The Starter Wife

by Nina Laurin

  “What a shame. You got mud all over that nice sweater. What will Mommy think?”

  Andrea opens her eyes to see Leeanne’s rapturous grin just inches from her face. She has a little bit of glittery pink gloss on one of her front teeth. The light of day brings out the pimple on her forehead that she coated with concealer. She wears that cropped puffy coat with the white fur trim that all the girls envy. Leeanne’s parents are rich, and she has everything. Lip gloss, platform shoes, bedazzled jeans, rabbit fur collars.

  Suddenly Andrea knows what to do. Leeanne is leering while her two cronies keep on oinking, pressing their fingertips with pink-polished nails into their noses to turn them up. Andrea raises her hand, unclenches her fingers, and plants the handful of mud into the dead center of Leeanne’s white coat.

  For a moment, everyone is stunned into silence. Then Leeanne’s shriek nearly splits her eardrums. The girls yelp oh my God and look what she did and what a little bitch. Leeanne’s grip loosens on Andrea’s collar, and just as Andrea draws in a lungful of air, Leeanne’s palm connects with her right cheek.

  The slap goes off like an explosion and sends her flying right back onto the muddy lawn. The world tilts as she lands on her side, the impact knocking the wind out of her.

  “You bitch! You’ll pay for this,” shrieks Leeanne. Andrea realizes her mistake, but all she has time to do is curl up on her side, pulling her knees up to her chin. Leeanne’s pointy-toed boot digs into her side, right into yesterday’s bruise, drawing a gasp from her. Her mouth fills with mud as more kicks rain down from all directions. Suddenly, they stop, and she realizes the ringing isn’t inside her skull—it’s the bell far overhead.

  When she opens her eyes again, the girls are gone. But she can’t go to class—she knows that. She barely finds the strength to sit up. Tears are running down her face freely now, and she smears them along with the mud all over her cheeks.

  “Hey! Addie.”

  She spins around and sees a lone, lanky silhouette sauntering toward her. She wants to call out to him, but if she opens her mouth, she knows she’ll start to sob.

  “What happened?” He crouches to be at her face level, and she turns her head away. “Shit. Leeanne again?”

  “Mom will kill me,” Andrea murmurs, surprised that it’s the first thing that comes to mind.

  “Why? It wasn’t your fault.”

  “For the sweater.”

  Her brother’s face blurs with the tears in her eyes. Eli is everything Andrea is not, like he’d leeched all the bright colors out of her when they were still in the womb, and some of the girls are already starting to look at him in that way, giggling behind their hands.

  “Don’t worry about the sweater. I’ll switch with you.” Their mom buys their clothes at Walmart, and he’s wearing the same gray sweater with fitted cuffs, except scrupulously clean. “Come on, Addie. Let’s go get you cleaned up.”

  She lets go of a tiny sob. Eli grins and picks up some of the mud at his feet.

  “Hey. Look.” Under her puzzled gaze, he smears the dirt along his hairline and down his cheek. She can’t help but giggle. “Feel better? Come on. We’ll be late for class.”

  “You’re not going to go to class like this,” she says.

  “Sure I am. Boys will be boys, right?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  They smuggle me out the back like some celebrity after a stint in rehab. So it really must be that bad, I think, trying not to let myself panic.

  Milt takes the back seat on the passenger’s side, next to me, in Cynthia’s black, shiny Cadillac SUV. The morning is obscenely bright and sunny, and the car is stuffy like a toaster oven from soaking up the sunshine in the parking lot. I watch my adoptive mother jab the buttons irritably with her manicured finger until the fans start their quiet hum in the four corners of the car. My sweat cools on my upper lip. Here, in the gauzy aroma of Cynthia’s lilac air freshener, I notice the sour, stale smell wafting from me. It can’t be coming from the clean clothes Milt brought me from home, my favorite old jeans and a sweatshirt I’d left thrown over the back of a chair in the bedroom, in another life. It seems to seep from my very pores, and I detect my own fetid breath, which means it’s even worse than I can tell. I smell not too unlike my charges when they show up at the shelter, hoping for a place to turn in for the night, or at least for a cup of coffee and five minutes in a tepid shower.

  As soon as I’m home, I’m going to run a bath, I think automatically, my mind on the oversize oval tub in our town house. Except I’m not going home and there will be no bath, not for a little bit.

  “Can I have my phone now?” I pipe up.

