The Wrong Family

by Tarryn Fisher

  Praise for The Wrong Family

  “The Wrong Family is your new obsession.... You’ve never read anything like this.”

  —Colleen Hoover, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “It’s not just a stunning thriller—it’s a force of reflection, as full of empathy and truth as it is shocking twists and turns.”

  —Megan Angelo, author of Followers

  “Tarryn Fisher’s latest thriller is like riding a roller coaster in the dark... You won’t devour this book. It will devour you.”

  —Tess Callahan, author of April and Oliver

  “No one writes as authentically as Tarryn Fisher. She is truly a once in a generation writer and The Wrong Family proves that, yet again.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Anna Todd

  Praise for The Wives

  “You’ll have whiplash until the very end. The Wives will leave the most sure-footed reader uneasy until the last word is read.”

  —#1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover

  “I couldn’t put it down... Nail-biting, heart-clenchingly good from the start, with characters that you both root and cringe for. I loved every word.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Alessandra Torre

  “Fans of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl will revel in The Wives... Will keep readers on their toes until the final page.”

  —USA TODAY

  “A fantastic thriller...filled with twists and turns you won’t see coming.”

  —PopSugar

  “[An] engrossing psychological thriller... Suspense fans will be rewarded.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Fisher is a writer to watch.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  Also available from Tarryn Fisher

  and Graydon House

  The Wives

  For more about Tarryn Fisher, visit www.tarrynfisher.com.

  The Wrong Family

  Tarryn Fisher

  For Traci “Face” Finlay and Aunty Marlene

  Tarryn Fisher is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of nine novels. Born a sun hater, she currently makes her home in Seattle, Washington, with her children, husband and psychotic husky. She loves connecting with her readers on Instagram.

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part Two

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part Three

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Reader’s Guide

  Discussion Questions

  The Wrong Family Author Q & A

  Excerpt from The Wives by Tarryn Fisher

  Part One

  1

  JUNO

  Juno was hungry. But before she could eat, she had to make it to the fridge without cutting herself.

  She eyed a safe-ish route through the largest shards of glass that led past the island. She wore only thin socks, and as she stepped gingerly from a black tile to a white, it felt like she was playing a human game of chess. She’d heard the fight, but now she was seeing it in white porcelain shards that lay like teeth across the floor. She couldn’t disturb them, and she definitely couldn’t cut herself. When she rounded the island, she saw a green wine bottle lying on its side, a U-shaped crack spilling wine in a river that flowed beneath the stove.

  Juno eyed all of this with mild curiosity as she arrived at her destination. The old GE hummed as she opened it, the condiments rattling in the door. The shelves were mostly empty—clean, but empty, Juno noted, the essence of this house and everything in it. Except today, she thought, looking back at the slaughtered dinnerware. She pressed two fingers to her lips and sighed into the fridge. They hadn’t been to the market. She tried to remember the last time they’d come home with bags of groceries, Winnie’s reusable sacks sagging as badly as Juno’s tits. They’ll go soon, she told herself. They had a child to feed, Samuel, and thirteen-year-olds ate a lot. But she was still worried. She pulled the only two Tupperware containers from the shelf, holding them up to the light. Spaghetti, three days old. It looked dried out and clumpy: they’d toss it tonight. She set that one on the counter. The other contained leftover fried rice. Juno held this one longer; she had smelled it cooking last night from her bed, her stomach grumbling. She’d tried to name the ingredients just by their smell: basil, onions, garlic, the tender green pepper Winnie grew in the garden.

  Prying the lid off the container, she sniffed at its contents. She could just take a little, skim off the top. She ate it cold, sitting at the tiny dinette that looked out over the back garden. They’d been fighting about the house, and then money, and then Winnie had slammed the casserole dish on something—presumably not Nigel’s head, since he was alive and well as of this morning. The wine had been knocked over seconds later.

  The clock above the doorway read ten seventeen. Juno’s sigh was deep. She’d run over-schedule, and that meant no time for a shower today. She ate faster, hurrying to wash her fork and dry it, then she tiptoed around the deceased casserole dish, making a face at the mess. She’d started a book a few days ago, and she wanted to get back to it. At sixty-seven there were few pleasures in life, but Juno considered reading one of them.

  She glanced back once more to check the state of the kitchen, wondering who was going to clean up the mess. She liked the checkered black-and-white floor that Nigel was eager to trade for fabricated wood. The olive green fridge would have been impressive once on the Sears sales floor, and it made her heart flutter every time she walked into the kitchen. It was a lived-in kitchen, none of that sterile modernism you typically found in subdivisions named after trees. And she was lucky to be here. Greenlake was the type of neighborhood people were willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money to live in. She knew that, and so the last thing she wanted to do was upset her standing with the Crouches. She flicked the light off and stepped into the hallway, leaving their business to themselves. That wine was going to be a mess to clean up.

