside of Seattle’s city limits until my parents hired her when she was in her mid-thirties. It was her way of telling me how lucky I was, how any other girl would adore the life I was given, a life of luxury and without want, a life where every door had already been opened for me.

  But that’s what I’d hated, the feeling that I’d never had to work to earn anything like Cynthia had. She deserved the fancy clothes she now wore, the facials, spa treatments and expensive hair cuts Mom sent her to get while everything I’d ever gotten was just given to me. Even bad grades or trouble at school had a way of being wiped clean.

  I still cringed at the memory of Mom walking me back into my chemistry class the day after school was let out for the summer of my eighth grade year. I’d received a failing grade on my chemistry final because I hadn’t studied—it was an act of rebellion more than anything, even though I did hate chemistry. But Mom had talked Mr. Coates into letting me take it over again after I’d had an entire extra week to study. I could tell by the look of annoyance in his eyes he hadn’t wanted to, but considering the amount of money my parents donated to the school each year, he hadn’t had much of a choice.

  “You’re right,” I told Cynthia, pushing a smile across my face. “I was just feeling sorry for myself.”

  At this, she nodded, as if feeling sorry for myself was exactly what I’d been doing and that there couldn’t possibly be another reason I’d be upset. It’s always been this way, this notion that nothing should trouble me when I’d been surrounded with so much privilege. But when I’d been eleven, and my cat, Pedro, had died suddenly, privilege was not something I’d imagined easing my pain. I hadn’t even begun to properly mourn his loss when, the very next day, my parents brought me a new cat they proactively named Peco for me. He was orange and white with long hair, just like Pedro, but Peco was not Pedro. I’d cried and said I didn’t want another cat, that they couldn’t just replace the one I’d had for as long as I could remember.

  “How do you think Peco feels knowing you don’t want him?” Dad had asked me, making sure to look at the new cat with a glum expression, an expression I knew would change to impatience if I didn’t see things the way he wanted me to.

  “I think it makes him sad,” Mom had added in. “And sad isn’t how any of us should feel.”

  “Wipe your tears away,” Cynthia piled on, acting in her role as ally to my parents. “There is so much to be thankful for, don’t you think?”

  And so it went, me accepting Peco and trying not to cry when I thought of Pedro, as if he’d never existed at all. That’s just how things went, making bad, unhappy events disappear. Sometimes I wondered what would happen if I had died. Would my parents have just adopted a girl with the same dark blonde hair I had and forgotten they’d ever had me?

  “Come on, honey,” Cynthia said putting a hand out to me as she stood up, the pale blue dress she wore tailored perfectly to her body, a body that had gone through a number of surgical changes over the years. “Let’s go. There are people you’re meant to meet.”

  “Okay,” I said, begrudgingly leaving my hiding place.

  In the time I’d spent in the peace garden, a whole slew of people had arrived for the party. This particular celebration was the annual gala for the plastic surgery clinic, each year held at one of the homes of the current owners and practicing surgeons, my father, Dr. Louisa Hellman and Dr. Jack Pierce.

  Louisa’s house was similar to ours and only a few miles away while Jack’s was a nearly hundred-year-old home in Seattle, big and “lovingly restored by Jack’s own hands,” his wife would say. I’d always loved Jack’s house most of all, though it had been a couple years now since I’d been there. There were nooks and crannies and places to hide, places you could catch your breath without worrying that anyone would find you.

  “Oh, my goodness, is that you, Natalie?”

  Cynthia stopped at the woman’s words, as did I. I’d been walking at her side like some kind of zombie, hoping that nobody would notice me or want to talk.

  “Hi,” I said, putting on a smile and lifting my eyes to the woman. It was Jack Pierce’s wife, turning away from a small group of women it looked like she’d just been talking to.

  “Mrs. Pierce,” Cynthia said, tilting her chin downward. “So lovely to see you. I’ll excuse myself and leave you to catch up with Natalie.”

  “You don’t have to…” Mrs. Pierce put her hand out, as if trying to keep Cynthia from walking away. “She didn’t have to go,” she said to me, almost apologetically. “She never sticks around much for me to get a chance to talk to her.”

  I shrugged. “I suppose she has something to check on inside.”

  The party was a catered affair, but Cynthia would have wanted to make sure everything ran smoothly. But besides that, I don’t think she felt worthy to have much more than small talk with my parents’ friends and business associates. I half imagined that, whenever things didn’t go according to plan or if Cynthia thought she’d overstepped some line or disappointed my parents in some minute way, she went into her room and flogged herself as punishment.

  “I guess.” Mrs. Pierce laughed and shrugged too. “Jack and I don’t have anyone working at our house… I mean, no housekeepers or gardeners. I think if we did, I’d be asking them to sit down to coffee al
l day, feeling bad making them pick up after us.”

  “They do get paid,” I reminded her, feeling myself smile. I liked Mrs. Pierce—I always had.

  “Yes… I suppose you’re right.” She waved her hand through the air as if she were being silly.

  But I didn’t think she was, not at all.

  When I didn’t say anything, she cleared her throat and turned slightly to wave at the group of women she’d been with, a group that was now moving along at some mention of another friend just arriving.

  “You look really pretty,” I told her, knowing that I had to make myself sociable at some point.

  I’d decided I was at least lucky it was Mrs. Pierce that I could be sociable with, and telling her she looked pretty was an absolute truth. With long, curly red hair, creamy white skin and brown eyes set into a beautiful face, gorgeous might have been a better, though perhaps more awkward descriptor.

  “Oh, do I?” She laughed again, a sweet, genuine laugh. “I never know just what to wear to these things. I always go and buy something new, but it seems so wasteful. Seems like we should be feeding the homeless or doing an animal rescue instead, doesn’t it?”

  “Probably.” She put me at ease, and I was beyond thankful I hadn’t been stuck with someone who only wanted to ask me about my college plans and accomplishments or take guesses as to what parts of my body might have been surgically altered. “Would you like to sit down for a bit?” I asked, just then noticing my parents eyeing me from across the yard, slight smiles on both of their faces.