  “You don’t have a phone anymore,” Cynthia says flatly. My snappish retort dies when I see her eyes in the rearview mirror. Her regular Botox appointments maintain her face in a pleasing, smooth expression, but in spite of all that paralyzing toxin, her glare manages to convey murder. So I decide to keep quiet.

  When we turn the corner onto the quiet street where the house sits at the very end, I sit up straight and look around. My adoptive parents used to live in an honest-to-God gated community, right up until the out-of-nowhere divorce that came as a surprise even to me. The ensuing move from the McMansion to the neat Victorian-style cottage in an upper-middle-class area was a comedown Cynthia never got over. That was when Cynthia’s own biological daughter began to hate her. I, for one, was glad to be out of that mansion. Maybe it’s all the memories of life right after the fire that I was glad to leave behind. Maybe I just liked the cottage that smelled like home—not my home, maybe, but a home.

  Right now, there are cars—not our neighbors’ quaint Toyota SUVs and dated Jeeps, but other cars, vans splashed with logos. One or two have that telltale tower sticking out of them, like something from a cartoon.

  “Milton,” Cynthia says in that reserved voice that nonetheless manages to be commanding. He nods, shrugs out of his jacket, and throws it over me. It’s big enough to cover me entirely, like a large, warm tent that smells like him. Except right now it’s anything but comforting.

  “What the hell is going on?” I ask, peering out from under the collar.

  He gives me a look so apologetic it borders on pity. “Come along, Addie.”

  We make our way through the swarm of reporters, and all I can see are legs and feet: my own once-white work shoes, Milt’s brown leather boots, Cynthia’s maroon stocky heels and massive nylon-clad calves in front of me. And other shoes, crowding in from all sides: loafers, sneakers, pumps. Voices descend on us, overwhelming despite the coat that covers me from head to midthigh.

  “Do you have any comment, Andrea? What can you tell us about what happened?”

  Milton yells at them to get the fuck away from me, or something like that—I don’t make out the actual words. Cynthia’s shrill voice chimes in: Please disperse; she will not be talking to anyone right now. Finally, the front door opens, swallows us up, and shuts behind us. I throw the coat off me with all the violence my painkiller-weakened muscles can muster, just in time to see Cynthia turn the two locks and slide the latch into place too.

  “I was afraid it would be worse,” Milt is saying.

  “Worse?” Cynthia hisses. “How can it possibly be worse?”

  That’s when I realize I’ve had enough. “One of you is going to tell me what the fuck is going on,” I snap. “Right fucking now.”

  They turn to me as if on command, and their faces soften, expressions shifting.

  “Addie,” Milt says in that pacifying tone, the same one he used when we had The Talk months ago about taking a break.

  “You should go to your room and rest,” Cynthia cuts in. “You have a concussion, for goodness’ sake. You’re not thinking clearly.”

  “I think I’m the only one here right now who’s thinking clearly.”

  Cynthia looks at Milt, half-pleading, half-exasperated. He steps forward, tiny steps like he’s about to tame a wild horse, and tries to take my arm. I throw him off. He grabs it again
, more insistent this time, and I’m reminded that he’s an athlete who still works out five days a week, and the heaviest thing I’ve lifted in years is a beer can. He leads me along to the staircase up to where my old room used to be, next to my sister’s.

  “I hate to say this, Addie, but this time, you should listen to her,” he mutters into my ear.

  “What happened? Don’t lie to me, Milt. Not you too. Please. What happened?”

  “Nothing you need to worry about. Nothing that has anything to do with you.”

  “Did I do something?”

  “No.”

  “Did I…did I run someone over? Did I kill someone?”

  About the Author

  Nina Laurin studied creative writing at Concordia University, in Montreal, where she currently lives. She arrived in Montreal when she was just twelve years old, and she speaks and reads in Russian, French, and English but writes her novels in English. She wrote her first novel while getting her writing degree, and Girl Last Seen was a bestseller a year later in 2017. The follow-up, What My Sister Knew, came out in summer 2018 to critical acclaim. Nina is fascinated by the darker side of mundane things, and she’s always on the lookout for her next twisted book idea. She blogs about books and writing on her own site, thrillerina.wordpress.com.

  Also by Nina Laurin

  Girl Last Seen

  What My Sister Knew

  PRAISE FOR NINA LAURIN

  What My Sister Knew

  “Nina Laurin’s psychological suspense thrill ride will have you ripping through its pages at warp speed as you dig for the truth about a fateful event that drove two twin siblings apart.”

