Sinking, sinking, it starts. That’s how I feel. All day, all night, when I thrash in the sheets, wondering when you’re going to let go. All this time later and I still feel just like I did on the day you died, like I have an itch coming from deep inside the marrow of my bones, and the only way to make it better is to make it stop. Make myself stop. End it.
On that morning I got in the truck, it was exactly a year to the day after Teddy’s heart attack. It’s surprised me that nobody has made that connection. I thought what I was doing would be obvious. I thought there would be a big to-do about it. I thought people would know. “She must have been so distraught over his death.” “She couldn’t live without him!” “Now at least they’re together again.”
But no! Nobody seems to understand what I was trying to do. Nobody seems to understand how badly I wanted to die that day. I don’t anymore, but it is still so difficult to be alone. Nobody has ever understood it, the unbearable loneliness I’ve suffered, the ungodly solitude I’ve endured. I want to be done with it now, Henrietta, but things didn’t turn out the way I intended. I didn’t get my wish. And so back I go, back to New York, to my gilded cage, still without the one thing that has always eluded me: love.
This is my punishment, isn’t it? This is the price I pay. There is nothing more pathetic, or dangerous, than a lonely woman. That’s what it all comes down to. That’s the crux of this whole thing. It’s what I see crawling all over this place. It’s what killed Henrietta, and her mother, and it’s what was supposed to kill me.
Do you know what? Right before you died, I could hear you yelling for me. Worse, I could hear the worry in your voice, and Henrietta, I’m sorry: it thrilled me.
It’s amazing how much I remember from that night, considering the state I was in and the amount of alcohol I had consumed. I’d gone off to get another beer, and when I looked over at you and Bradley, leaning against his car, you were laughing. It was the kind of laugh that lovers share. Intimate and easy, in on the same joke.
I was convinced that the joke was me.
Was it?
To this day, Bradley says he can’t remember.
But that was it, I decided. That was the moment. I launched myself up the hill and into the bramble. I drank the beer, guzzling it down, and then smashed the bottle into a tree. I was crying then. Sobbing. Nobody saw me. People were too busy celebrating. That’s what I remember: the sound of celebrating. Laughing and whooping and music. It was an impossible sound, so far off from what I was feeling.
When I got to the clearing, I stood with my back against a tree and looked out at the lights of the town beneath me. I thought about what a prison this place had been, and how the only thing that had brought me any happiness over the course of my seventeen years of life had been you. And Bradley. But you were both discarding me now, too.
I tried to think of the best scenario. I really did, Henrietta.
I told myself that I was imagining what was going on with you two, and that Bradley and I would stick to our plan. This place beneath me, these lights in the distance were my future. I would marry him and raise his babies. I would make it work.
Or if what I was seeing between the two of you was real—if you were truly in love—I would accept it. Take it on the chin. I could run off, like you planned to and like I soon did. I could find a new life somewhere else.
I told myself all this, Henrietta, trying to make it better. I tried to make another choice.
I took a step back, but then I heard the two of you. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear another minute of feeling the way I did. That’s when I stepped out onto the ledge.
I don’t know what it was that brought you and Bradley to me at just that moment. Call it fate. Call it serendipity. Had you been a second later, I swear, Henrietta, my plan would have gone off without a hitch and it would be you writing to me now instead of the reverse.
I put my hands out to the sides—a swan dive, I suppose—and then I heard you scream my name.
Oddly, when I turned and saw you and Bradley standing there, the fear in your eyes, my first thought was not that you had come looking for me. My first thought was that you had come up to that secluded spot, away from the party, to be alone. Together.
I turned back toward the edge. The view of the town, the lights, seemed to be pulsing. I took another step. Your voices. And then I felt your arms around my waist, barreling around my middle, willing me back, the two of us falling backward, safely on the ground.
I should’ve just surrendered then, Henrietta. I should have been brave enough to face all the pain I felt. But I didn’t, did I? I had to keep going. That’s what Bradley was always admonishing me with: “You take things too far, Susannah!”
I stood up, and you stood up with me, and your arm was pulling my arm, and I was pulling away, and then Bradley was trying to pull us apart and his hand was your hand and your hand was his and it all happened so fast—
There was a scratch. Pebbles underfoot. A whoosh. The crack of tree limbs. And then Bradley and I were staring at each other, our horrified eyes trying to will the other’s to say that what had just happened had not happened. But it did. It did, Henrietta.
“I didn’t mean to—” he said, his hands clawing at his cheeks. “I don’t understand how—”
“I know,” I said. I didn’t let him finish. “I know.”
My hands are shaking when I finish reading. There’s a note tucked into the back of the journal, between the blank pages. “There are more,” it says. “Lots more, if you want them. Lots to write about, Bess . . .”
I reach for my phone on the coffee table.
“Elizabeth,” Diane says. “Good afternoon.”
“Hi . . . Diane?” I cough it out, the phone shaking in my hand. “Sorry to bother you, but quick question: a package was left on my stoop this morning but I didn’t happen to see who left it, and there’s no note and no address. Did you by any chance notice if someone stopped by our house?”
