by Kerry Clare
PRAISE FOR
Waiting for a Star to Fall
BY KERRY CLARE
“Kerry Clare’s Waiting for a Star to Fall is a love story at its core, though one without an ending written in the stars. It’s about what we believe—and who we believe—and it reveals that we each control our own happiness and destiny. Timely and insightful, Clare has crafted a worthy successor to her memorable debut Mitzi Bytes.”
—Karma Brown, #1 bestselling author of Recipe for a Perfect Wife
“Kerry Clare has done something spectacular: She’s written a riveting #MeToo novel that is a nuanced celebration of the complexity of human nature. I read it in one morning and will be thinking about it for a long time to come.”
—Lauren Mechling, author of How Could She
“Girl falls hard for charismatic, older man. It’s heady and intoxicating. Then he turns out not to be who she thought he was. Like, at all. This is a thrillingly sexy book about that first big, bad love, and the pain of seeing someone for who they really are. Kerry Clare writes about the dark heart of women with a deceptively light touch, one that belies a complexity just below the surface. A diverting and compassionate read.”
—Lisa Gabriele, author of The Winters
“Timely and entertaining on the surface—but crack through to its core and discover a deep and thought-provoking meditation on the flaws and foibles of humanity. This book is beautifully, brutally honest, reminded me of being 23, made me forgive myself my lapses in judgment—and, made me long for whatever Kerry Clare will write next. Fans of Emily Giffin and Curtis Sittenfeld take note: This is your next read.”
—Marissa Stapley, bestselling author of The Last Resort
“A skillfully told story for our times, Waiting for a Star to Fall takes readers on an emotional journey. Clare’s expert handling of this all-too-familiar yet difficult subject is sure to spark meaningful book club discussions.”
—Chantel Guertin, author of the Pippa Greene novels
“When Kerry Clare’s Waiting for a Star to Fall landed on my desk, I could not restrain myself and read the entire novel that same day. Taking a now familiar story as her starting point—famous man pummeled by sexual assault allegations—she ventures beyond the headlines, into terrain news stories can’t cover. What gives these mediocre men their outsized confidence? Why do they act with so little regard for others and how do they keep getting away with it? Searching for answers, Clare turns the spotlight on her women characters, the ones who are hurt by these men even as they continue to enable them. A deft examination of power, complicity, and accountability, Waiting for a Star to Fall is thoroughly engrossing. Clever and insightful, this book is a sheer delight.”
—Sharon Bala, author of The Boat People
“I’m in awe of Kerry Clare’s tender, imaginative care for the characters in Waiting for a Star to Fall. I was right there with them, viscerally in the moment with all their best and worst ideas, especially with Brooke, hoping for what she hoped for even when I worried about the outcome. Such a fully realized, fascinating, enthralling world Clare has created—I was completely enraptured.”
—Rebecca Rosenblum, author of So Much Love
“Waiting for a Star to Fall is the novel we need at this moment: a wonderfully sharp and humane examination of power and betrayal, love and limits. Kerry Clare has told one woman’s story, but many of us will recognize ourselves in this rich portrait.”
—Elizabeth Renzetti, Globe and Mail columnist and author of Shrewed
ALSO BY KERRY CLARE
Mitzi Bytes
The M Word: Conversations about Motherhood
Copyright © 2020 Kerry Clare
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House Canada Limited
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Waiting for a star to fall / Kerry Clare.
Names: Clare, Kerry, 1979- author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200241052 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200241060 | ISBN 9780385695473 (softcover) | ISBN 9780385695480 (EPUB)
Classification: LCC PS8605.L3605 W35 2020 | DDC C813/.6—dc23
Cover design: Terri Nimmo
Cover image: Galina Kamenskaya/Getty Images
Cover art (interior): Talia Abramson
Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
a_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0
Contents
Cover
Also by Kerry Clare
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Lanark Telegram: “Murdoch Cruises to an Easy Win”
Seven Months Previous
Tuesday Morning
Tuesday Afternoon
Wednesday Morning
Wednesday Afternoon
Thursday Morning
Thursday Afternoon
Friday
Friday Evening
Saturday Morning
Saturday, Later
Friday Night
Sunday Morning
Sunday Afternoon
Monday Morning
Acknowledgments
This book is for every woman who was ever 23.
Lanark Telegram
“MURDOCH CRUISES TO AN EASY WIN”
SO LET’S CALL IT a comeback. Seven months after resigning as party leader due to allegations of sexual misconduct, hometown boy Derek Murdoch cruised to an easy win in the mayoral race, defeating four-term incumbent Caroline Rawlings in a surprise upset. Defying pollsters—not for the first time—and delivering a swift jab to opponents all too ready after the scandal to declare Murdoch finished in the world of politics, he would stand up in his victory speech and declare himself vindicated.
