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Praise for Heather Gudenkauf’s debut novel THE WEIGHT OF SILENCE A TV Bookclub Pick A Top Five New York Times bestseller

“Brilliantly constructed, this will have you

gripped until the last page …”

—Closer

“Deeply moving and lyrical … it will haunt you all summer.”

—Company

5 stars “Gripping and moving.”

—Heat

“The Weight of Silence is a cleverly crafted exercise in sustaining tension. Her technique is faultless, sparse and simple and is a masterclass in how to construct a thriller … A memorable read … A technical triumph and a brave first novel.” —Sunday Express

“It’s totally gripping …”

—Marie Claire

“Tension builds as family secrets tumble from the closet.”

—Woman & Home

“This has all the ingredients of a Jodi Picoult novel.”

—Waterstone’s Books Quarterly

“Set to become a book group staple.”

—The Guardian

“Jodi Picoult has some serious competition in Heather Gudenkauf.”

—Bookreporter

“Deeply moving and exquisitely lyrical, this is a powerhouse of a debut novel.

—Tess Gerritsen, No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author

“Gudenkauf moves the story forward at a fast clip and is adept at building tension. There’s a particular darkness to her heartland, rife as it is with predators and the walking wounded, and her unsentimental take on the milieu manages to find some hope without being maudlin.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Heart-pounding suspense and a compelling family drama come together to create a story you won’t be able to put down. You’ll stay up all night long reading. I did!”

—Diane Chamberlain, author of Before the Storm

“A great thriller, probably the kind of book a lot of people would chose to read on their sun loungers. It will appeal to fans of Jodi Picoult.”

—Radio Times

“Gripping and powerful, right to the end.”

—Northern Echo

“An enchantingly lyrical novel mixed with shockingly menacing overtones.”

—newbooks

THESE THINGS HIDDEN

HEATHER GUDENKAUF

For Scott

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing, while often a solitary act, never can be done without the world seeping and sometimes crashing in. I am grateful to so many people who have been there for me and my family. Much gratitude goes to my parents, Milton and Patricia Schmida, who have been my strength and anchor in life. My brothers and sisters and their families, my life preservers—thank you to Greg, Mady and Hunter Schmida and Kimbra Valenti, Jane, Kip, Tommy and Meredith Augspurger, Morgan and Kyle Hawthorne, Milt, Jackie, Lizzie and Joey Schmida, Molly, Steve, Hannah, Olivia, and Myah Lugar, and Patrick and Sam Schmida. Thanks also to my Gudenkauf family, there for us every step of the way: Lloyd, Lois, Steve, Tami, Emily, Jenni, Aiden, Mark, Carie, Connor, Lauren, Dan, Robyn, Molly, and Cheryl, Hailey and Hannah Zacek.

I am deeply grateful to the following people who generously supported all things Gudenkauf: Jennifer and Kent Peterson, Jean and Charlie Daoud, Ann and John Schober, Rose and Steve Schulz, Cathie and Paul Kloft, Sandy and Rick Hoerner, Laura and Jerry Trimble, Mike and Brenda Reinert and their families. Thank you to Danette Putchio, Lenora Vinckier, Tammy Lattner, Mary Fink, Mark Burns, Cindy Steffens, Susan Meehan, Bev and Mel Graves, Barbara and Calvin Gatch, Ann O’Brien, Father Rich Adam and the parishioners of St. Joseph’s in Wellman, Iowa, Kae and Jerry Pugh, Sarah Reiss and the many families near and far who were always there for us. Huge thanks go to the instructional coaches, principals, teachers, staff and students from the DCSD, especially George Washington Middle School, Carver, Kennedy, Bryant and Marshall Elementary Schools, as well as Jones Hand in Hand Preschool.

