by Nicole Baart
"Richly atmospheric and featuring a compelling cast of sharply drawn female characters, Little Broken Things is both a page-turner and a thoughtful examination of what it means to mother and be mothered, in all its most real and varied forms."–Kimberly McCreight, New York Times bestselling author of Reconstructing Amelia and Where They Found Her
"Beautifully layered...gives readers everything they could possible want in a novel - vivid, engaging characters, a town filled with dark secrets, a mind-twisting mystery and the ferocious power of a mother's love. Original and gripping, Little Broken Things is a stunner that will linger with you long after the final page is turned." –Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times bestselling author of The Weight of Silence and Not A Sound
"Nicole Baart weaves exquisite writing with unstoppable drama in this tale of family schisms and secrets on a collision course with life-threatening danger. Putting down Little Broken Things was impossible." –Randy Susan Meyers, bestselling author of Accidents of Marriage and The Widow of Wall Street
"I have long been a fan of Nicole Baart’s finely crafted, flawed characters, her deft plotting, her fluid, lovely writing, and all of these gifts are on display in Little Broken Things. I cared about these sisters, feared and hoped for them, and lost my heart to Lucy, the locked-shut little girl living in the center of the book’s secrets. It’s a gripping and suspenseful tale that kept me turning pages late into the night; move it to the top of your stack."–Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of The Almost Sisters
"Nicole Baart has outdone herself with this lush, evocative family drama full of shocking twists and a heart-warming grand finale. I will think about the Sanford family for a good long time. Put Little Broken Things on your fall reading list now!" – Kate Moretti, New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Year
"Little Broken Things made me abandon my life and responsibilities for days. Stunning, beautifully wrought, tenaciously hopeful—move this book to the very top of your book club list."–Kimberly Stuart, author of Sugar: A Novel and The Heidi Elliott series
“Hold on to your hearts for this one. Nicole Baart leaves no emotion untapped with Little Broken Things as she nudges readers to ask: What kind of mother am I? With page after page of her trademark lyrical prose, Baart offers a treat of a tale that will please her loyal readers while drawing the praise of many more. Soul-stretchingly good!” –Julie Cantrell, author of Into the Free and Perennials
“Suspenseful, heartfelt, and emotionally rich, Little Broken Things explores the complicated bonds of family—those we’re born into and those we choose. Baart’s writing—as always—is a delight.”– Elizabeth Blackwell, author of While Beauty Slept and In the Shadow of Lakecrest
Little Broken Things
NICOLE BAART
I
THE LITTLE GIRL’S HAIR is fine as cornsilk. It pours through the scissors like water and spills to the floor, a waterfall of white.
“Beautiful,” I breathe, squeezing her narrow shoulders with hands that tremble. My voice wavers, too, and I swallow hard. Not now. “You look like Tinker Bell.”
“I don’t want to look like Tinker Bell.” One small hand reaches up and up, searching for the fountain of curls that cascaded down her back only moments before. Now ringlets frame her ears, perfect curlicues that tickle the nape of her neck and flirt with the greening Hello Kitty earrings she’s been wearing day and night for at least a month.
The earrings will have to go. And the telltale glimmer of her almost silvery-blond hair.
“Look what I have,” I say, trying to distract her. Circling her tiny waist with my hands, I spin her on the kitchen stool so that we’re nearly nose-to-nose. I press a quick, awkward kiss to her damp forehead, sweaty from the game of hide-and-seek I used to set the stage for all that is to come. Children are not my specialty, but somewhere along the way I learned that they’re just like adults in one regard: they purr when petted just so. It feels wrong to use kindness as a tool, but I’m doing what I have to. “It’s a surprise.”
“What?” A thin eyebrow quirks knowingly, skeptically. The girl is only six, but she’s an old soul. A single word can flip the tables. Make me feel as if we’ve switched places and I’m the child, the kindergartener before me a grown woman. So much wiser than I was at six and sixteen and twenty-six.
“You have to pick.” The boxes are on the counter and I grab them quickly, one for each hand, and hold them behind my back. “Chocolate mousse or ginger twist?”
