The Blackbird Season

by Kate Moretti

  Praise for The Vanishing Year

  “Great pacing and true surprises make this an exciting read. Fans of twisted thrillers featuring complex female characters will devour Moretti’s latest.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “A woman’s perilous past and her affluent present converge in Kate Moretti’s latest jaw-dropping thriller. Replete with unsavory characters, buried secrets, and a bounty of unexpected twists and turns, The Vanishing Year is a stunner. A perfectly compulsive read that’s impossible to put down.”

  —Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of Don’t You Cry

  “The Vanishing Year is a chilling, powerful tale of nerve-shattering suspense. Kate Moretti pieces together a stunning, up-all-night thriller with a throat-gripping twist that will leave the reader reeling.”

  —Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times bestselling author of Missing Pieces

  “Moretti maintains a fast pace . . . chillingly satisfying.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Fans of S. J. Watson, Lisa Unger, and Sophie Hannah will enjoy this fast-paced psychological suspense novel.”

  —Booklist

  “This psychological thriller evolves into sheer terror . . . the outcome will amaze readers.”

  —RT Magazine

  “Readers will wonder who is good, evil, or simply the victim of misguided thinking as they devour bestselling author Kate Moretti’s latest book, full of expertly placed screens and revelations.”

  —BookPage

  “Some of the most suspenseful writing in the genre . . . adroitly written.”

  —Crime Time (UK)

  “The Vanishing Year is dark, twisty, edge-of-your-seat suspense. I read it in a single sitting and enjoyed every word. I highly recommend it!”

  —Karen Robards, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Time I Saw Her

  “The tantalizing plot twists layered atop the juxtaposition of the protagonist’s troubled past and the opulence of her current life are not only intriguing, they’ll keep you reading The Vanishing Year far into the night. Well done, Ms. Moretti, well done!”

  —Lesley Kagen, New York Times bestselling author of Whistling in the Dark

  “The Vanishing Year is more than an engaging tale of utter betrayal. It’s an intricate dance of realities, full of twists and turns you won’t see coming. Kate Moretti has outdone herself. You’ll miss your bedtime, guaranteed.”

  —J. T. Ellison, New York Times bestselling author of No One Knows

  “The Vanishing Year is part psychological study, part thriller, part journey of a lost woman finding herself amidst the chaos and confusion of abuse. Expertly told with secrets, twists, and whip-smart prose, Kate Moretti shows in her third book that she deserves her New York Times bestseller status. The Vanishing Year will live in your mind long after you put the book down.”

  —Ann Garvin, author of The Dog Year

  “The Vanishing Year takes us from the heights of New York Society to the depths of the depraved mind. In this gut-grabbing novel Moretti creates a glittery world of dreams and nightmares. Moves and counter-moves. Clear your schedule and brew a pot of coffee. You’re going to be up all night with this one.”

  —T. E. Woods, author of the Justice series

  “Kate Moretti’s The Vanishing Year is a Rebecca for the modern age—a novel filled with doubts and deception, secrets and history. Society wife Zoe Whitaker must confront the age-old question of whether forgetting our past dooms us to endless repetition—and more heartache and danger than one woman can bear.”

  —Jenny Milchman, author of As Night Falls

  “Engaging, intriguing, heart-pounding. In The Vanishing Year, Kate Moretti brings us the story of a Zoe Whittaker who has whitewashed her past and taken on a new and pristine identity. Of course, nothing is exactly as it seems to Zoe, and nothing is as it seems to the reader either. The twists had me gasping, the details had me transfixed. I cared about Zoe right away, which along with everything else, made it impossible for me to stop reading this book.”

  —Amy Sue Nathan, author of The Glass Wives

  “The Vanishing Year is the perfect mix of pulse-pounding action and exquisite prose. The complex, unpredictable plot and Kate’s layered, multidimensional characters kept me hooked until the very last satisfying page. This book is sure to be one of this year’s most talked about thrillers!”

