Still Water - Softcover

Buch 2 von 3: Still

Stuart, Amy

 
9781982137762: Still Water
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1982137762 ISBN 13: 9781982137762
Verlag: POCKET BOOKS, 2020

Inhaltsangabe

From the internationally bestselling author of Still Mine comes a “riveting, twisty…stay-up-all-night read” (Karma Brown, bestselling author of In This Moment) about the hunt for a missing mother and son in a town that is drowning in deception—perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell and Shari Lapena.

How do you find the truth in a town full of secrets?

Sally Proulx and her young boy have mysteriously disappeared in the stormy town of High River. Clare O’Dey is hired to track them down, hoping against all odds to find them alive. But High River isn’t your typical town. It’s a place where women run to—women who want to escape their past for safety and anonymity.

In a town where secrets are crucial to survival, everyone is hiding something. The police clearly have an ulterior motive beyond solving the case. Malcolm Boon, who hired Clare, knows more about her than he reveals. And their benefactor, Helen Haines, is concealing a tragic family history of her own. As the truth surges through High River, Clare must face the very thing she has so desperately been running from, even if it comes at a devastating cost.

“As swift, intense and vengeful as the river it describes, this book is a must-read” (Roz Nay, bestselling author of Our Little Secret).

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Amy Stuart is the #1 bestselling author of three novels: Still Mine, Still Water, and Still Here. Shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award and winner of the 2011 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition, Amy is the founder of Writerscape, an online community for hopeful and emerging writers. Amy lives in Toronto with her husband and their three sons. Connect with her on her website AmyStuart.ca and on Twitter @AmyFStuart.

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Still Water
It is morning and Clare sits at the kitchen table, a breakfast spread in front of her. There is music playing in another room, a song too folksy and quiet for Clare to discern the words. Helen Haines washes her hands at the sink, wooden cabinet doors askew on their hinges behind her. What does Clare know of Helen? That she wears old jeans and a plaid shirt untucked. That she must be a decade older than Clare, forty-something, her dark hair streaked with gray and wrapped in a tight bun. That she owns this grand house and the eighty acres it sits on. That she invites women seeking refuge to stay here with her, women on the run. Women like Sally Proulx. Women like Clare.

This time yesterday Clare stood on a patch of grass at a gas station hundreds of miles from here, watching from a distance as Malcolm filled the tank, cell phone warm to her ear, counting the rings on the other end of the line.

My name is Clare O’Brien, she said when Helen Haines finally answered. I am a friend of Sally Proulx’s.

Well-rehearsed lies, only her first name true. There had been a long silence before Helen cleared her throat and asked what Clare wanted.

I need a safe place to stay, Clare said. And I know Sally is missing. I want to help.

Hours later Clare stood at the gate to this strange house with her duffel bag at her feet, swatting at the flies that swooped in the stillness. Across the road from the gate a field of young corn stood ablaze in the pink light. Farmland and trees stretched in every direction. Thick with heat. Too reminiscent of home. When Clare emerged through the bend of trees arching over the long driveway, the first thing she noticed was the river. The willow tree. This house. And standing before it all on her front steps, hands in the pockets of her faded jeans, its matriarch, Helen.

“How did you sleep?” Helen asks, still hunched over the sink.

“Not terribly well,” Clare says. “I had a nightmare.”

“The heat can do that.” Helen wipes her hands on a dish towel and sits across from Clare. “And you traveled pretty far.”

“I did.”

The story Clare told Helen had her traveling from the east and not the north. Helen will know nothing of Clare’s actual trip with Malcolm, the turn inland from the ocean, southward on busy highways, the sun high and blaring through the windshield, a full day of driving until he’d deposited her at a nearby gas station and she’d called the taxi to take her the rest of the way. Helen will know nothing of the curt and fumbling good-bye Malcolm offered as he unloaded her bag from his truck, a strained nod in her direction before driving away, the parking lot gravel too wet from rain to kick up under his wheels.

“I have to say,” Helen says. “I was surprised to get your call yesterday.”

“I debated coming at all,” Clare says.

“Sally never spoke of you.”

“No,” Clare says. “I don’t imagine she would have.”

Clare pauses, mirroring Helen’s frown.

“We don’t advertise this place.”

“I know you don’t.”

“And yet you knew about it.”

“Because Sally told me,” Clare says.

“And now we’ve been in the news.” Helen looks to her feet, anxious. “You didn’t say much last night.”

“I was overwhelmed,” Clare says, a half-truth. “Arriving here. That cross nailed to the willow tree. It threw me.”

“I hate that cross,” Helen says. “Markus put it up.”

“Markus?”

“My brother. He lives across the river. It’s a memorial to our parents. But now . . .” Helen trails off.

“Well,” Clare says. “I appreciate you giving me the chance to rest.”

“Sally didn’t talk about home,” Helen says. “Where she came from. Some women do. Some tell you everything. Some don’t. She mentioned her mom. A sister, once, I think. She and William seemed pretty alone in the world.”

Clare lifts a salt shaker from the table and clutches it hard in her fist. She thinks of the details on Sally’s family from the file, a mother dead and a sister across the country quoted in a story about Sally’s disappearance as saying they’d long been estranged. No father. Few friends. Sally Proulx and her son, alone. It’s hard to pinpoint how it happens, how the isolation sets in for women when a marriage turns bad.

“Did you see Raylene this morning?” Helen asks.

“She wasn’t in the room when I woke up.”

“She often goes for walks before the heat settles in.”

“Is it just you and Raylene in the house?” Clare asks.

“And you,” Helen says. “And Ginny. My daughter. I really only have room for two or three women. Less when Ginny is home for the summer.”

“I haven’t met her.”

“She’s a late riser. And she’ll glare you down like a bear. Just ignore her.”

Ginny, Clare thinks. Virginia. The only photo from the case file had been culled from social media, a hazy profile shot of a young woman in a bikini top and flowing skirt, arms bent loosely overhead, the river swirling fast behind her. Helen stands again and returns to the sink. The room is large and square, a long harvest table at its center. A back door leads to a stretch of untended field and then a distant grove of trees. So much like home, Clare thinks again.

“There are two detectives working Sally’s case,” Helen says. “I know they’ll want to meet you.”

“I’m happy to talk to them,” Clare says, smiling to ward off the surge of dread at the prospect.

Helen stares at Clare, rapping her ringless fingers against the table, her nails cut square. There is a simple beauty to Helen, skin golden from summer sun and eyes a deep brown, but she does nothing to play it up. Clare thinks of her own mother, yanking the brush through her hair and dabbing on lipstick before so much as opening the door to receive the mail. You have standards or you don’t, she’d say to Clare as they roamed the cosmetics aisle of the drugstore. There is no middle ground.

“I don’t know much about what happened to Sally,” Clare says. “Maybe you can fill me in.”

“Other way around,” Helen says. “I need you to fill me in.”

“On what?”

“Sally should not have told you about this place. I’m having trouble getting past the fact that she did.”

“She sent me one e-mail. One e-mail. Telling me where she was. A week later I see on the news—”

“Telling you where she was. You see?” Helen rubs at her forehead. “Who knows who else she told?”

“No one, I’m sure. Sally—”

“She wasn’t supposed to do that. It’s the only rule. The only rule I have. I invite women here. They don’t just decide to come. They don’t invite each other.”

“I understand,” Clare says. “I’m sorry.”

“What if she told her husband? Or someone else?”

“I doubt she would have done...

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Verlag
POCKET BOOKS
Erscheinungsdatum
2020
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1982137762
ISBN 13 
9781982137762
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
400
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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