by Lisa Gardner
NEVER TELL
“Never Tell is raw, visceral, emotional; the sentences come at you like MP5 rounds; and it features three incredible characters—D.D., Flora, and Evie—who alone could carry any narrative. Together they create a tsunami of a thriller. This may well be Gardner’s best work, and that is saying something.”
—David Baldacci
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Available from Dutton
Evie
By the time I pull my car into the garage, my hands are shaking on the wheel. I tell myself I have no reason to feel so nervous. I tell myself I’ve done nothing wrong. I still sit there an extra beat, staring straight ahead, as if some magic answer to the mess that is my life will appear in the windshield.
It doesn’t.
With a bit of care, I can still slide out of the driver’s seat. I’m bigger, but not that much bigger. I fight more with my bulky coat, the strap of my oversized purse, as I ease out from behind the steering wheel. Conrad bought me the purse as a Christmas gift last year. From Coach. Real leather. At least a couple of hundred dollars. At the time, I’d been so excited I’d thrown my arms around him and squealed. He’d laughed, told me he’d seen me eyeing the bag in the store and had just known he had to get it for me.
When I’d hugged him then, he’d hugged me back. When I’d laughed that day, and giddily opened up the huge, gray leather bag to explore all the compartments, he’d laughed with me.
Christmas morning. Nearly one year ago.
Had we hugged since? Laughed since?
The bulge in my belly would argue we’d found some way to connect, and yet, if not for the streams of bright colored lights and gaudy decorations covering my neighborhood, I’m not sure it would feel like the holidays at all. As it is, we’re one of the last undecorated houses on the block. A wreath on our door; that’s it. Each weekend we promised to get a tree. Each weekend, we didn’t.
I take my time hefting my purse over my shoulder. Then I turn and face the door leading from the garage into the house.
Dead man walking, I think. And something crumples inside me. I don’t cry. But I’m not sure why.
The door is open. Cracked slightly. As if on the way out, I didn’t pull it hard enough shut. Letting out all the heat, my father would say, which causes me a fresh pang of pain.
I push through the interior door, close it firmly behind me. That’s it. I’m home. Standing in the mudroom. Another day done. Another night to begin.
Hang up the purse. Shrug out of the coat. Ease off the boots. Bag on the bench. Jacket on the coat rack. Shoes on the mat. I fish my cell phone out of my bag and set it up on the side table to charge. Then, I take a final moment.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Listening for him.
The kitchen? He could be sitting at the table. Waiting in front of a cold dinner. Or pointedly taking the last bite. Or maybe he’s moved into the family room, ensconced in his recliner, feet up, beer in hand, eyes glued to ESPN. Sunday is football. Go Patriots. I’ve lived in Boston long enough to know that much. But Tuesday night? I never got into sports. He’d watch; I’d read. Back in the days when we spent so much time glued together, it seemed natural to also have some time apart.
I don’t hear the clinking of silverware from the kitchen. Nor the low rumble of TV from the family room.
Door open, I remember. And my left hand flattens on the relatively small, but noticeable, curve of my belly.
The hall leads me to the kitchen. A spindly table sits in front of the back window. No sign of dinner. But then I notice a rinsed plate lying neatly in the sink.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
I should have a story, I think. An excuse. A lie. Something. But in the growing silence, my thoughts churn more, my brain spinning wildly.
Dead man walking. Dead woman walking?
I’m going to vomit. I can blame it on the baby. You can blame anything on pregnancy. I’m sick, I’m tired, I’m stupid, I lost track of time. Baby brain, pregnancy hormones. For nine whole months, nothing has to be my fault. And yet . . .
Why did I come home tonight? Except, of course, where else do I have to go? Ever since I first met Conrad ten years ago . . . He noticed me. He saw me. He forgave me.
And I loved him.
Ten whole years, I have loved him.
I leave the kitchen. It’s small and, like the rest of the 1950s house, still in desperate need of updating. We purchased the place with hope and aspiration. Sure it sat on a postage stamp yard, and each room was tinier than the last, but it was ours. And being young and handy, we’d fix it up, open it up, then sell it for oodles of money.
Now I walk down a narrow hallway where half the wallpaper hangs down in pieces, and do my best not to notice.
Family room. Den, really. With Conrad’s beloved La-Z-Boy, a modest sofa, and of course, an enormous flat-screen TV. The recliner is empty. The TV is off. The room is empty.
Door open, I remember again.
Our garage fits only a single vehicle, and even that is a perk in a Boston neighborhood. Conrad parks his Jeep on the street. Which I check now. Because I’d spotted it pulling into the driveway and, yes, there it is. Black Jeep. Situated at the curb straight outside. A prime spot I can already imagine he was thrilled to get, as even with parking permits there’s more demand than supply. Hence his kindness in giving me the garage.
It’s okay, honey. I don’t want you walking down the street alone at night. I like knowing that you’re safe.
Dead woman walking. Dead woman walking.
Don’t vomit now.
And then . . .