  —Nicole Baart, author of The Beautiful Daughters

  “The Vanishing Year dazzles with New York’s high society, one woman’s dark and twisted past, and a marriage brimming with secrets and lies. Part psychological thriller, part edge-of-your-seat suspense, this gorgeously written novel will keep you guessing until the final reveal. Unputdownable.”

  —Karen Katchur, author of The Secrets of Lake Road

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  For Chip

  The river is moving.

  The blackbird must be flying.

  —from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, Wallace Stevens

  The day the birds fell, I dealt the tower card. Everyone always said to never read your own cards, but who the hell was gonna read mine?

  People believe, though. I don’t, but other people do. I was more interested in the idea that there was magic in the world at all. I found a book in the library and I’ve been reading my own cards every morning since. But two things happened at once, two days in a row, and you should know about them. First, I found a blackbird, just like the others. Perfect. Smooth. Soft. Like it had just stopped breathing. Except, this one had a hole where its left eye should have been. I’ve never seen that before. The next day, I did a reading and dealt the tower card, the one with that one-eyed raven on it. And then, just when I thought the world was mocking me, it rained starlings.

  I try not to believe in signs. But sometimes they’re just so goddamn obvious.

  CHAPTER 1

  Nate, Monday, May 4, 2015: Two weeks after the birds fell

  The rain came in sheets, like a wall, forming wide rivulets down the windshield. The wipers swished and couldn’t keep up. They were old, needed to be replaced, and left streaks across the glass. But this was Alecia’s car and she hadn’t told him. His job was the maintenance, sure, but he wasn’t a mind reader. He smacked the lever up a notch.

  He squinted against any oncoming headlights, the few there were. Winding pavement and black towering pines combined with the lack of streetlights made this stretch of road, up into the Pocono Mountains, a hazard regardless of the season. The Lackawaxen River rushed by to his right, a mere fifty feet over a guardrail, engorged with the deluge of rain, more than typical for spring in Pennsylvania. He slowed to thirty miles an hour and leaned forward, his headlights bouncing off the white line, the yellow centerline almost invisible, faded with age.

  His phone rang, the display flashing. He ignored it. Could be Tripp, but he’d gotten into it with Alecia and she likely wanted to keep it going. He’d been so distracted he’d forgotten his pillow and would be stuck sleeping with a throw pillow on Tripp’s sofa, mildewed and lumpy. He wasn’t even sure the bag perched next to him on the passenger seat had enough to get him through the week. He’d been unfocused, just shoving things in: jeans, socks, underwear, shirts. Things you need when you have no job, no wi
fe to go home to.

  The phone rang again and he took his eyes away from the road for a split second. Alecia. He almost picked up, but tightened his hands on the wheel. Pick it up, don’t pick it up? Her pecking and pulling at the threads of their marriage wasn’t new; it was as old as anything he could remember. She just had so much more to pull at now. Not just Gabe, although always, always Gabe.

  His headlights caught on a figure in the distance, a hand waving in the air, panicked. He slowed the car, pulled over, until he was next to her, hair plastered to pale cheeks, black clothing rendering her almost invisible in the night, had it not been for her gleaming white hair. He felt the cord of muscle up his arms tighten in a spasm. He rolled down the passenger-side window, but just a crack. Maybe two inches. He’d be damned if he was letting her into this car.

  “You’re going to get yourself killed. What the hell are you doing?”

  “I need help.” Her eyes were wild, wide and doll-like against her face, and her hands, red chipped fingernails, cupped her cheeks, pushing her hair back. Fingers wound up into that bright white hair at her temples and she shook her head back and forth and back and forth, like a dog shaking off water. That hair, a regular topic of conversation with the students, impossibly exotic but just so weird. Teenagers these days aimed to stand out, and that bright whiteness still gave them all pause.