Heartfelt thanks go out to my agent Marianne Merola, who always has my best interests in mind and faces me in the right direction. Her guidance and friendship have meant the world. My editors Valerie Gray and Miranda Indrigo have provided friendship, support, insight and suggestions that have helped me to become a better writer. Thank you also to Heather Foy, Pete McMahon, Andi Richman, Nanette Long, Emily Ohanjanians, Kate Pawson, Jayne Hoogenberk, Margaret Marbury, Donna Hayes and everyone at HQ, who have taken me under their wing and have worked tirelessly on my behalf. A special thank-you goes to Natalia Blaskovich, who provided me with valuable information regarding Iowa law and the criminal justice system.

As always, all my love and thanks to Scott, Alex, Anna and Grace—I couldn’t do it without you.

Allison

I stand when I see Devin Kineally walking toward me, dressed as usual in her lawyer-gray suit, her high heels clicking against the tiled floor. I take a big breath and pick up my small bag filled with my few possessions.

Devin’s here to take me to the court-ordered halfway house back in Linden Falls, where I’ll be living for at least the next six months. I have to prove that I can take care of myself, hold down a job, stay out of trouble. After five years, I’m free to leave Cravenville. I look hopefully over Devin’s shoulder, searching for my parents even though I know they won’t be there. “Hello, Allison,” Devin says warmly. “You all set to get out of here?”

“Yes, I’m ready,” I answer with more confidence than I feel. I’m going to live in a place I’ve never been before with people I’ve never met. I have no money, no job, no friends and my family has disowned me, but I’m ready. I have to be.

Devin reaches for my hand, squeezes it gently and looks me directly in the eyes. “It’s going to be okay, you know?” I swallow hard and nod. For the first time, since I was sentenced to ten years in Cravenville, I feel tears burning behind my eyes.

“I’m not saying it will be easy,” Devin says, reaching up and wrapping an arm around my shoulders. I tower over her. She is petite, soft-spoken, but tough as nails, one of the many things I love about Devin. She has always said she was going to do her best for me and she has. She made it clear all along that even though my mom and dad pay the bills, I’m her client. She’s the only person who seems to be able to put my parents in their place. During our second meeting with Devin (the first being when I was in the hospital), the four of us sat around a table in a small conference room at the county jail. My mother tried to take over. She couldn’t accept my arrest, thought it was all some huge mistake, wanted me to go to trial, plead not guilty, fight the charges. Clear the Glenn family name.

“Listen,” Devin told my mother in a quiet, cold voice. “The evidence against Allison is overwhelming. If we go to trial, chances are she will be sent to jail for a very long time, maybe even forever.”

“It couldn’t have happened the way they said it did.” My mother’s coldness matched Devin’s. “We need to make this right. Allison is going to come home, graduate and go to college.” Her perfectly made-up face trembled with anger and her hands shook.

My father, who had taken a rare afternoon away from his job as a financial adviser, stood suddenly, knocking over a glass of water. “We hired you to get Allison out of here,” he shouted. “Do your job!”

I shrank in my seat and expected Devin to do the same.

But she didn’t. She calmly set her hands flat on the table, straightened her back, lifted her chin and spoke. “My job is to examine all the information, look at all the options and help Allison choose the best one.”

“There is only one option.” My father’s thick, long finger shot out, stopping inches from Devin’s nose. “Allison needs to come home!”

“Richard,” my mother said in that unruffled, irritating way she has.

Devin didn’t flinch. “If you don’t remove that finger from my face, you might not get it back.”

My father slowly lowered his hand, his barrel chest rising and falling rapidly.

“My job,” she repeated, looking my father dead in the eye, “is to review the evidence and choose the best defense strategy. The prosecutor is planning to move Allison from juvenile to adult court and charge her with first-degree murder. If we go to trial, she will end up in jail for the rest of her life. Guaranteed.”

My father lowered his face into his hands and started crying. My mother looked down into her lap, frowning with embarrassment.

When I stood in front of the judge—a man who looked exactly like my physics teacher—even though Devin prepared me for the hearing, told me what to expect, the only words I heard were ten years. To me that sounded like a lifetime. I would miss my senior year of high school, miss the volleyball, basketball, swimming and soccer seasons. I would lose my scholarship to the University of Iowa, would never be a lawyer. I remember looking over my shoulder at my parents, tears pouring down my face. My sister hadn’t come to the hearing.