“As a matter of fact,” she says, “I was moving my Christmas cactus into the living room this morning—it needs more light if I expect it to bloom at all this season—and I saw a car, but I didn’t recognize it. It was a teal color? Virginia license plates. They parked right in your driveway, but I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. Whoever it was had on a big, puffy coat with the hood pulled up. Now that I think about it, I’m thinking it was a woman—a very petite one, actually, too small to be a man. She seemed in a hurry.”
“Okay, thanks,” I say, picturing Cindy’s frame. “That helps.”
“What was the package, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Oh, nothing,” I say, searching my brain for an answer because I know that won’t satisfy her. My eyes land on the National Geographic Kids Almanac on the coffee table. “It was a book that Max is borrowing from a friend. I just wondered which friend; his mom forgot to include a note. Anyhow, thanks again!” I hang up before she has a chance to respond. The diary is next to me, threatening me, like it’s alive. I put a hand to my chest, feel my heartbeat pounding beneath my palm, pick the diary up, and read it again.
Thirty-Five
SIX MONTHS LATER
DRAPER HALL PARKING LOT
“I heard Eva and David are moving up to Washington.”
“To do what? Pursue his political future?”
“Who knows. Who cares! But you know what else? Someone said Cole was joking at that guys’ poker night about running for mayor.”
“Cole Warner?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“That actually makes sense. I can see that.”
“Can’t you, though?
“Yes, but what a twist! Bess as First Lady!”
“Well, she knows a thing or two about that role, doesn’t she?”
“Ha! I actually heard she’s working with William.”
“Yes, I think the inn is going to add a catering business.”
“Just what she needs, to be surrounded by food all day.”
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“You’re terrible.”
“Just honest. Actually, though, she’ll probably do a good job with it, if what she’s done with the inn is any indication. Have you seen the lobby?”
“Gorgeous, how she decorated it!”
“To die for! Diane was going on and on about it at the hair salon. She said the color scheme was her idea.”
“Interesting! But speaking of Bess, did you hear about Susannah Lane?”
“Selling Esperanza. I saw Martha Brown taping the listing up in her window yesterday.”
“The Warners should buy it. They could actually turn it into a resort, the way everyone said Susannah wanted to. I wonder what she’s doing back in New York.”
“Working with someone on her memoir, I heard.”
“Memoir! That should be something.”
“I know. Whether it’s truthful or not, I’m sure I’ll read it.”
“Me, too. I’ll read it cover to cover.”
“Everyone will.”
“It will be the talk of the town.”
“You know something has to be.”
“Truer words, my friend.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Acknowledgments
I am incredibly fortunate to have now written three books under the guidance of my wonderful editor, Emily Griffin, and my agent, Katherine Fausset. Emily’s sharp insights helped shape this story in so many crucial ways, and I am beyond grateful for our easy, collaborative rapport. Katherine always expertly navigates our sometimes complicated industry on my behalf, and has taught me so much in the process. It is a joy to work with them both.
Thank you to the entire team at HarperCollins: Amber Oliver, Suzette Lam, Mary Sasso, Falon Kirby, Julie Hersh, and Andrea Guinn. From start to finish, it has been a pleasure to work with you.
Special thanks to my husband, Jay, and our girls, who understand when I have to disappear for a few hours (and sometimes the occasional weekend) to write, and cheer me on even when I’m grumpy. Your support means the world to me.
This book features a few women who don’t necessarily do the best job supporting each other, and I would like to acknowledge the many women in my life who have done the opposite for me. I am occasionally asked whether my relationships with other female writers are competitive, and I am always delighted to report that they are, in fact, some of the most extraordinary, supportive people I have met in my professional life, and I am so proud of how we rally around each other. Finally, thank you to my network of close girlfriends who do so much for me on a daily basis—the phone calls, the emergency childcare, the comic relief, the long talks, and lunch dates. Life would be far more difficult, and not nearly as fun, without you.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the Author
* * *
Meet Kristyn Kusek Lewis
About the Book
* * *
A Conversation with Kristyn Kusek Lewis
Read On
* * *
Reading Group Guide: Discussion Questions for Half of What You Hear
About the Author
Meet Kristyn Kusek Lewis
KRISTYN KUSEK LEWIS is the author of Save Me and How Lucky You Are. A former magazine editor at Glamour and Child, Kristyn has been writing for national publications for nearly twenty years. Her work has appeared in the New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Real Simple; Reader’s Digest; Glamour; Self; Redbook; Cosmopolitan; Marie Claire; Parents; Allure; Good Housekeeping; Cooking Light; Health; Men’s Health; the New York Daily News; and many more. Kristyn is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross and the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she earned an MFA in creative writing. She lives in the Washington, DC, area with her family.
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About the Book
A Conversation with Kristyn Kusek Lewis
What was the inspiration for Half of What You Hear?
