She’s worked her ass off to get to this point, and she’s loved every minute. She has nurtured her talent to create livable spaces out of thin air, lives and breathes color and texture and mixed metals and raw wood and stone. Her perfect day involves hammers and nail guns and paintbrushes and rug placements and jovial shouts in colloquial Spanish and Romanians singing lullabies as they caulk bathtubs. Why would she ruin a good thing by having a kid?
This is why you keep losing the babies, Olivia. You don’t really want them.
A shudder runs through her. That isn’t true. Of course she wants them. She wants them so badly she can pretend to herself she doesn’t. Lying to yourself is the greatest lie of all, isn’t it?
She flips on the radio to drown out her thoughts, but they are breathlessly covering Beverly Cooke. It figures that brash woman was going to be a part of Olivia’s life forever. It’s always the ones you don’t want around who stay with you ad nauseam. Beverly wanted to be Olivia’s friend. She’d tried everything—texting invites to bunko nights, sending referrals, asking for advice. Olivia was just turned off by her from the very beginning. Yes, she was being judgmental, yes, she was being spiky and unfriendly. Who cares? It was not Olivia’s responsibility to make a stranger trying to force her way into her life feel better. Therapy has given her permission to take what she needs from life, from the people around her, and leave the rest. She is not going to apologize for simply not liking the woman.
But Beverly is dead, and Olivia feels bad about this, she truly does. As aggravating as the woman was, Olivia didn’t want her to die. Not really. Not like that. Raped, murdered, and submerged in the lake? It’s the stuff nightmares are made of.
If Park’s child has done this, what does that mean? What does that say about Park?
The arrow-to-the-heart thought leaves her breathless again. Will she ever not feel the betrayal at the words? Park has a child. A son. At least one son. Who knows, maybe there’s more.
Now there was a nightmarish thought.
And if her handsome, loving, giving husband could create a child who grew up to be a killer? She needs to rethink everything. She knows there’s a difference between nature and nurture, between passing on homicidal genes and creating monsters out of neglect and abuse, but plenty of kids are abused and don’t kill things. Don’t kill people. Maybe they’re all just seething like she is. Maybe they’re all just so sad. But they don’t go through with it. They don’t act on their whims.
Can she have children with a man who’s taken part in creating a monster?
Her cell rings, the caller ID popping up on the screen in the car. She expects it to be Park, but it’s Lindsey. Park’s little sister is his polar opposite and has been Olivia’s best friend since they were kids. She debates letting it go to voice mail in case Park has reached out to her, but no, there’s been no time. Park would call his wife first, not his sister.
“Hey, Linds.”
“Hey, yourself. You will never believe what I just heard.”
Olivia tenses. It’s already out there, it’s too late to contain it. Their lives, upended, ruined. “What did you hear?”
“Perry is coming home.”
4
THE PAST
Nashville, Tennessee
April 1999
“He’s here, he’s here. Oh my God, wait until you see him, he’s gorgeous.”
Olivia’s mother drops the curtain and flits around her bedroom like a demented butterfly. Her father is downstairs, waiting with the camera for Olivia to make her grand entrance.
“And so are you, my darling girl. You two will be the talk of prom.”
Olivia smiles, swallows back her nerves, and gives her nose one last sweep with the powder brush. A few grains fall onto the strapless bustline of the pale chrysanthemum organza, and she carefully brushes them away. Prom. Rite of passage. She will be going through many rites of passage tonight. First corsage. First black-tie event. First time.
It’s been planned for weeks. They have a hotel room—ostensibly, the whole crowd is going to be there, but they’ve managed a suite with an adjoining bedroom, so they’ll be able to sneak off for privacy once people start passing out. She’s not nervous to lose her virginity, not to him. They’re going to be together forever, she knows this in her heart. They have a tie that will see them through everything, a link that’s been in place since the day they met. The day the Benders moved to town, and she saw the boys across the street for the first time, she’d felt it, that zing, an invisible thread that crossed the street and tied her to him. He’d seen her lingering on the porch, threw up a hand in a jaunty wave, already so comfortable with his new surroundings. Then he punched his brother in the arm—she knew it was his brother, they looked alike, not exactly, but they were similar in the ways that counted—and the other boy made brief eye contact with her, then looked shyly away. The girl, younger, pretty, had come tearing around from the side yard screaming about a rope swing, and the three of them had disappeared through the hedge without a word. But the moment was ossified for her, clear as amber in her mind’s eye.
And here they are, six years later, vivacious, elegant Olivia Hutton and studious, athletic Park Bender, the most popular couple in school, about to embark on the most important night of their lives, the night that will change everything, and they both know it. Not just know it, accept it, encourage it, relish it. They’ve been counting down the months, weeks, days, hours—and now minutes, and it’s finally here, the life-altering moment has arrived in the back of a limo with his brother Perry, flying solo despite myriad options, and two other couples, and she’s never been more ready for anything in her short seventeen and a half years on this earth.
The night does not go as planned.
Oh, it starts well enough. The photographs are perfect, Olivia sweeping down the grand staircase （she’s always wondered if her mother insisted on buying the house in preparation for this moment）。 Her mother cries a little. Her father looks ridiculously proud. Park charms them both, and they sign the pledge that they won’t drink and drive—a family tradition before every date—even though they’ve paid for the limo for the whole night and the following morning.
Thank heavens there are no more pledges to make to the parents. If they knew what was planned…
They arrive to the adulation of their friends and teachers—their clique mobbing them like typical adolescent sycophants, with squeals of admiration and high-fives and knowing looks.
The band is great, they dance and take photos, and someone manages to spike the punch so they’re all too merry and the teachers are pissed off.
No, it doesn’t start to go south until it’s time to crown the King and Queen and Perry Bender is named Prom King instead of Park. He was on the court, sure, of course he was, but no one expected it. Park is the King of the school. Everyone knows it. Perry hadn’t even bothered with a date.
So it is Perry standing next to Olivia in her gaudy store-bought crown being photographed and cheered, looking both thrilled and bashful and not a little shocked, while Park storms from the gymnasium with a scowl, followed, as Olivia catches out of the corner of her eye, by Alison Banks. Alison is moving surreptitiously, as if heading toward the bathrooms but instead ducking left at the last moment, out the door Park slammed through.