While normally I crave the feeling of being wanted and valued, I can’t handle three hours of discussing my sister’s latest, Bloody Heart, Wild Woods. It’s the only one I haven’t read, the one she wrote after I went off the grid. The book club provided a little description of the story, set off the coast of New England, and it didn’t sound like my life, but I’ve been fooled into complacency before, only to be struck by the dagger she hides—just for me—in the heart of every novel.
I’m scared to read this book, scared that it could suck me back into the person I was before.
And, honestly, I’m scared to see what my sister knows.
* * *
That night Andrew is home early, after Emma’s dinner but before her bath. “I’ll take it from here,” he tells me. “Put up your feet and relax.”
Our grown-up dinner is waiting in the Crock-Pot, so I pour myself a glass of wine, listening to the sound of running water from the bathroom, the deep rumble of Andrew’s voice, the piping counterpoint of Emma’s. I never thought I would have this kind of life, and relaxing into it isn’t easy. Compulsively I run a dishrag over the counter top, even though there’s not a crumb on it. I always clean the house aggressively, using products that are safe or even homemade, with vinegar and baking soda. I want it fresh, spotless, safe for Emma. When this all falls down, no one will be able to say I didn’t do everything right.
In the hour before Andrew walked through the door, I took a slug from a bottle of bourbon stashed under the sink among the cleaning supplies. The fire in my throat helped me push Ava and her book away as I arranged Emma’s bits of cooked chicken, leftover steamed broccoli, and goldfish crackers on a melamine plate divided into three sections.
Emma is an easy child, especially considering that she has passed her “terrible twos” and her “even worse threes.” Now that she’s four, she likes order, so I made a point of choosing three kinds of food, one for each section, in equal amounts. She went around on her own, taking a bite of chicken, then broccoli, then a goldfish to close it out. Once her plate was clean she held out her hands, and I gave her a kiss on each soft palm, followed by a graham cracker.
We are usually on our own for Emma’s meal and the rest of her evening routine. Houston traffic is unpredictably terrible, and we live in the suburbs “outside the loop” of the beltway. On any given evening Andrew might get home in half an hour or over two hours, depending on the situation.
If Bethany’s in-laws were Andrew’s, they might say he’d found marrying a nanny cheaper than keeping one on. I don’t mind yet. Children live in the moment, in the little things of life, so Emma keeps me here, in this happy place. And maybe because she isn’t my flesh and blood, I never feel competitive or resentful. Sometimes I wish she were a little older, a little less of all the things a four-year-old child often is—hungry, tired, bored, whiny, messy—but for the most part we get on easily together. Being with her makes me a better person.
Andrew is also easy to get along with. I chose him for his open gaze, his straightforward approach, and his undemanding nature. His wife died giving birth to Emma, something I didn’t think happened in America anymore, and eighteen months later he was ready to “test the waters,” as he put it. That’s how we came to meet on the dating site that served as my smoke screen. He doesn’t look for lies in me. And if you don’t count the big one, the one I told up front, I don’t have to lie to him.
But sometimes I get that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Because lies have a way of surfacing, and I want so much for this Lizzie—wife, mother, friend—to be real. Andrew doesn’t deserve a fake.
He returns with Emma in his arms, a fine mist of soapy sweetness hovering over them both. “Say good night, sweetheart.” He tilts her toward me.
As her warm, damp cheek presses against mine, she whispers, “Good night, sweetheart,” and giggles.
“Good night to you, my Emma bean.” For a moment, this is the only thing that’s real, this family—a mom and a dad and this loved child. Then Andrew turns with Emma, and I feel the chill of the air conditioning on my abandoned cheek.
I take another sip of wine, a sip that’s a little too big. As I hear Andrew setting up Emma’s room with the nightlight, special blanket, and lullaby bear, I speed to the fridge. The bottle of white is almost empty, so I swig it down, hide the empty bottle at the bottom of the recycling bin, and fill my glass with a serving from a new bottle. Not cold, but that’s okay.
I’ve put in the wine-saving plug and have the refrigerator open when Andrew comes back into the kitchen.
“You want a glass?” I ask, hoping he’ll say no. Drinking warm white wine looks bad, and I’m invested in looking right. We’re just weeks shy of our first-year anniversary, and Andrew still thinks I’m a good person.
He nods, then hesitates. “What’s for dinner?”
“Beef stew. We have red.” I think we have red. Unless I drank it all.
“I’ll go with a beer instead.” He comes up behind me and puts one arm around my tensed waist, reaching with the other to snag a bottle of Saint Arnold Santo. “Let’s watch the news before we eat.”
Prime-time television in Texas comes on an hour earlier than it does on the East Coast, where I grew up. There’s no way we can watch the nightly news together unless we record it, so we always do. We settle together on the sofa, knees touching, drinks in our hands, and push play.
The newscaster is in the middle of a story, but it’s the photo behind her that makes me clench my wineglass. Ava. A publicity photo that shows her leaning against a brick wall, her blonde hair barely brushing the shoulders of her tailored leather jacket. It takes a second for me to make sense of the words written across the photo: “Life Imitates Fiction.”
That’s how I learn my sister is missing.
CHAPTER
2
HOW IS THE disappearance of one woman national news? When that woman is a New York Times best-selling author whose books are made into blockbuster movies, when she writes story after story about women who are missing or kidnapped or killed, and when her husband makes a teary-eyed plea to the cameras for “any news at all”—that’s a guaranteed eyes-glued-to-the-screen scenario.
I’m not prepared. Not for any of it. Not for the rush of fear and love I feel for Ava, even after all she’s done. I want to unsee the news, dial the evening back to me and Andrew on the sofa, safe and happy. The way he thinks we still are.
One unfortunate side effect of cutting yourself off from your family is that nobody calls to tell you there’s been an accident or a tragedy. And when you learn that your sister has gone missing, you can’t let your husband know anything is wrong. Not without blowing up the new life you have with him. All he knows about Ava is that she’s a writer on our book-club list. That’s on me. I’ve got the schedule stuck to our fridge.
The final notes of the nightly news theme are fading away. Andrew looks at me. “You should definitely go to book club tomorrow night. This whole thing is going to make the discussion unforgettable.”
Unforgettable. I clench the stem of my empty wineglass, remembering the way Ava always sucked the life, the attention out of every space. I can’t believe she’s missing. I will not believe it. This has got to be another one of her games.