“I want to thank my family, and the people of Lanark for always standing by me. The last few months have been a journey,” he said, “but everything that’s happened has only made me a stronger person, a better politician. My friends, this is only the beginning…”
Seven Months Previous
Tuesday Morning
She hadn’t been drinking—this was the thing. Yet that morning Brooke woke up with a hangover, and it took about five seconds to put the night back together again. She had a different taste in her mouth, but the weight on her head was just the same. So what had happened? What had led to the restless, uneasy sleep that she was now shaking off like a blanket, eyes struggling to come to terms with the daylight?
And then there it was, reality settling over her like dread, and it was all coming back: the press conference, watching the live-stream as her phone buzzed. A bombshell that ricocheted, the whole thing unfolding with no warning of what might happen next—except Brooke had some guesses. A level of insight into the general narrative that didn’t serve to make her feel better, or wiser. It made her feel worse, and she’d broken out in a sweat, even though her extremities were freezing and her legs were shaking the way they’d been shaking the second time—which was really the first time—that Derek Murdoch kissed her.
It was uncharact
eristic, that’s what they all said. The pundits, and the people online who were paid to talk even when they didn’t know what they were talking about. They explained how Derek wasn’t a person who ran away from challenges, no matter how difficult. Principled. That’s what they kept calling him, the key to his character, they supposed. They’d never seen him like this, so rattled, and Brooke would admit—as she’d watched him falling apart on the screen—that she hadn’t recognized him either. Could the breakdown be part of a performance? Was this the strategy they had in mind? Maybe it was supposed to be humanizing. Because she couldn’t think of any other reason for Derek to have fared so poorly. Professionally, at least, he’d never been unprepared for anything in his life.
When the whole thing started kicking off, Brooke was miles and worlds away from the action. She was babysitting—a part-time gig she’d found after tearing a phone number off a poster on the community board at the library. The poster belonged to Marianna Tavares, a single mom who worked at a seniors’ home, mostly day shifts, but she needed someone to watch her daughter on the odd evening. An arrangement that worked fine most of the time (the one upside of no longer having a social life was availability for odd jobs to supplement Brooke’s meager income), but what an odd evening this one turned out to be, Olivia finally tucked into her bed upstairs, asleep. Brooke was scrolling on her phone, thinking about putting on Netflix, when she received a text from her sister Nicole, the first time she’d heard from her in ages: What is going on NOW?
Brooke replied with a string of question marks—and then her phone buzzed again. And again, and again. She hadn’t taken Derek’s name off her news alerts when she left his office, and now his name was everywhere. There had been allegations, two women saying shocking things, and he’d be holding a press conference, pre-empting the story before it broke on the newscast at ten o’clock.
Everything was happening on Twitter, and Brooke scrolled through her feed, ignoring her sister’s message, searching for some confirmation herself, an understanding of the bigger picture, but she could find none. Her desperation for clarity mingling with fear, frustration, even fury. What have you done? she was thinking. After all she had given him—and forgiven him—over the course of his career, and hers—to have it all come down like this. Was there no limit to how much Derek could betray her?
As she refreshed her screen again, new details appearing, they finally began to form a picture. And it was also a relief to realize this was not one particular shocking story it could have been, blowing up her whole life all over again, only this time with the world watching. This breaking story now had nothing to do with her—although this also underlined how remote she had become from Derek these last few months. Entirely out of reach—and yet, not so far that she couldn’t discern what was going on. For years, shady characters had been willing to offer to pay for dirt on Derek, something to mess with his image, to tarnish his sterling reputation. Brooke had seen them sniffing around, had even talked to some of them directly, and now, apparently, someone had finally taken them up on the offer.
Derek would have known this too, which was surely the reason he’d been so indignant as he stood before the reporters, sending the press conference off the rails before it even began. Where he should have been calm and assured, he was agitated and angry, and not remotely convincing as an innocent man as he pledged to push back against the allegations. He was going to fight to clear his name, he explained. Except he hadn’t been in fighting form at all, particularly at the end, when he’d been speaking through tears, and then he’d cut the whole thing off abruptly, reporters chasing him down three flights of stairs.
Marianna was home by then, and she and Brooke were watching the whole thing together, and witnessing Derek in this state—he was so pathetic, with the crying and the running away—seemed to snuff out any residual anger Brooke had been harboring toward him these last few months. She had been imagining him back in the city, living his life as though nothing had happened, while her whole world had ended, and she’d let herself yearn for a sign that he’d suffered at all. A self-centered twist on empathy, for him to know what she knew, what she felt, and she’d wondered whether it might even feel good to see him hurting—some kind of justice delivered, his comeuppance. But now she knew that it didn’t, not at all, because it felt so unnatural not to be on his side, and because whatever else Derek had done, he was paying for it now—that much was obvious.