  “I can’t help you. You know that.” There it was. He was finally, finally angry. Everyone had been asking him, are you angry? In an accusatory way, a way that really meant why aren’t you angry? As though this alone was proof of his guilt. He wanted to capture the moment, record his voice right now, because seeing her, finally, he realized he was really, really angry. “Get out of here, Lucia. Go home. Where you belong.”

  She leaned against the car so her mouth was even with the window opening, her body pushed against the window so he couldn’t see her eyes. Only that mouth, that lying little mouth. She wore a white T-shirt, soaked through, and he could see the outline of her nipples, pressed against the glass. Where was her jacket? It had to be fifty-five degrees. Not his problem. He looked away.

  “I don’t belong anywhere.” And when she leaned her forehead against the door trim, he could finally see her eyes. They were bloodshot and her pupils dilated like black Frisbees against a cerulean sky. Fear could dilate your eyes, he knew that for sure. Or was she on something? Pilfered from that brother of hers?

  He didn’t care.

  He picked up his phone. Pressed the numbers 911.

  “I can’t help you, Lucia. I’m calling the police and I won’t leave until they get here, but you cannot get in my car. I can’t do anything for you.” His voice was gentler than he’d intended. He’d always had a soft spot for her and those like her: the damaged, pretty girls. The smart girls with no guidance. The lost girls. There had been others; Robin Hendricks came to mind, but none who’d gotten him to this place before.

  He hit send. Ring. Ring. “Pike County Police Department.”

  “Hi. This is Nate Winters. I need help on Route Six.”

  “Sure, Mr. Winters, what appears to be the problem?”

  “I’m here with a Lucia Hamm. I was driving and I found her walking along the road. She might be on something but I can’t drive her anywhere. Just send someone, please.”

  She stared at him, her mouth twisting. She backed up slowly, away from the white line, her eyes narrowed at him, the side of her face illuminated by the headlights.

  “Lucia!” He called through the slight window opening. “Don’t you dare go anywhere. Stay right there.”

  She stepped around the front of the car, his hazard lights blinking red against her face. Her mouth curved up in a wicked smile and his insides coiled. She leaned forward, palms flat against the hood of his car, eyebrows arched seductively.

  “Mr. Winters?” The voice on the other end was deep and slow. “Is everything all right?”

  She blew him a kiss.

  He rolled his window down all the way and leaned out. “Lucia!” He called again, his voice dying in the wind.

  She turned and walked away, along the white line, the headlights of the car flanking her retreating figure. She wore a short, black skirt and knee-high boots, and her hips swayed.

  “Shit.” He ran his hand through his hair.

  “Mr. Winters? Are you still there?”

  She turned, then, maybe ten feet from the front of his car, braced her feet on either side of the white line and gave him two middle fingers. Then she cut right and ran into the woods.

  “Mr. Winters.” The man on the phone was stern now, angry about having his time wasted. “Are you still there? Do you still need someone to come out?”

  “I don’t know.” He felt sick. No matter what happened now, everything had just gotten worse. All the pieces he’d been clinging to had flown apart, scattering what was left of his life in a million directions. He was in trouble, he’d been in trouble, but now he was more than in trouble, he was as dead as a person could be while still being alive. In one heartbeat, he envisioned Alecia and Gabe huddled together on the couch, himself in prison, a 20/20 special. His dinner rose in his chest and he took a deep breath to quell the panic.

  He had no way of knowing that this moment would become the linchpin, the moment that all the moments after would hinge upon. The papers would call him a murderer; the police would come to him; his ex-friends, his gym buddies, the guys who knew him for God’s sake; and say, Nate was the last one to see her alive, right? The last one is always the guilty one.

  He couldn’t know all this. But he could still feel it, like something physical chasing him and gaining ground, his heart beating wildly, a skittering pulse up the back of his neck. It was more than a feeling. It was a portent, something tangible, almost corporeal.

  “She’s gone,” he said quickly, and hung up, dropping the phone on the seat. He should have just driven away. Everything in his body told him to just drive away.