The girl’s nose crinkles, confused. “We already had ice cream,” she says. “Cookie dough.”
Of course she’s bewildered. There isn’t often ice cream in the freezer. Or bread in the pantry, or milk in the fridge for that matter. And now: Chocolate? Ginger? After ice cream and hide-and-seek and undivided attention? It’s as magical and mystifying as the haircut, the flaxen curls that tumbled in lacy patterns across the dirty linoleum floor. We’ve slipped into a fairy tale, but she has yet to realize that we’re stumbling down a thorny path, lost in a dark and wicked wood.
“Chocolate mousse?” I press, because fear is creeping in. I’m going numb and will soon be paralyzed, incapable of doing what I have to do. The list of my weaknesses is long and varied, but none so great as my tendency for inertia. At the moments I most need to go, I find myself crippled and terrified. Trapped. That isn’t an option now.
“Ginger twist,” the girl says. To be contrary.
“Good choice,” I force myself to say. “I always wanted to be a redhead.”
Another nose wrinkle, but I can’t explain. She wouldn’t understand anyway. I just yank the tab on the box and fish around for the clear plastic gloves that wait inside. There is also a disposable cape and I sweep it around her with what I hope is a flourish. I’m starting to quiver, my entire body seizing as if I’m on the verge of hypothermia. Never mind it’s August and there is a thin bead of sweat slipping down my spine. “You’ll look just like Annie.”
“I thought I looked like Tinker Bell.” There is a hitch in her voice now, a dark shadow on the horizon that forecasts tears.
No. If she cries it’s over. I won’t be able to follow through. “We’re going to play a game.” I sound insistent, maybe even desperate.
“I don’t want to play a game.”
“It’ll be fun, I promise.” I squeeze the dye into the little black bowl and add the developer. The odor of ammonia rises in the kitchen, the tang of chemicals and cat urine reminiscent of things I’ve worked hard to forget. It’s a trigger I wasn’t expecting, so overwhelming I have to grip the edge of the counter, squeeze my eyes shut against the mushroom cloud of emotions that turns my heart toxic. “You love games.”
“I said, I don’t want to play a game.” The girl slides off the stool with a grunt, but I whip around and catch her under the arms be- fore she can get too far.
“Sit still, damn it!” Shouting at her won’t help matters at all, but I’ve never been very good at keeping my temper. I thrust her back onto the stool. Feel guilty that I don’t feel guilty about it. “I told you to sit still.”
“No, you didn’t.” But it’s nothing more than a whisper.
Vaseline would stop her delicate hairline from flushing with the hint of an angry rash, but there isn’t time for that. Or for waiting the full twenty minutes for the color to develop. And when I push her small head down beneath the stream of cold water gushing from the rusty faucet in the kitchen sink, I only allow myself a teaspoon of remorse. We don’t have a choice. I can’t let myself forget that. Not even for a second.
“There you go,” I say, after it’s all over. I towel her cherry-colored curls with more force than necessary, ignoring the dye that bleeds onto the white towel and ruins it. “I don’t even recognize you.”
Of course, I do. There is nothing that can be done for her eyes, stone-colored and distinctive simply because they are every color and no color at all. They’re eyes that require a second glance: creamy smooth as a latte when she’s calm,
dark as a thunderstorm when she’s upset.Grayish now, and sad, but as I watch, her eyes seem to change. It’s the hair color. It has to be. Her gaze is suddenly unfamiliar beneath the fringe of red. A bright, suspicious green that is so shocking it turns the kitchen cold.
“I love you,” I say abruptly, surprising myself. It’s not something I say. Not often. And certainly not with the depth of emotion behind it that I feel in this moment.
I reach out tentatively and take a single coil of her bright hair between my thumb and forefinger. It’s the only way I dare to touch her. I long to pull her into my arms and never let go, to press her against me and run. “You’re my brave girl,” I tell her.
It’s the closest I come to saying goodbye.
Day 1: Wednesday
Wednesday 4:48 p.m.
NORA
I have something for you.
QUINN
Sounds mysterious.
Give me a clue.
Seriously, Nora. Don’t be a
tease.