  —PopSugar.com

  “[A]n intense psychological thriller that has a surprise twist…Laurin provides an insightful look at how secrets can shatter a bond between twins.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A twisty, mind-bending thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat as [Nina Laurin] probes the bond and secrets between twins.”

  —USAToday.com

  “There are an abundance of suspense/thriller writers, but none is better than Nina Laurin at fooling the reader as her plotline takes numerous 90 degree turns, while she builds suspense one red herring at a time. What My Sister Knew is a thriller built on shifting sands; just as one feels solid ground under his feet, the earth cracks open, and the reader falls into the abyss where nothing and no one is trustworthy. Laurin writes in prose that is both eloquent and concise, and is a genius at hiding the truth in plain sight if only the reader would think of the psychology of the characters rather than the evidence. No suspense fan should miss this book.”

  —NYJournalofBooks.com

  “There’s no sophomore slump here; Laurin’s riveting second novel is full of unexpected twists and dark turns.…[T]his is a read you won’t want to put down.”

  —RTBookReviews.com

  “One of the best things a novel can do is keep you guessing, and Nina Laurin’s sophomore effort does exactly that. What My Sister Knew is a rich, complex story about the effects of secrets, the lingering consequences of abuse, the inner workings of deeply troubled households, filial love, and the way we are shaped by trauma. Fans of psychological thrillers would be remiss to skip this one.”

  —CriminalElement.com

  “Nina Laurin delivers an action-packed, mind-bending ride. Just when you think you’ve discovered the truth, a new secret is revealed, making you question whether there really is a line between good and evil.”

  —Wendy Walker, bestselling author of

  All Is Not Forgotten

  “4 Stars! I am two for two when it comes to Nina Laurin’s books! The book starts out with questions, suspense, and intrigue, and slowly builds to a bursting crescendo as we learn more about Andrea, Eli, and their family. If you had a chance to read the author’s first novel and enjoyed it, I’m positive you’ll gobble up What My Sister Knew as well. It was a fast read that had me flying through the pages and entertained me for hours on end.”

  —TheSuspenseIsThrillingMe.com

  “A dramatic, suspenseful, incredibly thrilling novel that focuses on the sibling dynamic. It’s a must-read for anyone who loves a good thriller.”

  —SarahScoop.com

  Girl Last Seen

  “Every good thriller has a shocking plot twist. Girl Last Seen has many. Author Nina Laurin’s eerie novel will stay with you for days, months, even years to come.”

  —HelloGiggles.com

  Girl Last Seen by Nina Laurin is a chilling suspense about two missing girls whose stories intertwine—perfect for Paula Hawkins fans.”

  —EliteDaily.com

  “A well-written and compelling novel that offers more than suspense; it offers a deeper understanding of how sexual assault can leave its victims broken. Ms. Laurin is to be congratulated for her achievement.”

  —NYJournalofBooks.com

  “4 Stars! This debut novel is a gritty thriller with dark twists you won’t see coming. The heartbreaking, heart-racing journey…will keep you guessing to the nail-biting end.”

  —TheSuspenseIsThrillingMe.com

  “Debut novelist Nina Laurin has created a memorable character in complicated, flawed and endearing Laine Moreno. From the very first page, Girl Last Seen jettisons the reader into the life of a crime victim trying to outrun her past. Fast-paced and hard-edged, it is a heart-stopping thriller that had me guessing to the very end.”

  —Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times bestselling author

  “Girl Last Seen hooked me so quickly I might have whiplash. This is a sharp, twisting, intense thriller, the heartbreaking and fast-paced story of a woman who bears the scars of a trip to hell and back but who refuses to be defeated. Don’t miss this smashing debut!”

  —David Bell, bestselling author

  “Girl Last Seen gripped me from start to finish. Lainey Moreno is a riveting heroine, a kidnapping survivor who will only escape her demons if she faces her greatest fears, and Nina Laurin brings her vividly to life. Psychological suspense doesn’t come much grittier or more packed with satisfying twists and turns.”

  —Meg Gardiner, Edgar Award–winning author

  “Laurin creates a compelling, vulnerable central character.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Laurin’s novel is nearly as compelling as it is depressing in detailing Lainey’s story to a hair-raising, violent climax. A promising debut.”

  —BooklistOnline.com

  “Disturbing and suspenseful…provides a great twisty ending that will satisfy.”

  —RTBookReviews.com