  To Juno’s left and down six feet of hallway were the foyer and formal living room. The foyer was a depressing little alcove with stained-glass windows looking out over the park. It used to be paneled in dark wood, but Winnie had it painted white, which only moderately improved the overall feel of it. And then there were the family photos: studio portraits of Sam through the years as his teeth jutted from his gums like Chiclets. There were a couple of Nigel and Winnie, too, doing wedding things: Nigel in black tie and Winnie in a simple slip dress that was no doubt inspired by Carolyn Bessette’s on the day she married John Kennedy Jr. But despite the desperate attempt at cheerfulness, the foyer was doomed to look like a vestry. Juno had heard Winnie commenting on the gloominess and hinting endlessly at Nigel to do something abo
ut it. “We could have that tree outside the front door cut down. That would open up the room to so much light...” But her earnest suggestions fell on a man too distracted to hear them. Winnie had settled for keeping the light above the front door on at all times. Juno quietly sided with Winnie on this issue. The entryway was gloomy. But beyond the front doors, past a smallish, unfenced yard and then a busy street, was Greenlake Park. And that was the best thing about the house. Greenlake, a neighborhood in Seattle, was urban-suburban in feel, and its center was the lake and park after which it was named. Looping around the lake was a 2.8-mile nature trail. You could be homeless or a millionaire; on that trail it didn’t matter—people came, and walked, and shared the space.

  Juno trudged right instead toward the rear of the house, and the hallway opened up to the family’s dining room on one end and a great room on the other. When she’d first moved in, she’d been startled by the clash of color and pattern that jumbled across the room.

  Nudging a fallen throw pillow out of her way, Juno walked slowly to the bookshelves, flinching at the pain in her hips. She was limping today, and she felt every bit of year sixty-seven. The bookshelves were just a dozen feet away, but she paused at the halfway mark, standing still and closing her eyes until the pain passed. She’d get there eventually; she always did. When the throbbing passed, she shuffled forward, her joints crying out. It was a bad day; she was having more and more of those lately. If she could just make it to the bookcase...

  It had been that way for quite some time, the disease raking its way across her joints. Her symptoms had felt flu-like initially, steadfast aches hanging on to her bones in meaty tendrils. But now it didn’t just merely hurt to move, her joints were on fire—the pain often so intense Juno wanted to die. Her extremities were always swollen, her fingers tinged blue like Violet Beauregarde’s face in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. To make matters worse, she was hit with five to six dizzy spells a day, and every time she fell it hurt worse, being that there was less and less of her to cushion the fall. She didn’t have a computer of her own, so she’d used the Crouches’ computer to Google the best diet for her condition, asking the big robot in the sky what foods she should and should not be eating. The big robot said to eat things like fish, beans and to drink a lot of milk. Juno had been eating a can of beans a day since, though she could do without the fish, and when she was especially angry with Winnie, she’d drink milk straight from the carton standing at the fridge.

  There was a slight incline from the living room to the book nook; it was there that Juno failed to lift her toe in time due to an untimely dizzy spell. She stumbled sideways as top became bottom and bottom became top, and her thigh slammed into the sharp edge of a side table. Clear, sharp pain flared as she opened her mouth to cry out her surprise, but the only sound she made was a strangled gurgling before she fell. The last thing she saw was the spine of the book she was reading.

  Juno sat up slowly. Her mouth was dry, and it hurt to open her eyes. She was embarrassed even though there was no one around to see her. What was that about? She rubbed the spot on her thigh, wincing; there’d be a plum-sized bruise by tomorrow. For the first time in years she found herself wanting a drink—a strong one. If she was going to topple around like a drunkard, she might as well be one. It was all talk, though. She’d given up drinking ages ago, if only to prolong her life, and the stuff that Nigel kept in the house made the roof of Juno’s mouth ache. Enough with the pity party, old girl, she thought, it’s time to get up. She shifted so that her legs were folded beneath her and then dropped forward until she was on her hands and knees.

  Last week she’d fallen in the bathroom and got a nasty cut when her forehead met the corner of the basin. She hadn’t passed out that time; she’d just been dizzy, but it had been enough to send her keeling over.

  The cut throbbed now as she crawled like a dog, head down, her knees singing painfully, her hands and feet swollen and puffy like unbaked dough. When she reached the chaise longue, she hauled herself up using the last of her energy. She hurt, every last inch of her; she’d be paying for this fall for days.

  “Ha!” she said, staring resentfully at the books.

  She found her novel, sliding it from between the stacks and tucking it under her arm as she made her way to the nearest armchair. She hated sitting in the chaise longue; it made her feel too much like Winnie. But she made it through only one page before the exhaustion of the morning caught up to her.

