• • •
AND THAT, HALEY, is the book you’ve just finished. It’s the horror novel I always dreamed I would write. An unconventional horror story, maybe, but the scariest story I know. I hope you’ll accept this, at last, as the story you’ve always wanted me to tell.
I wrote it my own way. I made it a thriller, a horror, a memoir, a noir. I used my college essays, emails, and other found documents to ground the story in the truth—they’re the closest thing I have to “evidence,” proof that my memories, however few, are real. I let some of Richard’s transcripts into the text, but when it came to his confession, I turned his voice into a movie script; I didn’t want to give him the last word. I peopled the story with the ghosts and monsters that have haunted me for so long, and then I slayed them; in a way, this book is an exorcism. But it’s also the kind of book I’d want to read. Because storytelling doesn’t belong only to perpetrators, and neither does having fun.
I admit there were times I used this book to punish the people who have hurt me. But sitting on my patio now, the few visible stars above me and the million lights of the city all around, I’m realizing I’ve also used it to forgive.
Which is why I’ve decided to send it to you, Haley.
I’m hoping you’ll help me publish it. We’ll have to call it fiction, of course (we both know the danger in presenting a woman’s story as truth). But I’m trusting you to see this is true. And even if you don’t believe—even if nobody believes me again—I will know this is true, because I made it; because it’s mine.
THANK YOU
Emily Forland for being the best.
Lindsey Schwoeri for your brilliance.
Ryan Boyle, Meighan Cavanaugh, Allie Merola, and everyone at Viking for taking such good, artful care of this demanding book. Jon Riley and Oliver Gallmeister for bringing it overseas. Rose Tomaszewska for the title.
Bloedel Reserve, the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, and The Mount for time and space. Robert Knisely for sharing his cabin in the woods.
Paul Dobry, Heather Wells Peterson, JT Petty, and R.F.I. Porto for reading and improving many drafts, along with Elena Burgueño, Dana Cann, Amal Giknis, Sarah Langan, Emily Meredith, Patrick Murray, Tim O’Brien, and Jasmine Oore.
JT Petty, again, for introducing me to Men, Women, and Chain Saws. Lina Brunton for always having good advice.
Reed Petty. Susan Bell Knisely.
And Oliver Baranczyk with a bullet.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kate Reed Petty has been recognized with a Narrative magazine 30 Below Award, as well as grants and scholarships from the Robert Deutsch Foundation, The Mount, Bloedel Reserve, and the Sewanee Writers Conference. Her short fiction has been published in Electric Literature, American Short Fiction, Blackbird, Ambit, Nat. Brut, and Los Angeles Review of Books, and she has a master of letters from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She lives in Baltimore.
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