I think of all the people in the building, in their offices. I think of Becca beneath all that weight, all that dirt. Tucked away. Hidden. I think of her being so sure I’d help her. I think of her in the basement, her eyes shut, her skin cooling, me by her side.
I think of my mother putting her here, knowing they were finally about to pour the concrete. Hiding Becca beneath rubble with no way of knowing if she’d be found or not. Hoping she’d be safe. Hoping I’d be safe, too. I think of my dad, never knowing, not when he was working on site and not now.
I wish I could rewind the days and change it all. I wish I could bring her back, but what’s done is done. A thousand apologies can’t change that. She’s gone, and she’s been gone for a long time. Part of me is gone, too. Has been since that night. You can’t do what I did and come out on the other side unchanged. Undamaged. But I would’ve done anything for her, anything at all.
I remove the half-heart necklaces from my purse. When I went back to see what remained of the house, I found them on the ground near the water.
Best friends forever.
I think about that last night in the house, how sure Becca was that the Red Lady was going to fix it all, that everything would be okay. But nothing was okay. Nothing was ever okay. She was only a story, but once we fell in there was no way out.
The sky darkens and the chill settles deeper into my bones. A breeze touches the back of my neck, and in that caress, I hear the whisper of my name. Sense someone standing behind me. Smell freshly turned earth and the coppery tang of wet pennies. My muscles lock, and I can’t move. Can’t think.
And then it’s gone.
But I won’t look. I won’t ever look.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some novels are problem children and require a little more work to get right than others. This was one of those novels. Thank you, Chelsey Emmelhainz, for your wonderful editorial advice, your dedication to Heather and Becca’s story, and your patience while I got it right. And to Heather Flaherty, my agent extraordinaire, thank you for your guidance as well as your dedication and patience, too. (I’m also incredibly grateful that you didn’t freak out when I sent you the query letter featuring a character with your first name.) I don’t know what I’d do without the two of you on my side. I do know that this novel would be a very different animal, and I quite like the beast it turned out to be.
Thank you to the entire Crooked Lane Books team. It’s been a genuine pleasure working with all of you.
Thank you, Kristi DeMeester and Paul Michael Anderson, for reading a much earlier draft, when I was still struggling with how to tell the story. Every comment you made helped me find my way through the fog. And Kristi, extra thank-yous for helping keep me sane during the revisions and for inspiring me with your work.
Thank you to my yoga crew for sharing my excitement and for supporting me along the way.
Thank you to my family for their love and encouragement, especially to my daughter, for letting me go on and on about Heather and Becca as if they were people we knew; to my husband, for listening to me endlessly brainstorm and babble about edits and deadlines while on our daily walk with the dogs; and to my son, for minding said dogs while we took a much-needed break.
Hugs and love to the littles—Jeremiah, Chloe, Tristan, and Madison—for making me smile and laugh all the while.
And last but never least, thank you to my readers. Without you, none of this would be possible. There are many books published every day. Thank you for picking up mine, for choosing to spend your time with my characters. I hope you enjoyed their story.
ALSO BY DAMIEN ANGELICA WALTERS
Paper Tigers
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Cry Your Way Home
Sing Me Your Scars
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Damien Angelica Walters is the author of Cry Your Way Home, Paper Tigers, and Sing Me Your Scars, winner of This is Horror’s Short Story Collection of the Year. Her short fiction has been nominated twice for a Bram Stoker Award, reprinted in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror and The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and published in various anthologies and magazines, including the Shirley Jackson Award Finalists Autumn Cthulhu and The Madness of Dr. Caligari, World Fantasy Award Finalist Cassilda’s Song, Nightmare Magazine, and Black Static. Until the magazine’s closing in 2013, she was an Associate Editor of the Hugo Award-winning Electric Velocipede. She lives in Maryland with her husband and two rescued pit bulls and is represented by Heather Flaherty of The Bent Agency.
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Damien Angelica Walters
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-64385-163-1
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-64385-164-8
Cover design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt
Cover design by Melanie Sun
Printed in the United States.
www.crookedlanebooks.com
Crooked Lane Books
34 West 27th St., 10th Floor
New York, NY 10001
First Edition: December 2019
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