“Mom, please,” I whimpered as the bailiff began to lead me away. She stared straight ahead, no emotion on her face. My father’s eyes were closed tightly. He was taking big breaths, struggling for composure. They couldn’t even look at me. I would be twenty-seven years old before I was free again. At the time, I wondered if they would miss me or miss the girl they wanted me to be. Because my case initially began in juvenile court, my name couldn’t be released to the press. The same day it was waived into adult court, there was massive flash flooding just to the south of Linden Falls. Hundreds of homes and businesses lost. Four dead. Due to my father’s connections and a busy news day, my name never hit the papers. Needless to say, my parents were ecstatic that the good Glenn name wasn’t completely tarnished.

I follow Devin as she leads me to her car, and for the first time in five years I feel the full weight of a sun that isn’t blocked by a barbwire-topped fence. It is the end of August, and the air is heavy and hot. I breathe in deeply and realize jail air doesn’t really smell any different than free air. “What do you want to do first?” Devin asks me. I think carefully before I answer. I don’t know what to feel about leaving Cravenville. I’ve missed being able to drive—I’d had my license for less than a year when I was arrested. Finally, I’ll have some privacy. I’ll be able to go to the bathroom, take a shower, eat without dozens of people looking at me. And even though I have to stay at a halfway house, for all purposes I’ll be free.

It’s funny. I’ve been at Cravenville five years and you’d think I’d be clawing at the door, desperate to get out. But it’s not quite like that. I’ve made no friends here, I have no happy memories, but I do have something that I have never, ever had in my life: peace, which is a rare, precious thing. How I can be at peace for what I’ve done? I don’t know, but I am.

When I was younger, before I was in prison, my mind never stopped racing. It was constantly go, go, go. My grades were perfect. I was a five-sport athlete: volleyball, basketball, track, swimming and soccer. My friends thought I was pretty, I was popular and I never got in any trouble. But under the surface, beneath my skin, it was like my blood was boiling. I couldn’t sit still, I could never rest. I’d wake up at six every morning to go for a run or lift weights in the school’s weight room, then I’d take a quick shower, eat the granola bar and banana I’d shove into my backpack and go to class all day. After school there’d be practice or a game, then home to eat supper with my parents and Brynn, then three or four hours of homework and studying. Finally, finally, at around midnight, I would try to go to sleep. But nighttime was the worst. I would lie in bed and my mind couldn’t slow down. I couldn’t stop myself from worrying about what my parents thought of me, what others thought of me, about the next test, the next game, college, my future.

I had this thing I did to help calm myself at night. I’d lie on my back, tuck the covers around me just so and imagine that I was in a small boat. I would conjure a lake so big that I couldn’t see the shore and the sky would be an overturned bowl above me, black, moonless and full of winking fairy lights for stars. There would be no wind, but my boat would carry me across the smooth, dark waters. The only sound would be the lazy slap of water against the side of the boat. This calmed me somehow and I could close my eyes and rest. Because I was only sixteen when I got to prison, I was separated from the general population until I turned eighteen. After surviving the first terrible weeks, I suddenly realized that I didn’t needed my boat anymore and I slept just fine.

Devin is looking up at me expectantly, waiting for me to tell her the first thing I want to do now that I’m free. “I want to see my mom and dad and my sister,” I tell her, biting back a sob. “I want to go home.”

I feel badly for much of what has happened, especially for what my actions have done to my sister. I’ve tried to apologize, tried to make things right, but it hasn’t been enough. Brynn still won’t have anything to do with me.

Brynn was fifteen at the time I was arrested and, well, uncomplicated. Or so I thought. Brynn never got mad, ever. It was like she could store her anger in a little box until it got so full it had nowhere to go and it morphed into sadness.

When we were kids, playing with our dolls, I would grab the one with the creamy, unblemished face and the smooth, untangled hair, leaving Brynn with the doll that had a mustache drawn on with a permanent marker, the one with ratty hair that had been cut with dull scissors.

