The Last Place You Look
Page 30
He raised his eyebrows but he didn’t ask. “Sure,” he said.
“We can still make fun of Matt, though, don’t worry.”
“Good.”
Andrew was waiting by the front door. “Do you want to put these in water?” he said, with a nod to the roses from Catherine. “Who are they from, anyway?”
“Mind your business,” I said. I slapped his hand as he nosed through the folds of cellophane for the card. “And no. I don’t think it was meant to be a lasting sentiment.”
He looked at me. “What’s really going on?” he said. “You look beat to hell, your door has a pizza box taped to it, what happened?”
I tossed him his car keys. “I have a story,” I said, “but I only want to tell it once tonight.”
“Fair enough,” Andrew said. “Ready?”
This was one of the reasons I loved my brother. He was kind, and not curious. He didn’t need to know every last secret. He would trust you to tell him in your own time. In that way, he was my exact opposite, and it meant that he could find peace. I wasn’t sure that I could ever do that. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to. Not if it meant completely turning off the part of my brain that made me go into that house. But maybe there was a way to do both. I thought about what Tom had said earlier, how you could leave behind the parts you don’t like. He meant the parts of my father’s memory, but I wanted to think the same could apply to parts of yourself, that you could choose who you wanted to be, that every moment could be different. That, like I told Sarah, nothing counted, not unless you wanted it to count. I said, “Ready enough.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would be nothing without Kellye Garrett, whose support, guidance, humor, plotting brilliance, and reminders about thought process were nothing short of transformative to the story and to me as a writer. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thanks also to Brenda Drake, for everything she does to support emerging writers via Pitch Wars. And speaking of which, I’m so grateful to everyone I’ve met from the PW community, especially Elle Jauffret and Jenny Ferguson for their rational advice when I was in full freak-out mode, Sonia Hartl and Roselle Kaes for their generosity and feedback on my manuscript, and Lisa Schunemann, my writerly drinking buddy.
Massive gratitude to my agent, Jill Marsal, and to my editor, Daniela Rapp, for believing in this story and for all of their work on my behalf. Also, thanks to Marla Cooper for putting me in touch with Jill in the first place.
Thanks to Bill Kerwin, for always reading.
I also want to thank Jessica Adamiak for her sharp editorial eye and her patience while reading approximately one zillion of my stories, novels, and pieces and parts thereof over the years. And for teaching me that getting ink means don’t give up yet.
And finally, thanks to Joanna Schroeder, my best reader, listener, sounding board, and my partner through this and all other adventures.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KRISTEN LEPIONKA grew up mostly in her local public library, where she could be found with a big stack of adult mysteries before she was out of middle school. Her writing has been selected for Shotgun Honey, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Grift Magazine, and Black Elephant. She is also the editor of Betty Fedora, a journal that publishes feminist crime fiction. Kristen lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her partner and two cats. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK. Copyright © 2017 by Kristen Lepionka. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover photographs: silhouette © Vivienne Gucwa; woman © Ebru Sidar/Arcangel; sideway © KPG Payless/Shutterstock.com
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-12051-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-12052-6 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781250120526
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First Edition: June 2017