MY STORIES HAVE always started with a character, but with this book, I also knew that I wanted to write about a small town. I have lived most of my life in and around major cities, but I harbor serious country-mouse fantasies, in part because of the childhood summers I spent near Shenandoah National Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I just love this part of my home state. I feel like my blood pressure drops twenty points the farther I head into the country, and after several visits to the Blue Ridge Mountains and the somewhat more posh areas in and around Middleburg, I started crafting the idea of Greyhill.
I also had an inkling that I wanted to write a story about a woman who is in her early forties and feels fairly established in her life, but then gets plunked down into something entirely new. When I started working on the story, I had just moved back to the Washington, DC, area, which is where I was mostly raised, after living elsewhere for over twenty years. My advantage over Bess is that my move was a homecoming—but in far less dramatic fashion, I was going through a similar adjustment, finding my way in a new environment, and using a geographic move as a clean slate to really think about what I wanted next for my life and my family.
Which of the characters in this novel came the most easily to you? Which did you struggle with, and why?
IT IS ALWAYS fun to write about somebody who is badly behaved, so I quite enjoyed writing about Susannah, even after she began to show some of the demons that have haunted her throughout her life. One of the first scenes I wrote about her is the one where she is revealing some of the ways she exacted revenge on the women who were threatening her marriage, and it came from a murky memory of a story I’d once heard about somebody who’d hidden a dead fish behind someone’s radiator. I wanted Susannah to have this dark, almost cruel side, because particularly with older female characters, we don’t always see the full range of the person, and I wanted to write about somebody older who was not the mild-mannered, grandmotherly type. That said, I didn’t want her negatives to be negatives for their own sake—I wanted to show the reasons for her behavior, to show that she’s really lived a life, and make her sympathetic. To show that like in real life, nobody is entirely good or bad. Bess was tough at first because so much of her experience in the story is reactionary: she’s reacting to the way the new community views her, to her mother-in-law’s expectations, to the struggles she sees her daughter having, to her husband’s relative ease, all while knowing with some certainty that people have already made up their minds about her. She had a tricky path to navigate in the story, and as badly as I wanted her to succeed in her new town, I almost felt like the experiences she was having meant that I had to simultaneously be the hand on her back pushing her forward, and the one setting obstacles in front of her.
Livvie and Max feel like very realistic teenagers. Are they based on your own children?
AS EVERY PARENT knows, kids grow up at lightning speed, and just when you think you have something figured out, your kids have moved into a new phase, with entirely different challenges. My kids are younger than Livvie and Max, but I know what it feels like to mourn the stages that your kids have moved past. I wanted Bess to be reexamining her life as a mother as her kids are moving out of their grade-school years, when it could feel like they are reaching the age where they no longer need her as much. Of course, she discovers by the end of the book that they very much still need her, but I thought that with Max and Livvie in this tween place where they have one foot in their childhood and one foot in their teens, Bess would question what her life as a mother has looked like and what she wants it to look like going forward, in her “new life” in Greyhill.
I also wanted Livvie’s experience in town to echo some of Bess’s teenage struggles, just to mess with her a little more and give her more to grapple with as she adjusts to her new reality. And given how she spends so much time thinking about Susannah’s experience as a teenager in Greyhill, I wanted her to have a present-day scenario to give some relevance to her anxieties about how the town works.
How did the process of writin
g this novel differ from the process of writing How Lucky You Are and Save Me? Why did you decide to include an element of suspense?
I WISH I COULD say that the decision came consciously, but as I began writing about the characters, the suspense element revealed itself to me. Though it’s not necessarily fun while you’re writing it—it can be maddening, in fact—it’s fun to look back and see how a story progresses and changes from draft to draft. For instance, in the earliest version of this novel, Susannah and her husband, Teddy, were very much alive and married, and Bess was Susannah’s caretaker as she recovered from her accident.
It’s hard to compare the experience of writing each novel I’ve published because they’re each so different. When you’re writing fiction, you’re really immersing yourself in the world you’ve created, and comparing each experience is nearly as difficult as trying to compare completely distinct places on the globe. Each book has its own unique makeup. That said, I knew after writing Save Me, which is a story very much inside the head of one character, that I wanted to write something with more exterior action and more moving parts, which is why the idea of a town felt so appealing.
What are you working on next?
EACH OF MY books has had a central subject—the growing pains of long friendships, marriage, life in a small town—but the common thread, I’ve discovered, is that I write stories about identity, and how women think about themselves in the context of the choices they’ve made and the people they surround themselves with.
My next book is in that same vein, but it’s a story about a family. At its heart is a woman who’s stumbled into a career as a bestselling “happiness expert” but isn’t actually all that happy herself. It’s about how the person we present to the world—whether through our daily interactions or our jobs or our Instagram accounts—is often dramatically different from who we are deep down. That could sound like a bummer, but the book has some comic elements that have been really fun to write—partly because these well-meaning characters, including a zookeeper husband and a college-age daughter, have a propensity for making really bad decisions despite their best intentions. It’s that whole car-wreck scenario: you hate to see it happening, but you just can’t look away.
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