  He opened the car door and stepped into the rain.

  CHAPTER 2

  Alecia, Tuesday, April 21, 2015

  A month before Nate was fired, nearly a thousand starlings fell from the sky. Not fluttering to the earth like snowflakes, but plummeting, like quarter-pound raindrops. They fell hard and fast in the middle of the third inning of opening day at Mt. Oanoke High field. The first one Alecia saw bounced off Marnie Evans’s shoulder and hit the gravel with nothing more than a soft rustle. She screamed, her fingers threaded through her hair, get it out! Get it out! Get it out! Like it was a trapped bat. Alecia didn’t mind watching Marnie Evans freak out; in fact she kind of enjoyed it, so she just covered her mouth with her palm. Marnie Evans treated minor hiccups—missing basket bingo cards and off-color varsity jacket orders—like national disasters all while chewing Xanax like Pez.

  But adversity builds muscle, and since Alecia chipped and clawed her way through every day, it took so much more to rattle her than the Marnie Evanses of the world, and a few little birds weren’t going to do it. So she didn’t mind watching Marnie at all. She hadn’t even expected to be at the game. Nate had asked her out of the blue. It felt nice to be so spontaneous. The day had a fresh-air, college-kid-out-on-the-green feel to it, summer break looming, with all its newness.

  It was just a regular Tuesday, except that it was a good day. And all of Alecia’s days were divided clean down the middle, it seemed. Good Days (capital G, capital D) and Bad Days. The deciding factors were variations on a theme: whether they were able to get through a grocery trip, whether Gabe got through his therapy without freaking out, whether she got a call from a bill collector.

  Gabe actually did remarkably okay with change, perhaps because Alecia didn’t fight against every wrong turn, every slight schedule adjustment, like some of the women in her special-needs-moms’ group. But it was always easier when things went according to plan. Today there had been no tantrum, no horrific trip to the store, no bill collector. When the phone rang at two, after Gabe’s nap (a record t
hirty minutes), she picked it up, sort of excited and breathless.

  “Hey.” She thought it was amazing that her heart still skipped when she saw Nate’s name come up on caller ID, and on a Good Day, she might count herself as belonging to the apparently few happy marriages left.

  On a Bad Day, she thought about packing a bag, leaving Nate to deal with Gabe, to let him see, for once, how it really was. To fully recognize Gabe and all his cracks and scrapes and bruises and bumps and imperfections. No more I’m sure you’re overreacting, hon, or, He’s just his own person, that’s great! To understand her frustration when everyone, including Nate, said, but he looks normal! Or are you sure kids aren’t just kids? To live with autism in a way that wasn’t a blue T-shirt or a charity walk or a foundation, but to live with the ugly. On a Bad Day, she wished all the ugliness on her husband and nothing but windblown freedom for herself.

  “Hi!” Nate exclaimed, both happy and surprised that she was happy.

  Alecia pulled the phone away from her ear and adjusted the volume.

  “Good day?” Nate asked, a note of caution in his tone that lit a quick fire under Alecia’s skin and then settled. The answer to that question would dictate the rest of the conversation: whether Nate would stay on the line and chat, or scamper off with some well-thought-out excuse.

  “Yep, so far. He’s just waking up.” She could hear Gabe, his too-heavy-for-a-five-year-old stomps around his bedroom.

  “Come to my game this afternoon? Please?” He pleaded with an unusual edge of desperation. Nate asked so little of her, always wanting to be mindful of her time, of her energies, worried about her stress levels and how he could make her happy, to the point of dancing on eggshells. She knew that she couldn’t say no, this one time, even if it meant dragging Gabe into unfamiliar territory. He’d know some of the people but not all. In Mt. Oanoke, people never change: the baseball crowd, the dressed-to-the-nines gym moms, the coaches’ wives, the athletic association groupies. Nate’s mother would probably be there, too.