Good as Dead by Susan Walter
Lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to the truth.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky
PART 1
HOLLY
Three months ago
I woke up from a thick, dreamless sleep, and for several seconds I had no idea where I was. I didn’t panic, not at first. It’s happened to me before, at my grandparents’ on their pullout couch, on our trip to Big Bear in an unfamiliar motel room. Where am I? Oh yeah, now I remember. Those confusing first few seconds when I wake up somewhere other than my own bed, they’re not scary. Not usually.
But this time was different. When I opened my eyes, all I saw was white—the walls, the sheets, the stiff synthetic pillow under my knee. What is wrong with my knee? I closed my eyes. Think, Holly . . . think. In the darkness I heard hushed whispers, the hollow scraping sound of curtain rings on metal rods. There was a nauseating smell. Antiseptic, with undertones of death and dirty diapers. I knew that smell. I hated that smell. Last time it meant an emergency C-section, lucky to be alive.
Suddenly I knew. A second before I didn’t, but then I did. It hit me like a sucker punch. I cried out. The pain was unbearable. Like a thousand hands twisting my skin until it tore off the bone. I knew I was howling, but I couldn’t stop. Because I remembered.
I remembered everything.
CHAPTER 1
The first thing I noticed was the flowers. There were thousands of them, in every color, making graceful S curves along the front of the house. I wondered if they were the kind you had to replant every year. I made a mental note to find out.
The house was bigger than I expected. I was glad they didn’t let me choose it, I would have been embarrassed to pick one this nice. The front door was tall and painted bright red. Above it, a pair of matching gables stared out into space like big eyes with pointy eyebrows. It had a circular driveway, so you could go in and out without turning around. Instead of plain old asphalt, it was paved with chalky gray bricks arranged in a pattern that looked like zippers unzipping. I couldn’t decide if it was pretty or just made me dizzy.
Evan came around to my side and opened the car door for me. I didn’t say thank you. I never said thank you to Evan. The accident wasn’t his fault, but that didn’t mean I had to be nice to him.
Savannah, my teenage daughter—and the only reason I didn’t take all the Vicodin they gave me at the hospital in one swallow—refused to come see it. She said she was tired, but I knew the real reason she didn’t want to come. I didn’t want to see Evan, either, but we had all agreed to this, so there was no point putting it off. Besides me, Evan, and Evan’s evil boss, Savannah was the only one who knew why I was here, looking at this beautiful house. A house I could never afford but would be mine with a simple nod of the head.
“What do you think?” Evan asked before I even got all the way out of the car. If I’d had to guess, I would’ve put him around my age. Maybe a bit older. Forty at the most. I wondered if he was married. He didn’t wear a ring.
“I like the flowers,” I told him.
“Aren’t they magnificent? You’ll have a gardener, of course.”
Of course. Evan said that a lot. We’ll take care of everything, of course. If you have questions, you can call me anytime, of course. On the weekends, he sometimes wore a faded blue baseball cap with a Y on it. For Yale. Apparently he went there. I wondered if he’d majored in kissing ass, because he was really good at it.
I started toward the front door. My knee was stiff, but I tried not to limp as I walked up the uneven stone path. I’d finished my eight weeks of physical therapy, but Evan said I could do more sessions if I wanted to. Of course.
He followed me onto the front porch. Not a porch really, just a covered entryway, so you could open the door without getting rained on. There was a little wooden bench by the door. It looked brand-new. I wondered if it came with the house, or if Kiss-ass put it there.
Evan offered me the key. “Do the honors?”
He smiled at me. I wondered what he was thinking. I didn’t imagine he felt sorry for me, not anymore. He probably thought I was the luckiest bitch on the planet. When you have enough money, everything is for sale. I proved that.
I took the key from him and unlocked the door. The bolt was heavy and made a loud thunk when it retracted. I don’t know how wide the doorway was, but I remember thinking you could roll a piano through it—not the kind they have in bars, the pear-shaped kind that they have at fancy hotels and inside Nordstrom.
The knotty wood floors were cinnamon colored, to match the smell of the place, I thought. The creamy vanilla walls and gingerbread curtains made me feel like I was walking into a chai tea latte. My eyes welled with tears at the perfection of it all. Happiness mixed with shame mixed with grief, it was damn near overwhelming.
I slipped off my shoes and padded through the grand entryway, under a wagon wheel chandelier with bulbs the size of tennis balls. I wondered where you bought bulbs like that. And how on earth I would change them.
The dining room—it has a dining room!—was straight out of Downton Abbey, with a thick wooden table and eight high-back chairs. Four additional chairs—dinner for twelve, anyone?—stood guard beside the lowboy buffet. I wondered if there was china inside. I didn’t dare look.