Brynn never seemed to mind. I could have swiped the new doll right out of her hands and the expression on her face wouldn’t change. She’d just pick up the sad, broken-looking doll and cradle it in her arms like it was her first choice. I used to be able to get Brynn to do anything for me—take out the garbage, vacuum when it was my turn.

Looking back, there were signs, little chinks in Brynn’s easygoing personality that were almost impossible to deduce, but when I watched quietly I saw them. And I chose to ignore them.

With her fingers, she would pluck the fine, dark hair from her arms one by one until the skin was red and raw. She would do it absentmindedly, unaware of how odd she looked. Once her arms were hairless, she started in on her eyebrows. Pulling and plucking. To me she seemed to be trying to shed her own skin. Our mother noticed Brynn’s eyebrows getting thinner and thinner and she tried everything to get her to stop. Whenever Brynn’s hand moved toward her face, our mother’s hand would fly out and slap it away. “Do you want to look strange, Brynn?” she would ask. “Is that what you want? For all the other little girls to laugh at you?”

Brynn stopped pulling out her eyebrows, but she found other ways to punish herself. She gnawed her fingernails to the quick, bit the insides of her cheeks, scratched and picked at sores and scabs until they festered.

We are complete opposites. Yin and yang. Where I am tall and solid, Brynn is smaller and delicate. I’m a big sturdy sunflower, always turning my face to the sun, and Brynn is prairie smoke, wispy and indistinct, head down, nodding with the breeze. Though I never told her, I loved her more than anything or anyone else in the world. I took her for granted, assumed she would always be at my beck and call, assumed that she would always look up to me. But I don’t seem to exist to her anymore. I can’t blame her, really.

Letter after letter I wrote to Brynn, but she never wrote back to me. That has been the worst thing about prison. Now that I’m free, I can go to Brynn, I can make her see me, make her listen to me. That’s all I want. Ten minutes with her, then everything will be all right again.

As we get in the car and drive away from Cravenville, my stomach flips with excitement and fear. I see Devin hesitate. “Maybe we should stop somewhere and get something to eat first, then get you settled in at Gertrude House. After that, you can call your parents,” Devin says.

I don’t want to go to the halfway house. I’ll probably be the one convicted of the most heinous crime there—even a heroin-addicted prostitute arrested for armed robbery and murder would get more compassion than I ever will. It makes much more sense for me to stay with my parents, in the home where I grew up, where I have some good memories. Even though a terrible thing happened there, it’s where I should be, at least for now.

But I can see the answer on Devin’s face. My parents don’t want to see me, don’t want anything to do with me, don’t want me to come home.

Brynn

I get Allison’s letters. Sometimes I wish that I could write back to her, go see her, act like a sister to her. But something always stops me. Grandma tells me I should talk to Allison, try to forgive her. But I can’t. It’s like something broke inside me that night five years ago. There was a time I would have given anything to be a real sister to Allison, to be close with her like we were when we were little. In my eyes, she could do anything. I was so proud of her, not jealous like people thought. I never wanted to be Allison; I just wanted to be myself, which no one, especially my parents, could understand.

Allison was the most amazing person I ever knew. She was smart, athletic, popular and beautiful. Everyone loved her, even though she wasn’t all that nice. She was never exactly mean to anyone, but she didn’t have to try to get people to like her. They just did. She moved through life so easily and all I could do was stand by and watch.

Before Allison became Linden Fall’s golden girl, before my parents had set all their hopes on her, before she stopped reaching out for my hand to let me know everything was going to be okay, Allison and I were inseparable. We were practically twins, though we didn’t look anything alike. Allison was—is—fourteen months older than I am. Tall with long, sleek, white-blond hair. She has silvery-blue eyes that could look right through you or make you feel as if you’re the only one who mattered, depending on her mood. I was small and plain, with wild hair the color of a dried-out oak leaf.

