ISBN: 9780778310419
Publication Date: August 6, 2024
Publisher: MIRA
They buried their secrets, but not deep enough…
Hannah McCullough’s life is far from perfect, but you’d never know it by looking at her. Instead, you’d see a beautiful young mother wholly devoted to her two children and a docile wife utterly besotted with her self-made millionaire husband, Allan. You’d see the designer clothes she wears, the luxury car she drives, the dewy-eyed au pair she employs.
You wouldn’t see the dark secret she carries.
But when a construction crew unearths the body of a young girl near the McCulloughs’ vacation home on Orcas Island, Hannah has no choice but to confront her past. She wonders how much Allan knows about the victim and the apocalyptic cult she was connected to. Meanwhile, Allan can’t seem to understand why his beautiful young bride, as polished and pristine as the collectible artifacts in his glass case, would threaten their fairy-tale lifestyle by digging too deep, in places she knows she shouldn’t.
As the police investigation into the gruesome discovery deepens, the facade of Hannah’s picture-perfect marriage starts to crumble, and she soon finds herself on a dire hunt for answers. And Hannah’s search takes an unexpected turn after she crosses paths with three strangers with shocking secrets of their own.
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Excerpt:
NOW
HANNAH
I’m not completely okay with being one of those spoiled, pretty women you see in new luxury SUVs on their way to power barre, or to get microneedled, or running into Nordstrom to return some cashmere before picking up their children at prep school and going home to their hot, rich husbands.
That’s not me. Those women don’t smell like lost love the way I do. They don’t smell of death. But I have studied those women so carefully, and I imitate their ways so well, that I outdo them all.
So when my friend from the Seattle Tennis Club, Jorie Henries, calls with the news from Orcas Island, I freeze like an animal in a flashlight beam. My hiding place has been sniffed out, I think. This time, I’m caught.
It’s quarter to two, more than an hour before Oliver and Sibley’s school pickup, but I have been summoned by the head of school, Mr. Preller, to talk. He said it was time-sensitive but didn’t elaborate. The meeting must be about the school’s fundraising auction: I’ve sat on the committee for five years and counting. Or maybe the school is going to come at me, sharklike, for more of Allan’s money. They aren’t shy.
Jorie pings my mobile phone just as I’m making my exit onto Capitol Hill. I ignore it until I’m safely off I-5. Rush hour in Seattle starts at one thirty these days, and it doesn’t let up until after seven. Getting across town to the Huxley School and back is basically my job.
I pick up the phone, redial the call, and switch to Speaker. I gas my Range Rover into a left turn.
Jorie’s bright voice says, “Hannah! How are you?”
“Great. Heading over to the school. I’m guessing I’m about to get roped into even more auction stuff.”
Jorie laughs. “That’s why I always just say no to the school. I would never have any me time if I let the school have their way with me. God, as it is, the girls’ lacrosse schedule is running me ragged. Listen, I’m calling because I just found out about the news on Orcas, and I wanted to see if everything’s all right. With your island house, I mean. And with you.”
At the word Orcas, my throat clicks shut. I keep my eyes on the wet asphalt rolling out of sight under the Rover’s hood. “I’m not sure I know what you’re—”
“Oh, that’s right, you hate current events, don’t you?” Jorie laughs again. This time I hear a lilt of condescension. Jorie has an MBA from Stanford and considers herself to have the intellectual upper hand over me, who can only boast of a high-school diploma and subsequent (brief) flight-attendant career. Not that Jorie has ever used her business degree for anything besides making sure she didn’t get screwed in her prenup. “They dug up a dead body yesterday on Orcas Island,” she says. “Someone is excavating for a new house. A woman’s body—”
Allan, I think.
My fingers slip and fumble the phone. Just as I catch it, my vision fills up with the red glow of brake lights. I slam my own brakes, jolting hard against my seat belt. I have stopped with maybe a couple of inches between my front fender and a Prius.
My heart beats quick and small. It’s a rabbit’s heart. The heart of a victim.
I carefully drive forward.
Jorie is still talking. “—near Deer Harbor. Isn’t that where your island house is? I would just hate it if something like that happened near one of our homes.” A pause. “Hannah? Are you there?”
“Yes. Hi. I hadn’t heard about that, Jorie. Thanks so much for telling me— Oh! Sorry, I have another call. Is there—”
“No, no. See you Monday at the club.” Jorie’s voice is replaced with dead air.
There is no incoming call, only someone honking their horn wrathfully behind me. I pull through the intersection and then, half-blind, turn onto the first side street.
Dead leaves are gunking up the gutters, and cars pack both curbs. The houses are large, well-kept, and close together. Does wealth always look so desolate? Maybe it’s just because it’s November. I double-park and, without switching off my engine, open the web browser on my phone. Ghostly plumes of exhaust coil around my car.
Allan, I think again.
I have a choice here, I tell myself. No one is forcing me to search for anything. I can turn away and refuse to look. I can lock this news in the box in my mind with all the other junk I can’t deal with, and I can carry on. I’m good at that.
