PRAISE FOR HIDDEN BY CATHERINE MCKENZIE
“[A] delicate, honest exploration of secrets, family, and the varied meanings of true love . . .”
—Booklist
“Sure to please her many fans and appeal to readers who enjoy women’s fiction with an element of suspense.”
—Library Journal
“McKenzie has written a compulsively readable novel about grief and infidelity with great insight and great heart. A truly engaging read.”
—HEIDI DURROW, author of The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
“Catherine McKenzie’s latest book may be her finest. Hidden explores the intersecting lives of a man, his wife, and a woman who may or may not be his mistress. Imaginatively constructed, filled with nail-biting tension and gracefully written, Hidden is a winner.”
—SARAH PEKKANEN, author of These Girls and Skipping a Beat
“What I love about this deft, intimate novel is that there are no angels or demons here, just adults—husbands, wives, mothers, fathers—leading complex, messy, very human lives. They all struggle to weigh desire against obligation, what they want against what is right. I found myself in the impossible, wonderful position of rooting for all of them—and of missing them when the book was over.”
—MARISA DE LOS SANTOS, author of Belong to Me and Love Walked In
“A compelling novel that kept me turning pages at a breakneck speed. Heartbreakingly honest and real, Hidden is a wonderfully relatable tale.”
—TRACEY GARVIS GRAVES, author of On the Island
“Gripping, smart, beautifully written, Catherine McKenzie’s books are always a must read. Hidden should be at the top of your list.”
—ALLIE LARKIN, author of Stay and Why Can’t I Be You
“Catherine McKenzie breaks your heart in this story of two grief-stricken women mourning the same man. Hidden’s complex grace and page-turning sympathy left me satisfied through the very the last page.”
—RANDY SUSAN MEYERS, author of The Murderer’s Daughters and The Comfort of Lies
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 Catherine McKenzie
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503947214 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1503947211 (hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9781503945654 (paperback)
ISBN-10: 1503945650 (paperback)
Cover design by Kimberly Glyder Design
For my sister, Carolyn McKenzie Ring, who goes by Cam now, but will always be Cammy to me.
Contents
PROLOGUE Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
DAY ONE
CHAPTER 1 Houseguests
CHAPTER 2 Ring of Fire
COOPER BASIN FIRE
CHAPTER 3 Rise and Shine
CHAPTER 4 Private Eye
CHAPTER 5 You Take Sugar with That?
CHAPTER 6 Point of Origin
CHAPTER 7 The Blame Game
CHAPTER 8 Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner
CHAPTER 9 How a House Became a Home
DAY TWO
CHAPTER 10 To-Do
CHAPTER 11 Root Causes
CHAPTER 12 Threads
CHAPTER 13 There’s Going to Be a Change of Plans
CHAPTER 14 Accusations
CHAPTER 15 Packed
DAY THREE
CHAPTER 16 Take Cover
COOPER BASIN FIRE
CHAPTER 17 Bombed
CHAPTER 18 I Know What You Did
CHAPTER 19 The Box
CHAPTER 20 Back to School
CHAPTER 21 The Good Son
CHAPTER 22 Trust Issues
CHAPTER 23 The Fitting Room
DAY FOUR
CHAPTER 24 Flash in the Pan
CHAPTER 25 Fight Fire with Fire
CHAPTER 26 Alarm Bells
CHAPTER 27 You Can Bank on It
CHAPTER 28 Interrogation Two
CHAPTER 29 Pressure Cooker
DAY FIVE
COOPER BASIN FIRE
CHAPTER 30 Survival
CHAPTER 31 Don’t Fence Me In
CHAPTER 32 Way Over Yonder in a Minor Key
CHAPTER 33 Outside Your Body
CHAPTER 34 Surveillance
CHAPTER 35 Mirror Ball
DAY SIX
CHAPTER 36 All Through the Night
CHAPTER 37 Puddle of Grace
CHAPTER 38 Pieces of Me
CHAPTER 39 Block Party
CHAPTER 40 I Know What You Did
CHAPTER 41 Flaws in the System
CHAPTER 42 Corralled
CHAPTER 43 The Smell of Rain
Acknowledgments
Reading Group Guide for Smoke
About the Author
PROLOGUE
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Smoke. Everything about it had always meant away to her, so now that she was safe at home, it was a smell that didn’t track.
But it was smoke she smelled—green campfire smoke—tugging at her consciousness, telling her to wake up, wake up, wake up!
Elizabeth’s eyes opened. Ben was snoring softly beside her, out like the dead as he always was, and despite everything.
The tang of smoke was both stronger and fainter now that she was half-awake, and she wasn’t sure if she’d dreamt it. She knew she should get up to check, but she hesitated, like you do in the middle of the night when you think you might have left the oven on.
I should get up, you think, but maybe it’s nothing. I can fall back to sleep, take up my dream where I left off.