But at one time, it was as if we thought with the same mind. When Allison was five and I was four, we begged our parents to let us share a bedroom, even though our house had five bedrooms and we could have taken our pick. But we wanted to be together. When our mother finally said yes, we pushed our matching twin beds together and had our father hang yards of pale pink netting above our beds so we could draw it around us like a tent. Inside, we would spend hours playing cat’s cradle or looking at books together.

Our mother’s friends would gush over our relationship. “I don’t know how you do it,” they would say to her. “How did you manage to get your girls to get along so well?”

Our mother would smile proudly. “It’s all about teaching respect,” she explained in the snobby way she had. “We expect them to treat each other well and they do. And we feel it’s important that we spend a lot of time together as a family.”

Allison would just roll her eyes when my mother talked like this and I would hide a smile behind my hand. We did spend a lot of time together as a family—meaning, we were in the same room—but we never really talked to one another.

Allison was twelve when she decided to move out of our room into a bedroom of her own. I was devastated. “Why?” I asked. “Why do you want your own room?”

“I just do,” Allison said, brushing past me with an armload of clothes.

“You’re mad. What did I do?” I asked as I followed her into her new room, which was right next to the one we shared. The one that would be mine alone.

“Nothing, Brynn. You did nothing. I just want some privacy,” Allison said as she arranged her clothing in her new closet. “I’m just next door. It’s not like you’ll never see me again. Jesus, Brynn, you’re not going to cry, are you?”

“I’m not crying,” I answered, blinking back tears.

“Come on, then, help me move my bed,” she said, grabbing me by the arm and leading me back to our room. My room. As we pulled and shoved the mattress through the door and into the hallway, I knew that things would never be the same again. I watched as she arranged her school and athletic medals, trophies and ribbons around her new room and realized we were no longer anything alike. Allison was becoming more and more involved with her friends and extracurricular activities. She had been asked to join a very competitive traveling volleyball team. She spent nearly every free minute exercising, studying or reading. And all I wanted to do was be with Allison.

My parents had no sympathy for me. “Brynn,” my mother said. “Grow up. Of course Allison wants her own room. It would be strange if she didn’t.”

I always knew I was a little different from the other kids, but I never thought I was strange until my mother said this. I started looking at myself in the mirror to see if I could see the oddness that others saw in me. My brown curly hair, if not combed into surrender, would spring wildly around my head. What was left of my eyebrows formed short, thin commas above my brown eyes, giving me a constantly surprised expression. My nose was average—not too large, not too small. I knew that someday I would have very nice teeth, but when I was eleven they were imprisoned in braces, being forced into perfect alignment like straight-backed little soldiers lined up for duty. Except for my eyebrows, I didn’t think I looked very strange. I decided it must be what was inside of me that was so weird. I vowed to keep that part hidden. I stayed in the shadows, watching, never offering an opinion or an idea. Not that anyone ever asked. It was easy to fade into the background with Allison around.

That first night, sleeping by myself in our room, I cried. The room felt much too large for one person. It looked naked with my one small bookshelf and dresser, a few stuffed animals strewn around. I cried because the sister I loved didn’t seem to want me around anymore. She left me behind without a backward glance.

Until she was sixteen and finally needed me again.

I wasn’t even supposed to be at home that night. I was going to the movies with friends—until my mother found out that Nathan Canfield would be there, too. She would have none of that. He had gotten caught drinking or something and he wasn’t the kind of friend I should be associating with, she said. So I was forbidden to go out that night.

I often wonder how different my life would have been—all our lives would have been—if I had been sitting in some movie theater that night, eating popcorn with Nathan Canfield, instead of at home.

I don’t know what Allison looks like now. I imagine that life in prison isn’t helpful to keeping one’s good looks. Her once-high cheekbones could be hidden by mounds of fat, her long shiny hair could have turned frizzy and been cut short. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen Allison since the police came to take her away.

