On Sale Date: May 18, 2021
9780778389446, 0778389448
Hardcover
$27.99 USD, $34.99 CAD
Fiction / Thrillers / Psychological
352 pages
People don't just disappear without a trace…
Shelby Tebow is the first to go missing. Not long after, Meredith Dickey and her six-year-old daughter, Delilah, vanish just blocks away from where Shelby was last seen, striking fear into their once-peaceful community. Are these incidents connected? After an elusive search that yields more questions than answers, the case eventually goes cold.
Now, eleven years later, Delilah shockingly returns. Everyone wants to know what happened to her, but no one is prepared for what they'll find…
In this smart and chilling thriller, master of suspense and New York Times bestselling author Mary Kubica takes domestic secrets to a whole new level, showing that some people will stop at nothing to keep the truth buried.
MEREDITH
11 YEARS BEFORE
March
The text comes from a number I don’t know. It’s a 630 area
code. Local. I’m in the bathroom with Leo as he soaks in the tub. He has his
bath toys lined up on the edge of it and they’re taking turns swan diving into
the now-lukewarm water. It used to be hot, too hot for Leo to get into. But
he’s been in there for thirty minutes now playing with his octopus, his whale,
his fish. He’s having a ball.
Meanwhile I’ve lost track of time. I have a client in the
early stages of labor. We’re texting. Her husband wants to take her to the
hospital. She thinks it’s too soon. Her contractions are six and a half minutes
apart. She’s absolutely correct. It’s too soon. The hospital would just send
her home, which is frustrating, not to mention a huge inconvenience for women
in labor. And anyway, why labor at the hospital when you can labor in the comfort
of your own home? First-time fathers always get skittish. It does their wives
no good. By the time I get to them, more times than not, the woman in labor is
the more calm of the two. I have to focus my attention on pacifying a nervous
husband. It’s not what they’re paying me for.
I tell Leo one more minute until I shampoo his hair, and
then fire off a quick text, suggesting my client have a snack to keep her
energy up, herself nourished. I recommend a nap, if her body will let her. The
night ahead will be long for all of us. Childbirth, especially when it comes to
first-time moms, is a marathon, not a sprint.
Josh is home. He’s in the kitchen cleaning up from dinner
while Delilah plays. Delilah’s due up next in the tub. By the time I leave, the
bedtime ritual will be done or nearly done. I feel good about that, hating the
times I leave Josh alone with so much to do.
I draw up my text and then hit Send. The reply is immediate,
that all too familiar ping that comes to me at all hours of the day or night.
I glance down at the phone in my hand, expecting it’s my
client with some conditioned reply. Thx.
Instead: I know what you did. I hope you die.
Beside the text is a picture of a grayish skull with large,
black eye sockets and teeth. The symbol of death.
My muscles tense. My heart quickens. I feel thrown off. The
small bathroom feels suddenly, overwhelmingly, oppressive. It’s steamy, moist,
hot. I drop down to the toilet and have a seat on the lid. My pulse is loud,
audible in my own ears. I stare at the words before me, wondering if I’ve
misread. Certainly I’ve misread. Leo is asking, “Is it a minute, Mommy?” I hear
his little voice, muff led by the ringing in my ears. But I’m so thrown by the
cutthroat text that I can’t speak.
I glance at the phone again. I haven’t misread.
The text is not from my client in labor. It’s not from any
client of mine whose name and number is stored in my phone. As far as I can
tell, it’s not from anyone I know.
A wrong number, then, I think. Someone sent this to me by
accident. It has to be. My first thought is to delete it, to pretend this never
happened. To make it disappear. Out of sight, out of mind.
But then I think of whoever sent it just sending it again or
sending something worse. I can’t imagine anything worse.
I decide to reply. I’m careful to keep it to the point, to
not sound too judgy or fault-finding because maybe the intended recipient
really did do something awful—stole money from a children’s cancer charity—and
the text isn’t as egregious as it looks at first glance.
I text: You have the wrong number.
The response is quick.
I hope you rot in hell, Meredith.
The phone slips from my hand. I yelp. The phone lands on the
navy blue bath mat, which absorbs the sound of its fall.
Meredith.
Whoever is sending these texts knows my name. The texts are
meant for me.
A second later Josh knocks on the bathroom door. I spring
from the toilet seat, and stretch down for the phone. The phone has fallen
facedown. I turn it over. The text is still there on the screen, staring back
at me.
Josh doesn’t wait to be let in. He opens the door and steps
right inside. I slide the phone into the back pocket of my jeans before Josh
has a chance to see.
“Hey,” he says, “how about you save some water for the fish.”
Leo complains to Josh that he is cold. “Well, let’s get you
out of the bath,” Josh says, stretching down to help him out of the
water.
“I need to wash him still,” I admit. Before me, Leo’s teeth
chatter. There are goose bumps on his arm that I hadn’t noticed before. He is
cold, and I feel suddenly guilty, though it’s mired in confusion and fear. I
hadn’t been paying any attention to Leo. There is bathwater spilled all over
the floor, but his hair is still bone-dry.
“You haven’t washed him?” Josh asks, and I know what he’s
thinking: that in the time it took him to clear the kitchen table, wash pots
and pans and wipe down the sinks, I did nothing. He isn’t angry or accusatory
about it. Josh isn’t the type to get angry.
“I have a client in labor,” I say by means of explanation.