Nora?
QUINN
KEY LAKE WASN’T DEEP. It wasn’t particularly lovely either, but the tree-lined shores fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, and there was something dusky and mysterious about the slant of light when the sun began to set across the water. The lake had a beauty all its own, and Quinn tried to remind herself of that as she sat on the edge of the dock, her toes ringed by specks of bright green algae. If she leaned over far enough she could see not just the bubbles from Walker’s submerged snorkel but the shape of him, too. Murky and indistinct beneath the slightly brackish water. But there he was. Diving. Hers.
When he broke the surface, Quinn stretched out her foot, toes curled like a ballerina en pointe, and he placed a piece of smooth glass on top of it with a smile. “It’s not a slipper,” he said after taking the mouthpiece of the snorkel out from between his teeth. “But we could call you Cinderella all the same.”
“Does that make you Prince Charming?”
“Not even close.” Walker palmed the piece of glass and moved through the lake as silent and smooth as the little waves that lapped at the posts of the old dock. Then he pulled himself up and out, spilling water from the fine lines of his body, naked but for the box- ers. He settled himself on the dock beside her, cool and dripping.
“I wish you’d put on a proper swimming suit,” Quinn protested, but something deep in her stomach knotted at the sight of him. Her husband wasn’t handsome so much as he was striking. It was impossible to meet Walker Cruz and not stare. It was the breadthof his strong hands, the ropy muscles of his dark forearms. The five o’clock shadow that he let curl into an honest-to-goodness beard when he was too preoccupied with a project to shave. Most appealing and confusing to Quinn was the intelligent, peculiar flash of his copper-flecked eyes. Sometimes, when he looked at her, Quinn felt like he was a stranger. Even though she slept beside him every night. “Your boxers are practically see-through,” she told him. “My mom has a telescope, you know.”
Walker shook his head and scattered droplets of water over Quinn. “Mrs. Sanford can look to her heart’s content.” He laughed, dismissing the house across the lake with a flick of his fingers.
Quinn didn’t have to look to know that the windows of her childhood home winked black as the sun slipped behind its brick walls. Maybe her mom was watching. Maybe not. She tried not to care either way, but it was hard not to. Indifference was for people who had no reason to care. Unfortunately, Quinn had many reasons. For starters, the fact that she and Walker were living in her mother’s rental. Or that they were both—temporarily, she hoped—unemployed. And, of course, there was Walker himself. It didn’t matter that Quinn loved him; her mother thought he was unsatisfactory—and she made little attempt to hide her disdain.
“Hey.” Walker put a damp finger under her chin and tugged her face toward his own. His kiss was wet and warm. He tasted of lake water and the Chardonnay they had with grilled chicken for supper: buttery and crisp. “It’s temporary,” he reminded her.
“Define temporary,” Quinn murmured against his lips, but he was already pulling away.
“You didn’t like Los Angeles.”
Quinn made a noise in the back of her throat. “It’s better than here.”
But Walker would not be so easily disregarded. “We’ll be gone before winter.”
“It’s August,” Quinn said as if that was proof. That winter was coming. That they had already lingered here too long. Paying her mother half of what a summer vacation rental normally brought in and validating Elizabeth Sanford’s many warnings about the finan- cial instability of marrying a struggling artist.
“My piece will sell,” Walker said, and the glint in his eye was almost enough to make Quinn believe. Almost.
“Can I see it?”
He shook his head but held up the polished, cloudy glass between his thumb and forefinger. “A hint,” he said, and the smile that played on his lips was enough to make Quinn grin back in spite of herself.
“You’re crazy,” she said.
“Crazy genius? Or just crazy crazy?” Walker pushed himself up and offered his hands to Quinn, the glass still clutched between his last two fingers and his palm. She could feel the cool smoothness of it pressed between their skin when he lifted her.
“Just crazy, I think.”
Quinn could have argued, but she wasn’t in the mood. Walker’s feet made a set of perfect footprints on the worn boards of the dock, and she followed them carefully, her own small feet swallowed up by the dark silhouette of his. Their life wasn’t crazy. Not exactly. It just wasn’t what Quinn had always hoped it would be.