Marianna proclaimed the whole affair “a gong show,” and Brooke couldn’t argue. Derek’s performance had been so bizarre, the allegations so tawdry. And why did he have to fall apart like that in front of the cameras? Running scared. The one detail she kept getting stuck on, because it just didn’t make sense. The Derek she knew would never have let that happen. Was no one looking out for him?
Marianna wanted Brooke to stay, she’d open a bottle of wine the way they had on other evenings, and together they’d hash the whole thing out—she hadn’t sat down in front of the TV news for years, she said, it was kind of fun. Trying to decipher the puzzle of baffling men was one of Marianna’s favorite pastimes, although she’d never once gotten to the bottom of it. But what Marianna didn’t know was that Brooke had a personal investment in the matter unfolding on TV before them now, in this particular baffling man, and Brooke didn’t want to get into it with anybody, let alone somebody who wasn’t even properly a friend. The emotions were still too raw for her to be detached enough from any of it, and nobody she’d tried to explain her connection to Derek to had ever understood.
She walked home from Marianna’s with her phone in her hand, still buzzing. She should have turned off her Derek alerts months ago, but they had been a useful way to keep track of him, to have him be part of her life, however tangentially. She’d received a message from her mother: What is happening? Are you okay? A sinking feeling as she read it, because of how much her mother didn’t know, the dark places her imagination might take her.
Which was why she called Nicole, who picked up right away, saying, “This is insane.”
“Hello to you too,” said Brooke.
“Did you know this was coming?” Nicole asked.
“I don’t know anything anymore,” said Brooke. “I was babysitting.”
“You saw the press conference?”
“I saw it.”
“He cried.”
“Well, people do.” Brooke was not going to defend him, even though Nicole was waiting for her to. It was truly a reflex she really had to fight—for five years it had literally been Brooke’s job to put the many sides of Derek together into a comprehensible and sympathetic story. But now she wasn’t going to do it, give Nicole the satisfaction.
Nicole was waiting. “It didn’t look good.”
“Not at all,” said Brooke. “Listen, I need you to call Mom. Just let her know that I’m all right. That I know as much about all of this as the rest of you do.”
“You’re really okay?” asked Nicole. She knew Brooke too well, which had made her hard to be around these last few months, or even to talk to, Brooke preferring the company of a near-stranger like Marianna. Or even no one. Because the last thing Brooke wanted to do was stare her truth in the face, to have to listen to her sister spell out the reality of her situation—that she was truly broken and still hung up on a guy who’d left her stranded. But for tonight, at least, Nicole would be able to help Brooke avoid a conversation with her mother—Brooke was up for that even less.
“Listen, I’m nearly home,” Brooke said in lieu of an answer to the matter of her well-being. Home now was a basement apartment in a triplex whose weedy lawn she was traversing. The faint cellphone signal underground was always a good excuse to escape these conversational traps. “If you could call her, I’d owe you big time.”
“Of course you would,” said Nicole. “But any thoughts of paying me back soon? I want to see you.”
“Sure, sure,” said Brooke. “Maybe some
time in the next few weeks.”
“Which is what you’ve said any time I’ve talked to you in the last few weeks.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Busy avoiding me.”
“I’m not,” said Brooke. “There’s just a lot right now. And then tonight—”
“I’ll call Mom,” said Nicole. “But you have to let me take you out for dinner.”
“In the next few—”
“—weeks. Yep, I know,” said Nicole. “Listen, you take care of yourself, okay? And if you need anything, you always, always can call me.”
Brooke told her sister, “I know.”
* * *
—
For the last few months, since her sudden return to Lanark, Brooke had mainly been successful at keeping the feelings at bay, as well as the people who’d force her to feel them. Although, she had always been a bit like this, and it had become her defining trait, her levelheadedness. The way she did not give in to emotions, to their powerful draw, but instead stuck to facts and worked her way through them. She could be a hero in a crisis, adept at strategy. The sensible one. She could rise above the morass and look down below, figuring a way to get through it, instead of succumbing to the panic. No, she would not panic, it was not her style—but surely now she’d reached the point where she could finally declare enough. Thinking of everything that had been heaped upon her these last few months, and now this: the allegations and the press conference. Her headache compounded by the force of it, her heart like a drum. She didn’t need it spelled out, really, how alone she was here, and she’d done that to herself. Except he’d done it to her first, leaving her in this desperate place, and there was no one she could tell the story to, because they’d only hate him. They’d misunderstand, or they would understand too well—and which one was it? But now it seemed like everybody hated him anyway. This cause she’d been fighting for all these months was a lost one, and even thinking about it felt like drowning. She had to get up now, or else she’d never be able to get up at all.