  * * *

  Juno woke with a start. A male purple martin sat on a branch near the window, chortling. Tchew-wew, pew pew, choo, cher! She hadn’t seen one since before they’d all left before winter. As she sucked back the saliva that pooled in the corners of her mouth, her bottom lip quivered. She was drowsy, her limbs sleep soaked. It was her damn circulation again. She slapped her thighs with mottled hands, trying to get the feeling back. She was exhausted with a capital E.

  As she pushed forward out of her chair, her book thudded to the rug, landing on its belly, pages crushed and folded like origami. She looked with alarm first at the book and then at the shadows, which were all wrong. Her head jerked in the direction of the window, which faced east toward the back garden. To the rear of the garden was a gate that led to an alley. Nigel Crouch often came home through that door, but the gate was closed, the latch still in place.

  The clock—what did the clock say? Her eyes found the time on the cable box. She registered the numbers in disbelief; it was suddenly becoming hard to pull in air. Stumbling toward the stairs, Juno forgot the book that had tumbled from her lap moments before. The very last thing she wanted was a run-in with one of the Crouches today.

  She was just in time: Nigel had come home from work earlier than usual today. There was the clatter of keys on the table, and then the hall closet opened as he dumped his work bag inside. From there she heard him go straight to the kitchen, probably for a beer. From where Juno lay under her covers, dreading having to hear another blowout fight, she heard him swear loudly. Her index finger found the place behind her ear where her skull curved into her jaw, tracing the spot with the pad of her finger, a childhood comfort she still relied on. Neither of them had been willing to put aside their pride to get out the mop and clean the mess from the fight. Juno bet he was wishing he hadn’t chosen today to come home early. She heard him walking directly over the casserole dish, the heels of his shoes grinding the porcelain to sand.

  The fridge opened, followed by a loud “Dammit!” His beer shelf was empty. She heard him head over to the pantry instead, where Juno knew he kept a bottle of Jack Daniel’s hidden behind the condiments. Over the course of months, Juno had gleaned that Winnie hated smelling alcohol on his breath. Her father had been killed by a very wealthy drunk driver, and she claimed the smell triggered her. The settlement from the lawsuit had been huge; Winnie and her siblings had been handsomely paid for the loss of their father. Because of that, Winnie didn’t allow Nigel to drink anything stronger than beer or wine.

  From where Juno lay, she imagined that he was glancing over the mess of angrily spilled wine as he drank straight from the bottle. He had a lot to be aggravated about, in her opinion. Two days ago, Winnie had taped a husband to-do list to the side of the fridge. Juno had paused to read it, flinching at the tone. It wasn’t directly addressed to him, of course; it never was, but there was an underlying assumption that these were his jobs. The top of the notepad said Projects, underlined three times:

  -Fix the doorbell.

  -Stain the back deck before it rains.

  -Remove wallpaper from bedroom near stairs.

  -Dig up the plum tree. It’s dead!

  -Clean the gutters.

  She heard a cabinet open and close. Juno knew it was the one under the sink by the sound the loose hinge made; he was grabbing a rag. Then the sound of running water and the rustling of a sturdy black garbage bag being shaken open. And then, listening to Third Eye Blind on
full blast, Nigel began to clean the mess his wife had made the night before. It took him fifteen minutes, and at one point she heard the vacuum going. When he was finished, she heard him lingering near the front door, probably considering if he should give the doorbell another go.

  There was nothing wrong with the doorbell; it worked perfectly fine. Juno was of the strong opinion that Winnie was spoiled.

  “It’s too loud,” Winnie had complained. “Every time someone rings it, I feel as if we’re being robbed at gunpoint.”

  Juno wasn’t sure what chimes had to do with being robbed at gunpoint, but the lady of the house wanted the bell switched to something “more soothing.”

  By now, Juno knew a thing or two about this family. For one: Winnie was a too-much girl. There was always too much spice on her food, too much mustard on her sandwich, too much cologne on Nigel. If Nigel tried to do things his own way, Winnie would watch him like a hawk, waiting for him to mess up. And he did—he always did. If someone were waiting for you to mess up, well then of course you would. She was like a door-to-door salesman, the way she demanded everyone conform to her whims: once her spiel started, you were screwed into listening.

  And for two: Nigel hated color—hated it. His den was decorated in defiance of Winnie’s garish collection of designer decor, which was sprinkled across the house, meant to look unassuming and missing by a long shot. Mr. Crouch did most things passive-aggressively. Juno had a great deal of respect for the passive-aggressive. They got things done, in their own way, though if it went unchecked, it led to trouble. She’d seen it in the couples who’d dragged each other into her office, demanding that she fix their spouse. “You can’t fix it if you don’t know it’s broke,” she’d tell them. And Nigel didn’t know. The rules by which he lived were the result of being an only child and being an only child to a single mother. Winnie was his priority—he had an innate need to take care of women, and specifically his woman—but he was bitter about it. Maybe he hadn’t been in the beginning, but he was now.