At the edge of the dock, Walker stopped and slid his feet into the ratty flip-flops he had kicked off earlier. Between the dock and the house was a stretch of shorn grass that refused to grow properly be- cause of the sandy soil beneath. It was rough and sprinkled with thistles, but it was perfect for bocce ball and lying on a towel in the sun, the two pastimes that had dominated their summer routine—if the lazy, haphazard way they filled their days could be called a routine.
They were waiting. Waiting for something better. Waiting for inspiration to strike. But lately Walker had been too busy in the boathouse he had transformed into an art studio to play or lounge with her. To wait. Quinn was happy for him, truly she was, but she didn’t like being locked out of any area of his life. Walker’s art was the worst. She felt small in the bald-faced hunger of his need for texture and color and light. The way he shivered at the sight of prairie grass bent by a storm or a branch that had fallen askew, crooked and disturbing as a broken limb.
Quinn wasn’t nearly so deep. She felt lost in her husband sometimes. Like she was drowning.
“You coming in?” she asked, trailing a finger down his damp arm. “You’ll need to change.”
It was an excuse. She craved him like water, the almond slant of his eyes, the way his skin was as dark and fine as sun-warmed soil. He had a slight accent from summers spent in Mexico City with his father’s family, and a lilting softness that rounded his consonants courtesy of his Ghanian immigrant mother. Quinn loved it all.
Her husband was so extraordinary. Set apart. Quinn ached for him, for something more than a mere wedding band to bind them together. She was his, heart and soul and body and mind and anything else she had to give. Quinn just didn’t know if he was hers in the same way.
“I have clothes in the boathouse,” Walker said. He was already distracted, his gaze on the high windows of the old, box-shaped building that housed his fever dream. It had been many long months since Quinn had seen him this way, but now he was a man consumed. There was little room for anything else. Even her. She let her hand fall to her side.
“Okay,” Quinn said. “Don’t be too late.”
He took several steps away from her, dismissed, his mind obviously on whatever awaited him in his makeshift art studio. But as Quinn watched, he caught himself and paused, gave his wife a final second of his attention. “You all right?�
� “I’m fine,” she assured him. “Go.” She hadn’t told him about her sister’s text. And she wasn’t about to when he was already concentrating on something else.
I have something for you.
What was Quinn supposed to do with that? A single cryptic message was typical Nora, and Walker would tell her as much. He wouldn’t give it another thought, and his nonchalance would only make Quinn feel silly for wondering. For worrying. But she couldn’t help it. I have something for you implied a transaction of sorts. She hadn’t seen Nora in over a year and she longed for her older sister with an almost childish desperation. They had never been close, not really, but absence and an air of mystery had rendered Nora the stuff of dreams. Her random texts and even less frequent phone calls felt almost illicit, dangerous, though as far as Quinn knew the worst thing her sister had ever done was walk away from a full-ride scholarship to Northwestern and shrug off Sanford family expectations. Quinn envied her sometimes.
Walker didn’t seem to notice that anything was wrong, and he winked at Quinn as he walked away, his flip-flops slapping his heels in rhythm as he carried his find to the boathouse.
It wasn’t much, that tiny piece of glass. Walker’s installations were usually magnificent in size and stature, and Quinn had a hard time reconciling the artifacts he was digging up from the lake with the immense sculptures her husband was known for.
He had been almost spiritless since they moved from Los Angeles to Key Lake, Minnesota, at the beginning of the summer. At least, artistically speaking. Quinn had loved the undivided attention she’d received for the nearly two months of Walker’s creative dry spell, the way that he trained the intensity of his concentration on her. She was his outlet for the long, hot weeks of June and July, her body and the plane of her hips, the way that her back lowered to her narrow waist, the object of his obsession. Walker had always been a singular man, devoted and laser-focused since the moment she met him in an introductory art class in college. He had been the professor’s work study, but Walker ended up teaching most of the class. And Quinn had admired his obvious devotion from the start. She’d wished maybe she had more of whatever Walker possessed hidden somewhere in her own soul.