But instead I type the search terms into my phone.
I’m jittery. I misspell every word. Despite that, the news item from the Seattle Times is easy to find: Human Remains Unearthed on Orcas Island.
Construction workers on Orcas Island, Washington, made a gruesome discovery yesterday when they excavated the remains of an adolescent female on a secluded waterfront lot. A spokesperson for the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office reports that the remains were found in a shallow grave, and there is evidence of blunt force trauma to the female’s skull. Foul play is suspected. Based on preliminary observations, the female appears to have been deceased between five and ten years.
Rural Orcas Island, with only around 6,000 year-round residents, made national news in the summer of 2015 as the home of the Kinfolk Community, a group of self-professed “radical homesteaders” led by Chris Garnock, who was known to his followers as Uncle. The community, which was flagged by watchdog organization Cult Watch, disbanded after a standoff with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that left an ATF agent, Garnock, and fourteen-year-old Kinfolk Community boy Quill Stroufe dead. The remains discovered yesterday were unearthed on land neighboring what was once the Kinfolk Community’s parcel.
The deceased female was wearing a braided leather bracelet with a small pottery disc attached, printed with the emblem of the Kinfolk Community: a seedling with two leaves. Cult expert Dr. Anthony Chin of the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington notes that the emblem signifies the “new springtime” that Garnock and his followers believed they would experience following an environmental apocalypse. A spokesperson for the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office says that, while not conclusive, the evidence strongly points to the possibility of the female having been a member of or visitor to the Kinfolk Community but adds that no persons linked to the community were ever reported missing.
The remains have been transported to the Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s Office for autopsy. Officials ask that anyone with information about the female’s identity contact the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office.
I read the article twice. Then I squeeze my eyes shut.
I would like to cry, except I’ve forgotten how.
Fifteen minutes later, I park in the fire lane in front of the Huxley School. Lawns sprawl around the stately old redbrick main building. Modern structures—the new library, the slick sports complex—stand off to the side, their windows glowing in the dull autumn afternoon. The school’s air of smug, liberal-minded money always makes me feel trashy.
I get out of the car. I’m not worried about being towed from the fire lane. My husband’s considerable annual donation to the scholarship fund has its perks.
I have pulled it together. Pulling it together, keeping it together, that’s in my skill set. With my quietly luxurious outfit—belted vicuña coat, jeans, Italian suede booties, chocolate-brown Birkin bag—I know I look like any pampered Huxley mom. Except that I’m younger and even more pampered than most.
It’s just a vacation home, I recite to myself as I wait to be buzzed into the school. Just a vacation home. And dead bodies are gross; anyone would be upset.
I make my way through the school’s empty hallways to the administrative offices.
“Mrs. McCullough,” the receptionist says. “Welcome. Mr. Preller is waiting for you.” She gestures to Preller’s office door.
I think I see a flicker of anxiety on her face before she turns back to her computer screen.
“I’ll get straight to the point, Mrs. McCullough,” Preller says once I have taken a seat and declined refreshment. “It’s about Oliver.”
“Oliver,” I repeat. This isn’t about the auction? Not about the scholarship fund?
“Surely that doesn’t come as a complete surprise. Your son’s behavior has been a problem since he began here…” Preller’s voice tapers off, as though he’s waiting for me to interject.
I remain silent, my spine rigid.
Preller says, “In some ways, Oliver has made progress—I understand he’s been in behavioral-cognitive therapy, and his impulse control seems to be improving. However, we’ve had several complaints from parents just this term, and I’m afraid that at this juncture we simply cannot fail to take some sort of action. I called you and your husband here today—it’s unfortunate he couldn’t come—to tell you that we have decided it would be best to…to suspend Oliver.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t think I quite understand.” I use the tone Jorie calls my flight attendant’s chirp.
In the back of my brain, a nasty little voice whispers, See? See? I told you we’re not safe.
“This morning he exhibited extraordinarily aggressive behavior toward one of our fourth-years,” Preller says.
“Aggressive?”
“At first, Oliver limited himself to berating the other student after their basketball accidentally hit him in the sport court—”
“Was Oliver hurt?”
“He terrified the other student. He screamed—he called the other student a freak and a monster—”
“He said that?”
“I’m afraid so. When the other student made a swipe at Oliver—”
“So the other child hit him first.”
“—Oliver tackled him to the ground and bit him. Bit his cheek. Not hard enough to break the skin, but contusions and swelling are present. The child has been taken to the doctor, because human bites carry a heavy risk of infection. The parents have threatened to sue the school.”
“Oliver is only twelve years old. Kids do weird things.”
“He should know better. He does know better.”
“How long is the suspension?”
“In January he may return to school, and we will reassess his behavior. You must realize that Oliver is being given extraordinary consideration here. Almost any other student would have been expelled—expelled, not suspended—years ago.”
“So, what? I’m supposed to be grateful to you? Grateful that now I have to hire some kind of private tutor just so he won’t fall behind, after my husband and I—”
“Your husband is one of our more generous donors, and for that we are grateful.”