“She keeps texting,” I say, telling Josh that I was just about to wash Leo. I
drop to my knees beside the tub. I reach for the shampoo. In the back pocket of
my jeans, the phone again pings. This time, I ignore it. I don’t want Josh to
know what’s happening, not until I get a handle on it for myself.
Josh asks, “Aren’t you going to get that?” I say that it can
wait. I focus on Leo, on scrubbing the shampoo onto his hair, but I’m anxious.
I move too fast so that the shampoo suds get in his eye. I see it happening,
but all I can think to do is wipe it from his forehead with my own soapy hands.
It doesn’t help. It makes it worse.
Leo complains. Leo isn’t much of a complainer. He’s an
easygoing kid. “Ow,” is all that he says, his tiny wet hands going to his eyes,
though shampoo in the eye burns like hell.
“Does that sting, baby?” I ask, feeling contrite. But I’m
bursting with nervous energy. There’s only one thought racing through my mind. I
hope you rot in hell, Meredith.
Who would have sent that, and why? Whoever it is knows me.
They know my name. They’re mad at me for something I’ve done. Mad enough to
wish me dead. I don’t know anyone like that. I can’t think of anything I’ve
done to upset someone enough that they’d want me dead.
I grab the wet washcloth draped over the edge of the tub. I
try handing it to Leo, so that he can press it to his own eyes. But my hands
shake as I do. I wind up dropping the washcloth into the bath. The tepid water
rises up and splashes him in the eyes. This time he cries.
“Oh, buddy,” I say, “I’m so sorry, it slipped.”
But as I try again to grab it from the water and hand it to
him, I drop the washcloth for a second time. I leave it where it is, letting
Leo fish it out of the water and wipe his eyes for himself. Meanwhile Josh
stands two feet behind, watching.
My phone pings again. Josh says, “Someone is really dying to
talk to you.”
Dying. It’s all that I hear.
My back is to Josh, thank God. He can’t see the look on my
face when he says it.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Your client,” Josh says. I turn to him. He motions to my
phone jutting out of my back pocket. “She really needs you. You should take it,
Mer,” he says softly, accommodatingly, and only then do I think about my client
in labor and feel guilty. What if it is her? What if her contractions are
coming more quickly now and she does need me?
Josh says, “I can finish up with Leo while you get ready to
go,” and I acquiesce, because I need to get out of here. I need to know if the
texts coming to my phone are from my client or if they’re coming from someone
else.
I rise up from the floor. I scoot past Josh in the door,
brushing against him. His hand closes around my upper arm as I do, and he draws
me in for a hug. “Everything okay?” he asks, and I say yes, fine, sounding too
chipper even to my own ears. Everything is not okay.
“I’m just thinking about my client,” I say. “She’s had a
stillbirth before, at thirty-two weeks. She never thought she’d get this far.
Can you imagine that? Losing a baby at thirty-two weeks?”
Josh says no. His eyes move to Leo and he looks saddened by
it. I feel guilty for the lie. It’s not this client but another who lost a baby
at thirty-two weeks. When she told me about it, I was completely torn up. It
took everything in me not to cry as she described for me the moment the doctor
told her her baby didn’t have a heartbeat. Labor was later induced, and she had
to push her dead baby out with only her mother by her side. Her husband was
deployed at the time. After, she was snowed under by guilt. Was it her fault
the baby died? A thousand times I held her hand and told her no. I’m not sure
she ever believed me.
My lie has the desired effect. Josh stands down, and asks if
I need help with anything before I leave. I say no, that I’m just going to
change my clothes and go.
I step out of the bathroom. In the bedroom, I close the
door. I grab my scrub bottoms and a long-sleeved T-shirt from my drawer. I lay
them on the bed, but before I get dressed, I pull my phone out of my pocket. I
take a deep breath and hold it in, summoning the courage to look. I wonder what
waits there. More nasty threats? My heart hammers inside me. My knees
shake.
I take a look. There are two messages waiting for me.
The first: Water broke. Contractions 5 min apart.
And then: Heading to hospital.—M.
I release my pent-up breath. The texts are from my client’s
husband, sent from her phone. My legs nearly give in relief, and I drop down to
the edge of the bed, forcing myself to breathe. I inhale long and deep. I hold
it in until my lungs become uncomfortable. When I breathe out, I try and force
away the tension.
But I can’t sit long because my client is advancing quickly.
I need to go.
Excerpted from Local Woman Missing @ 2021 by Mary
Kyrychenko, used with permission by Park Row Books.
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| Photo Credit: Sarah Jastre |
Mary Kubica is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of six novels, including THE GOOD GIRL, PRETTY BABY, DON’T YOU CRY, EVERY LAST LIE, WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT, and THE OTHER MRS. A former high school history teacher, Mary holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in History and American Literature. She lives outside of Chicago with her husband and two children. Her last novel THE OTHER MRS. was an instant New York Times bestseller; is coming soon to Netflix; was a LibraryReads pick for February 2020; praised by the New York Times; and highly recommended by Entertainment Weekly, People, The Week, Marie Claire, Bustle, HelloGiggles, Goodreads, PopSugar, BookRiot, HuffingtonPost, First for Women, Woman’s World, and more. Mary’s novels have been translated into over thirty languages and have sold over two million copies worldwide. She’s been described as “a helluva storyteller,” (Kirkus Reviews) and “a writer of vice-like control,” (Chicago Tribune), and her novels have been praised as “hypnotic” (People) and “thrilling and illuminating” (Los Angeles Times). LOCAL WOMAN MISSING is her seventh novel.
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