But no.
Something was on fire.
Something close, or something big.
Elizabeth’s feet hit the cold floor. She shivered through the pajamas she’d put on after she and Ben had finally decided they’d said enough for the night and climbed wearily into bed.
She followed the scent through the house, stopping to check that the smoke detectors were working. They were. They should be; she checked the batteries religiously with the change of season. She felt herself relax and then tense again. The fire wasn’t in the house, but it had to be close.
She stopped at the window at the end of the upstairs hall, scanning the horizon of jagged mountains until she saw it: a stack of smoke and heat wavering in the moonlight, racing up into the night, obscuring the stars.
She did a quick mental calculation as to distance and size, a computation she’d performed what felt like a thousand times before, and then went to wake Ben.
“Wake up,” she said, shaking his shoulder harder than she needed to. “There’s a fire.”
DAY ONE
* * *
From: Nelson County Emergency Services
Date: Tues, Sept. 2 at 2:32 A.M.
To: Undisclosed recipients
Re: Cooper Basin Fire Advisory
* * *
A fast-spreading ground fire has started at the edge of the Cooper Basin. Housing structures are threatened. Responding crews are clearing the area. Nelson County has issued an evacuation advisory for the entire Cooper Basin, and the area of West Nelson bounded by Oxford and Stephen Streets. Residents are advised to pack important papers and personal items and be ready to leave on short notice.
A temporary shelter is being established at Nelson Elementary. Classes ar
e suspended for the day, and parents are asked to keep their children away from the school. Parents will be contacted directly by the administration regarding the resumption of studies and their location.
More information is available at www.nelsoncountyemergencyservices.com.
Further advisories will be issued as necessary.
CHAPTER 1
Houseguests
Elizabeth
We have a fight—Ben and I—about where to go.
In fact, first we have a fight about whether we have to go anywhere at all.
“You’re freaking out for nothing,” Ben says when he’s shaken the sleep from his brain and understands that the fire isn’t in the house but I want to leave anyway.
“We’re in the evacuation area.”
I show him the e-mail I received from the county’s emergency services unit, my phone’s glow creating a halo around his face.
He reads it, slowly, meticulously. Doubting me, I can’t help but think, even when it’s clearly within my area of expertise.
“We’re in the evacuation advisory area,” he says as he hands me back the phone.
He’s right, but I know how quickly things can change, particularly in a year like this.
Look at how things have changed between us.
“Right,” I say. “As in, you’d be well advised to skedaddle before it’s too late.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“As if the fire cares what time it is? Please, Ben, will you . . . will you just this once let me have my way?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I don’t answer him. Instead, I start pulling clothes from the clean laundry basket where they’ve been sitting for days, neither of us taking responsibility. We’ve had this kind of standoff about a lot of things lately, communicating through the things not done, the words not said, our inaction as loud and grating as an unfixed faucet’s slow drip.
“Elizabeth? Hello?”
I shove the clothes into the backpack I use for my running stuff.
“I’m going. You want to stay? Fine. But I’m going.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll come. All right? I’m coming.”
I add some of his clothes to the bag. It smells faintly of sweat, but that probably isn’t the most important thing right now.
Ben shuffles to the dresser and puts on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. In the bathroom, he collects our toiletries, grabbing my face cream when I remind him.
We work silently for the next ten minutes, gathering laptops, closing windows, unplugging appliances. It’s only when we’re standing in the doorway, me balancing the plastic crate where I keep our in-case-of-emergency papers against my hip, that the obvious strikes us.
“Where are we going?” we ask simultaneously, then smile at one another the way we always do when we say the same thing in unison, though that almost never happens anymore.
“My parents’ place,” Ben answers.
“But—” I stop myself from saying what should be another thing that doesn’t have to be said.
We can’t go to your parents.
We’re getting divorced.
This is what we decided, earlier that night, before we agreed to go to bed because we were too exhausted and too sad to talk about it anymore. Besides, having arrived at the big decision—divorce—what did the rest of it matter, really? I didn’t care who got what piece of furniture, and though Ben might have had an opinion, he still cared enough about me to acquiesce to my “Enough” and agree that we should both get some sleep if we could.
We are getting divorced.
After ten years of marriage, and six years together before that.
Divorced.
I still can’t believe it, even though I was the first to say the word, maybe the first to think it. When I’d allowed myself to ponder it before—during the worst hours of the last few months, in the moments when I’d think, I can’t take this anymore, I can’t, I can’t—I was sure that if I finally worked up the courage to say it, to ask for it, I’d feel relieved.
But I don’t feel that way. If anything, I feel worse. Like I really can’t take it anymore, only I’m not sure what it is I can’t take.
So we can’t go to Ben’s parents’ house.
We can’t.
But we do.
Ben’s parents live in a ridiculously large house three miles south of town.