I miss my sister, the one who held my hand as I cried all the way into the classroom on my first day of kindergarten, the one who would help me study my spelling words until I knew them inside and out, the one who used to try to teach me to kick a soccer ball. I miss that Allison. The other one … not at all. I could go the rest of my life not seeing my sister again and I would be just fine with that. I went through hell after she went to jail. Now I finally feel like I have a home at my grandmother’s house. I have my friends, my classes, my grandmother, my animals, and that’s enough for me.

I’m afraid to find out how five years in prison have changed Allison. She has always been so beautiful and sure of herself. What if she isn’t that same girl who could stare down Jimmy Warren, the neighborhood bully? What if she isn’t the same girl who could run eight miles and then do one hundred sit-ups without breathing hard?

Or worse yet, what if she is the same? What if she hasn’t changed at all?

Allison

I don’t even think my sister knows that I’m being released from prison. Two years into my sentence, after she graduated from high school, she left home and moved two and a half hours north of Linden Falls to New Amery, where our dad grew up. She lives with our grandma. Last I heard, she was attending a community college there, studying something called Companion Animal Science. Brynn’s always loved animals. I’m glad she chose something that suits her. If my parents had their way, she’d slide into the vacancy I created and be in law school.

Brynn still won’t answer my letters or talk to me on the phone when I call her at Grandma’s house. I mean, I get it. I understand why she wants nothing to do with me. If I were in her shoes, I probably would have done the same thing. But I don’t think I could have stayed away from her this long. For five whole years, she has ignored me. I know I took her for granted, but I was just a kid. For how smart I was, I knew absolutely nothing. I understand the mistakes I made; I just don’t know how to bring my sister back to me, how to make her forgive me.

During the drive to Linden Falls, Devin and I don’t talk much but that’s okay. Devin wasn’t all that much older than I was when my parents hired her to represent me. Fresh out of law school, she came to Linden Falls because her college sweetheart grew up there and they were going to get married and open a law practice together. They never ended up getting married. He left, she stayed. If it wasn’t for Devin, I could have been in jail for much, much longer. I owe her a lot.

“You have a start at a whole new life, Allison,” Devin tells me as she merges onto the highway that crosses the Druid River and leads into Linden Falls. I nod but don’t say anything. I want to be excited, but mostly I feel scared. Driving into the town where I was born and grew up makes me feel dizzy, and I clasp my hands together to keep them from shaking. Waves of memories wash over me as we drive past the church we attended every Sunday, past my elementary school and past the high school that I never graduated from. “You okay?” Devin asks me again.

“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly, and I lean my head against the cool glass of the window. We continue on in silence, past St. Anne’s College where I met Christopher for the first time, past the street where we would turn if we were going to the house I grew up in, past the soccer complex where my team won the city championship three years in a row. “Stop,” I say suddenly. “Please, pull in here.” Devin steers her car into the soccer complex and parks next to a field where a group of young teenage girls are booting a soccer ball around. I climb from the car and watch on the sidelines for a few minutes. The girls are completely engrossed in the game. Their faces are red from the heat and their ponytails are drenched with sweat.

“Can I play?” I say. It comes out softly, shyly. It doesn’t sound like me at all. The girls don’t even notice me and continue on with their game. “Can I play?” I say again, this time more forcefully, and a short, solid girl with her brown hair pulled back in a headband stops and looks me up and down skeptically. “Just for a minute,” I say.

“Sure,” she answers, and trots after the ball.

I step cautiously onto the field. The grass is a deep emerald-green and I bend down to touch it. It is soft and wet from the earlier rainstorm. I begin to run, slowly at first, then I pick up the pace. I’ve tried to stay in shape while in jail, running laps inside the fenced courtyard, doing push-ups and sit-ups in my cell. But the soccer field is at least one hundred yards long and very quickly I become winded and have to stop. I bend over, hands on my knees, my muscles already aching.