Then . . .
“Door open,” I whisper. And I finally notice what I should’ve noticed from the very beginning.
* * *
* * *
Smell. I’d been listening for the sound of my husband. The clatter of silverware in the kitchen. The thump of his recliner banging back in the family room. But there aren’t any sounds. No sounds at all.
The house is hushed. Quiet. Still.
As if it were empty.
Smell.
The stairs leading to the second floor are like the rest of the house, narrow, confining, creaky. Conrad tightened the bannister three months ago. When I broke the news. When we both stood in our bedroom and stared at the little stick. My hands had been shaking so hard he’d had to take it from me.
I remember feeling ill then, too. Willing myself not to vomit, though it had been the near-constant queasiness that had led me to take the pregnancy test. A marriage is a mosaic of a thousand moments, a hundred precious memories. That day, watching his hands close around mine. Strong fingers, seamed with calluses. Steady, as they took the pregnancy stick away from me, held it closer to him.
I had that surreal feeling I sometimes get. Where I’m not present in my own life, but even all these years later, standing in my parents’ kitchen again. Holding the shotgun. Smelling all that blood.
And Conrad, being Conrad, looked right at me. Looked right into me.
“Evie,” he said. “You deserve this. We deserve this.”
I loved him again. Just like that. In that moment, I adored him. We held hands. He cried. Then I had to pull away to vomit for real, but that made us both laugh, and afterward he’d wiped my face with a washcloth and I’d let him.
A thousand moments. A hundred memories.
That pain again, deep inside me, as I lean heavily against the wall, away from the bannister I no longer trust, and work my way up the narrow staircase.
Smell.
The odor hits me hard now. Nothing faint, teasing, ambiguous. This is it. Had I known all along? Turning into the drive? Pulling into the garage? The interior door open, open, open.
What had my subconscious suspected, long before the rest of me had paid attention?
Upstairs, not the bedroom, but the second tiny room, Conrad’s office, looms to the left. That door is open, too.
Sounds to go with the smell. Sirens. Down the street. Growing louder. Coming closer. But of course.
My parents’ kitchen.
My husband’s office.
Blood.
Dark, viscous. A spray. A pool.
I can’t help myself. I’m sixteen. I’m thirty-two. I reach out. I touch the spot closest to me. I smear the red across my fingertip. I watch the way it fills in the whorls of my fingerprints.
My father. My husband.
Blood.
More noise. Banging. So far away. Shouts and demands and orders.
But up here, none of it matters. There is just me and this final moment with Conrad. His body fallen back into the desk chair, the back of his head sprayed on the wall behind him.
I fear what I will see on the computer screen before I even look. But I force myself to do it. Take it in. Register the images. This is my husband’s computer. This is what my husband was looking at before he died.
Harder banging now. The police. Responding to reports of shots fired. They will not be denied.
“It was an accident,” my mother whispers urgently in my ear. “Nothing but an unfortunate accident.”
I reach over to the computer. I close out the images. Then, because I have enough experience to know it won’t be enough, I pick up the gun from my husband’s lifeless hand. I curl my palm around the checkered grip. I slip my finger into the cold trigger guard.
And I start shooting.
* * *
* * *
When the police finally burst through the door, I stand at the top of the stairs, both hands up, gun in plain view, while turning slightly so that the curve of my stomach can’t be denied.
“Drop the weapon, drop the weapon, drop the weapon!” the first officer shouts from the base of the stairs.
I do.
He scrambles up the stairs, cuffs in hands. I hope for his own sake that he doesn’t stumble against the bannister.
A marriage is a mosaic. A thousand moments. A hundred memories.
The officer twists my arms behind my back. He cuffs my wrists tight, pats me down as if expecting even more weapons, as more uniforms pour through the door.
“My husband,” I hear myself say. “He’s been shot. He’s dead.”
“Ma’am, is there anyone else present?”
“No.”
A thousand moments. A hundred memories.
“Ma’am, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning.”
The officer escorts me down the stairs, out of the house, away from my husband’s body.
“Do you think I’ll be allowed to plan the funeral?” I ask him.
He looks at me funny, then deposits me in the back of the patrol car on a hard plastic bench seat.
More cops. More sirens. The neighbors appearing to watch the show. I know what will come next. The trip to the police station. Where my hands will be swabbed for blood, tested for GSR. Fingerprinting. Processing.
Then, when my past appears on the computer screen . . .
“An accident,” my mother whispers again in the back of my mind. “Nothing but an unfortunate accident.”
I can’t help myself; I shudder.
She will come for me now, I think. And because of that, as much as anything else, I curl my hands around my belly and tell my baby, this fragile, fluttery life that hasn’t even had a chance yet, how sorry I truly am.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Gardner is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty novels, including Never Tell, Look for Me, Right Behind You, Find Her, Crash & Burn, Fear Nothing, Touch & Go, Catch Me, and The Neighbor, which won the International Thriller of the Year Award. She lives with her family in New England.
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