Your husband is generous. Not you. It’s the same kind of microslight as Jorie laughing at my lack of interest in current events. But Jorie is at least a social peer. Preller is just a glorified minion.
“Your daughter is doing well, both academically and socially, here at Huxley, so I do hope—”
“Thank you, Mr. Preller.” I’m on my feet, gripping my handbag. “My husband and I will be in touch about whether or not we’ll be keeping our children at Huxley.” I give him an ostentatiously fake flight attendant’s smile. Pretzels? Something to drink? I say, “Have a great afternoon.”
All I can see are bones.
Big bones clumped with dirt and something gluey and fibrous. Delicate little bird bones flittering away in the wind. The bones are entangled with the name that keeps whispering in my mind: Allan.
“Daddy says everyone has their price,” my eight-year-old daughter, Sibley, says on the car ride home from school. “All you have to do is figure out what it is.”
“What?” I say, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. She sits straight and alert on her booster seat, her dark blond curls wisping around owlish glasses. “Daddy said that to you?”
“It’s for his work,” she says. “For being good at it.”
“Oh, okay,” I say, relaxing. “That makes sense.”
Sibley is a funny kid. Imaginative, precocious with art and language, but a little behind her peers in terms of emotional development. She is happiest playing alone for hours with her Calico Critters. Moving the tiny toy animals around in their plastic treehouse, making them have conversations with each other.
Oliver rides in the seat beside me. I haven’t mentioned the suspension to him yet, but I think he knows. His fair head is bent over his phone. He’s playing a game. Frown—swipe—frown—swipe—
I do not dare speak to him. I can’t reveal how desperately I need him to interact, or he’ll shut down even more. But this isn’t about my needs. It’s about his.
Once a month, I meet with Oliver’s therapist, Patti, one-on-one. She, who knows more of the truth than anyone else, suggested I see a separate therapist for myself. I declined. No way am I going to rip off those old scabs.
And now, Oliver’s suspension. How am I going to broach the subject with Allan? He’ll start pushing again to send Oliver to that boarding school in Montana, the one for screwed-up rich kids. Oliver won’t make it in a savage place like that.
“Is Daddy coming home today?” Sibley asks, as though she can read my thoughts. Sibley is an empath, her preschool teacher told me years ago, sadly, almost as though she were saying Sibley is defective.
“Yes, Daddy’s coming home,” I say.
I imagine that I hear a gentle tapping sound, the one that seeps from the locked-up part of my brain sometimes. It is soft, but so persistent.
We arrive fifteen minutes later at our large brick Tudor Revival home in Briarcliff, a moneyed neighborhood north of downtown. Perched high on a slope and framed by twisty madrone trees, there’s usually a view of Puget Sound, Bainbridge Island, and the Olympic Mountains, but not today. Too misty, too dark even at 3:45 in the afternoon.
The house was built in 1927. It has English-style mullion windows, a turret, creeping ivy, and a picturesque garage built to look like horse stables. A century ago, Seattle’s new rich wanted to cover up their grubby backgrounds by pretending they were British landed gentry. I know Allan bought this house for the same reason.
I park in the driveway. The garage doors are open, and I can see Allan’s black Tesla Model S inside, next to his Porsche.
“Daddy!” Sibley cries, unbuckling and flinging open her door. “I see him!” She dashes to the garage, hair flying, and knocks on the window of Allan’s Tesla, bouncing up and down. “Daddy, Daddy! Get off the phone!”
For the first time that afternoon, I’m alone with Oliver. I decide I won’t mention his suspension yet, but I want him to know I’m on his side. That, no matter what, I’ll always be on his side.
“Oliver, sweetheart.” I reach over to touch his still-round cheek. “Little—”
He pushes my hand away. “Stop it.”
My hand falls to my lap, limp and defeated. “Sorry. You’re right. You’re not a little kid anymore. But…” I turn to look at him, his profile so like my own, especially the slightly undersize nose with the faintest upward slope to the round tip. My mother had that same nose. So did my sister.
Oliver gets out of the car. Leaving his door open, he lopes toward the house.
I gather up my handbag, then get out, and circle around to gather the kids’ backpacks and close their doors.
In the garage, Allan has gotten out of his own car. He is crouching to talk eye to eye with Sibley, his phone in his fist. He is red-faced and in running clothes. A triangle of sweat darkens his T-shirt. He has just come back from a run. He is fifty-one years old and more than a little apprehensive about his own mortality, so there’s nothing weird about him squeezing in a run after a long flight.
What is weird is that he would sit inside his car—his precious custom Tesla with its soft leather seats—in sweaty clothes.
He was on the phone. He was trying to keep the call private, using the Tesla as a sort of high-privacy zone.
He sees me approaching. He smiles.
Author Bio:
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| Photo Credit: Aesa Jonasson |
Maia Chance is the author of the thriller The Body Next Door as well as ten mystery novels. Originally from northern Idaho, she has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in violin performance and a Ph.D. in English Literature. She lives on a bucolic island in Puget Sound with her husband, two children, and her dog.
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