The girls head back my way, their skin tan and healthy in comparison to my own white skin that has seen so little of the sun. Someone passes me the ball and everything comes back, the familiar feel of the ball between my feet, the instinct of knowing which way to move. I dart between the girls, dribbling and passing the ball down the field. For a minute I can forget that I’m a twenty-one-year-old ex-con whose life has already passed her by. A girl chips the ball to me and I weave in and out of the crowd of players and break away. With no cleats, I slip slightly in my cheap tennis shoes but quickly regain my balance. The midfield defender is approaching and I feint left, leaving her behind, and send a square pass to the girl with the headband. She launches the ball over the shoulder of the goalie and into the goal, and the girls erupt in celebration. For a minute I can imagine that I’m a thirteen-year-old, playing a pickup game with my friends, and I’m smiling and laughing, wiping the sweat from my forehead.

Then I look over and see Devin waiting patiently for me on the sidelines, an amused expression on her face. I must look silly, a grown woman dressed in khaki pants and polo shirt, playing soccer with a bunch of kids.

“You’re a natural,” Devin says as we walk back to her car.

“Yeah, a lot of good that does me now,” I answer with embarrassment, glad that my face is already red from my workout.

“You never know,” Devin responds. “Come on, we have a little bit of time left before they’re expecting us at Gertrude House. Let’s get something to eat.”

As Devin pulls up in front of the halfway house where I will be staying for the next six months, it begins to rain again. It is a huge Victorian, with peeling white paint, black shutters and a porch lined with white spindles. “I didn’t think it would be so big,” I say, looking up at the house. It would be scary if it weren’t for the beautifully landscaped front yard.

“It has six bedrooms, with two or three women to a room,” Devin explains. “You’ll really like Olene. She started Gertrude House about fifteen years ago. Her own daughter died after getting out of prison. Olene felt that if Trudy had had a place to go to after she was released from jail, a court-mandated place, she would still be alive today. So she opened Gertrude House as a way to try and educate women on how to live successfully after prison.”

“How did she die?” I ask as we get out of the car and walk to the front door.

“Trudy refused to move back home with her mother. Instead, she moved in with the boyfriend who’d got her hooked on drugs in the first place. She overdosed three days after she got out of jail. Olene found her.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so we move out of the rain and onto the porch in silence. Devin knocks on the front door and a woman of about sixty, wearing a shapeless denim dress, appears. She is slim, with closely cropped silver hair, and has tanned, leathery skin. She looks like a withered orange carrot left too long in the crisper.

“Devin!” she exclaims, wrapping her in a tight hug, her silver bracelets clinking against one another on her thin wrists.

“Hi, Olene,” Devin says with a laugh. “It’s always good to see you, too.”

“You must be Allison.” Olene releases Devin and takes my hand in hers. It is warm and her grip is strong. “It’s so nice to meet you,” she says in a low, gravelly voice. A smoker’s voice. “Welcome to Gertrude House.” Her green eyes never leave my face.

“Nice to meet you,” I answer, trying to meet her gaze.

“Well, come on in. I’ll give you the grand tour.” Olene steps into the foyer. I look at Devin, a flurry of panic rising in my chest, and she gives me an encouraging nod.

“I’ve got to get back to my office, Allison. I’ll give you a call tomorrow, okay?” She sees the worry in my face and leans in to hug me. Even though I keep my body rigid and tense, I am grateful for the touch. “Bye, Olene, and thank you,” Devin calls. To me, she says, “You hang in there. Everything is going to be okay. Call me if you need anything.”

“I’m fine,” I say, more to assure myself than Devin. “I’ll be fine.” I watch as she walks quickly down the porch steps and back to her car, off to live her life. That could have been me, I think. I could be wearing the gray suit, driving clients around in my expensive car. Instead, I’m carrying a backpack filled with everything I own and moving into a house with people who, in my other life, I would never give the time of day. I turn back to Olene. She is examining me carefully, a look of something I can’t quite identify on her face. Pity? Sadness? Remembering her daughter? I don’t know.

She clears her throat, a raspy, wet sound, and continues the tour. “We currently have ten residents staying here—eleven, now that you’ve joined us. You’ll be sharing a room with Bea. Nice woman. This used to be a library.” Olene nods toward a large, square room to the left. “We use it as our meeting room. We gather here every evening at seven. This is the dining room. Dinner’s at six sharp. Breakfast and lunch, you’re on your own. The kitchen is just through there—I’ll take you in when we’re done with the tour. Like most homes, the kitchen is the heart of Gertrude House.”

