When She Came Home
Page 23
“Jammer said you only got a whiff. Lucky, huh? Are you listening, Mad? He says like only one in a trillion people react bad like you. It might’ve killed you. I can’t believe how lucky you were.”
Someone was stirring her brain with a wooden spoon. “No one wants to leave yet, and anyway, Jammer says you’ll feel better.”
Then she was alone on the porch outside the house. A coyote padding across the yard stopped to look at her, moonlight reflected in its yellow eyes. Kay-Kay returned and sat beside her for a few moments, holding her sweating hands, and then she went back in the house.
The desert temperature dropped, and the air, cold and dry, lay over everything. The sweat dried on Madora’s body and she shivered, and her teeth rattled like bones in a paper bag. She dragged her feet up onto the chair and wrapped her arms around her knees. She rested her face on her knees and tried to close her eyes, but the lids bounced as if on springs. In the house someone had turned up a CD of an old Doors recording. The keyboard riffs scored her senses and the beat got down inside her, deep. Her muscles ached with it.
Car lights streaked across the cholla and prickly pear. For a moment she was sightless, then bleary-eyed, and the figure coming toward her seemed to emerge out of water like something blessed, a holy vision. Without knowing why, she tried to rise from the chair where she’d been cowering. Her legs wobbled under her and he reached out, helping her to balance.
“Hey, little girl, you better stay down.”
She saw two of him, sometimes three, floating like a mirage, but his voice was clear and strong. Under it, the pounding beat and the keyboard riffs grew fainter until they seemed to come from far out in the desert, where she knew there must be a party going on but nothing that concerned her anymore.
“Don’t be afraid, little girl. Willis won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
ALSO BY DRUSILLA CAMPBELL
Little Girl Gone
The Good Sister
Bone Lake
Blood Orange
The Edge of the Sky
Wildwood
Praise for Drusilla Campbell’s Novels
LITTLE GIRL GONE
“An unflinching portrayal of life in emotional and physical captivity. Campbell has a powerfully understated voice and resists the easy path of sensationalizing the story. Instead she provides authentic drama rich with complex psychological composition. The result is a novel that is hard to read, but even harder to put down.”
—San Diego Union Tribune
“Campbell’s latest has full-blown appeal for teen readers, echoing stories of abduction in the news (a là Jaycee Dugard, and her memoir A Stolen Life) or popular fiction (think of Emma Donoghue’s Alex Award-winning Room).”
—School Library Journal
“Little Girl Gone peers insightfully into the lives of people easily written off as monsters. With an economy of style, vivid details, and grace of expression, Drusilla Campbell has written a novel well worth staying up late to keep reading.”
—Laurel Corona, author of Penelope’s Daughter and Finding Emilie
“Campbell’s powerful novel explores the depth of depravity cloaked as charity and the ability to take a leap of faith and change the direction of one’s life. This compelling story will stay with you long after the book is finished.”
—MonstersandCritics.com
“When is the last time you cheered out loud for a character in a novel? That’s what I did as I read Drusilla Campbell’s Little Girl Gone. The complex relationships between Campbell’s richly drawn characters took me on a psychological roller coaster that tested my expectations, my values, and my heart. This story of tension and triumph is a perfect book club selection. Don’t miss it!”
—Diane Chamberlain, bestselling author of The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes
“Drusilla Campbell uses lyrical descriptions of the desert setting to make each character’s loneliness more atmospheric.”
—Newark Star-Ledger
“Nobody gets to the marrow of human flaws and frailties better than Drusilla Campbell. In Little Girl Gone, you are immersed in the lives of people you think you’ll never meet and come to care deeply about what happens to each of them. This is a compelling story that won’t leave you alone even after you’ve turned the last page.”
—Judy Reeves, author of A Writer’s Book of Days
“Campbell writes with deceptive simplicity all the more impressive for the psychological currents simmering below the surface of a barren terrain… a novel that celebrates the power of friendship and the freedom to make one’s own choices.”
—CurledUp.com
“Little Girl Gone is a fantastic exploration into domestic violence and the power of courage in the face of tragedy.”
—BookFinds.com
THE GOOD SISTER
“Should be on everyone’s book club list.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A novel about motherhood, sisterhood, and even childhood… In a novel which examines the sometimes devastating effects of postpartum depression, Campbell has managed to humanize a woman whose actions appear to be those of a monster rather than a mother. Through her sister’s eyes, we are able to understand and even empathize with Simone Duran, a woman who has failed as both a wife and mother.”
—T. Greenwood, author of The Hungry Season
“Can you have sympathy for a woman who attempts to murder her children? The way Drusilla Campbell tells her story, yes, you can. Even more important, in this unflinching look at family relationships, postpartum depression, and the complex lives of the characters, especially the women in this book, you can come to understand how such an unthinkable act can happen. Make no mistake, The Good Sister is a painful story, but it is also a story that will carve away at your heart.”
—Judy Reeves, author of A Writer’s Book of Days
WILDWOOD
“The pull of family and career, the limits of friendship, and the demands of love all come to vivid life in Wildwood.”
—Susan Vreeland, New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue
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Contents
Welcome
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Discussion Questions
A Preview of The Good Sister
A Preview of Little Girl Gone
Also by Drusilla Campbell
Praise for Drusilla Campbell’s Novels
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Drusilla Campbell
Excerpt from Th
e Good Sister copyright © 2010 by Drusilla Campbell
Excerpt from Little Girl Gone copyright © 2012 by Drusilla Campbell
Discussion Questions copyright © 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Grand Central Publishing
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First e-book edition: April 2013
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ISBN 978-1-4555-1036-8