The town of Nelson—regular population: 23,194; tourist population: 100,000, depending on how the economy’s going—sits in a bowl surrounded by a series of craggy, snow-covered mountains that form part of the northern Rockies. Before tourism got big, the town’s main income came from the vast cattle ranches that filled the valley. These ranches have all but closed down now, and the land’s become home to Nelson’s wealthiest residents. Ben’s parents’ house rests on the edge of a thousand acres that used to hold ten thousand head of cattle. Now it’s an excuse for my father-in-law, Gordon, to call himself a gentleman rancher.
But that isn’t being fair to him, really. Because he is a gentleman, one of the gentlest I’ve ever met, and I love him, I do. I love Ben’s whole family—his reserved mother, Grace; his awkward little sister, Ashley; his uptight, middle-child brother, Kevin. And though they might have more money than is right or fair, life isn’t right or fair. If anyone deserves to have this much money, they are those people.
But their house is ridiculously large. It really is.
As we sit in our car, parked in front of the Ridiculously Large House, we have another argument about whether we should use Ben’s key to the guest wing and camp out in one of the spare bedrooms until morning, or wake his parents and tell them we’re here. Ben wants to let them rest, but I don’t think that’s right.
“The alarm’s probably on,” I say, reminding him of something I don’t need to, which is something I hate about myself but don’t seem to be able to change. “What if we set it off? Do you want your mother to have another heart attack?”
“Of course not. Jesus. Okay, okay, we’ll do it your way.”
I put my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. This is really hard for me. I don’t know—” I swallow a sob as I look toward the window, focusing on the side-view mirror, the slightly-closer-than-it-appears night.
“I know,” Ben says, his own voice tight. “Me too.”
“Do you hate me now?”
“No.”
“Not even a little bit?”
He takes my hand and folds his fingers into mine. “Not one little drop.”
I turn toward him. “I don’t see how that’s possible. You must at least be angry.”
“I’m not.”
He gives me a sad smile, and my heart breaks all over again.
“We should go in,” he says eventually. “Get some sleep.”
We climb out of the car, and I sling the backpack over my shoulders like I used to do in my school days. We stand facing the house, each waiting for the other to make the next move. The high-pitched rasp of grasshoppers fills our silence.
“I’ll go in first,” Ben says. “Give me a few minutes.”
“You’re not going to—”
“Tell them? No.”
“Promise?”
“I said I wouldn’t.”
I watch his back as he walks into the circle of light cast by the front porch lamps. A firefly blinks on and off, on and off, along the roofline. The smoke is fainter here, miles away from the fire. It’s only one of the night smells keeping me company, along with the aspens and the sagebrush.
Inside the house, lights turn on like dominoes. My stomach clenches, tight with worry. While I mostly believe Ben will keep his word, that he won’t bring our bad news into his parents’ house, not tonight, I can’t be completely sure of what he’ll do anymore. Waiting here, counting out the seconds like a child playing hide-and-seek, feeling the weight of the pack on my back, it feels like too many Mississippis have slipped by for Ben to simply be telling them about the fire.
And so, when Ben’s mother opens the front door and walks through the dew-laden grass in her bare feet to pull me against her breast in an uncharacteristic gesture of welcome, I do what I almost never do.
I cry.
CHAPTER 2
Ring of Fire
Elizabeth
I wake in the grayish dark from a fitful sleep.
I spent the short night searching for a comfortable position in Ben’s childhood bed. It’s big enough for two—his parents didn’t believe in the traditional twin bed—but I can’t get the fire out of my mind. I check my phone (my hand cupped over the screen so its cast-off light doesn’t wake Ben) to see if there are any new updates, if the evacuation advisory’s been lifted, if my home is going to end up being as lost as my marriage.
Part of me still can’t believe it. A fire. A fire. Here. In Nelson. Where I came, two years ago, to finally put them behind me.
I worked wildland fires for twelve years, every fire season since I was twenty-four years old. I started out on a hand crew, worked my way up to squad boss, and then became the arson investigator for the regional fire district. From May to September, till the temperatures dropped and the snow flew in the mountains, that’s what I did, that’s what I was. Even in the off-season, if a fire broke out somewhere and they needed the extra manpower, I’d go where I was asked.
Ben would say: “Anywhere but here.”
I caught the fire bug working a summer job as a lookout in the southwest part of Oregon after my sophomore year in college. My friend Susan had been doing it for a couple of summers, and when she had to bail because of a case of appendicitis, I jumped at the chance to replace her. It’s funny to think about it now, but several months alone in the wilderness seemed like a good idea then. My best friend had died in a car accident six months before, and I’d broken up with my first serious college boyfriend. I guess I felt like I needed to get away from everything. An obsession with Jack Kerouac—who’d worked as a fire lookout for sixty-three days at Desolation Peak—might’ve also added fuel to my fire, so to speak.
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