Olene is moving more quickly now and I have to focus on keeping up with her instead of stopping and taking in each of the rooms individually. After my plain prison cell, Gertrude House is an overwhelming assault on the senses. There are brightly painted walls, paintings and photos, furniture and knickknacks everywhere. Music is playing in a far-off corner of the house and I think I hear a baby crying. At my questioning look, Olene explains. “Family members can visit. You hear Kasey’s baby crying. Kasey is leaving us next week. Going back home to be with her husband and children.”

“Why is she here?” I ask as Olene leads me to what appears to be a family room.

“At Gertrude House, we don’t focus on one another’s crimes. We try to zero in on what we can do to make everyone’s lives better and try to help the other residents reach their goals. That said—” Olene acknowledges with a shake of her head “—word travels quickly around here and you’ll get to know one another quite well.”

I’m suddenly very tired and wonder if Olene will take me to my room soon. I just want to crawl under the covers and sleep. We pass a short, heavy woman with waist-length black hair and several piercings in her nose and lip. “Allison, this is Tabatha. Tabatha, this is Allison Glenn. She’s bunking with Bea.”

“I know who you are.” Tabatha smirks, tossing her hair over her shoulder as she lifts a large bucket filled with cleaning supplies. I never really thought I could keep the reason I was sent to jail a secret, but I would much rather have been known as the girl who stole cars or snorted coke or even been the one to whack her abusive husband than who I really am.

“Nice to meet you,” I say, and Tabatha gives a snort so loud I expect the force will cause one of her nose piercings to fly out and hit me on the chest. I think of my friend Katie and almost laugh. When we were fourteen, she got her naval pierced without her parents’ knowledge. By the time she showed it to me, it was oozing and infected. I tried to help her, but she was ticklish and started to squirm every time I went near her stomach. Brynn walked in while I was helping her clean it up and we couldn’t stop laughing. Every time Brynn and I saw someone with unusual piercings, we’d get the giggles.

I decide to ignore Tabatha and turn to Olene. “Are we allowed to use the phone here? Can I call my sister?”

Brynn

I hear the ring of the phone and my grandma calls, “I’ve got it!” A minute later she comes into the kitchen, where I’m making a sandwich. I see the look on my grandma’s face and I know this has something to do with Allison. “It’s your sister,” she says. Already I’m shaking my head back and forth. “Brynn, I think you should talk to her.”

My grandma is trying to sound stern, but I know she’ll never force me to speak to her. “No,” I say, and go back to spreading peanut butter on my bread.

“You’re going to have to talk to her sooner or later,” she says patiently. “I think you’ll feel better.”

“I don’t want to talk to her,” I say firmly. I can’t get angry with my grandma. I know she’s caught in the middle. She wants what’s best for the both of us.

“Brynn, if you don’t talk to her on the phone, don’t answer her letters, Allison is going to find another way.”

All of a sudden, it’s clear. I see it in her old, kind blue eyes. Allison is getting out of jail. For all I know, she might be out already.

My hands begin to shake and a glob of peanut butter drops from my knife to the floor. I’m afraid she is going to show up here unexpectedly. I’ll be in the backyard, training my German shepherd-chow mix, Milo, to walk past a treat without eating it and I’ll turn around and there she’ll be, looking at me. Waiting for the words that I know won’t come. What could I possibly have to say to her? What more could she say to me that she hasn’t already said in her letters? How many ways can someone say they’re sorry?

I bend down to wipe up the peanut butter with a paper towel, but Milo gets to it before I do. “I can’t talk to her.”

My grandmother presses her lips together and shakes her head in defeat. “Okay, I’ll go tell her. But, Brynn, you’re going to have to face her sometime.” I don’t answer, but follow her into the living room and watch as she picks up the phone.

“Allison?” My grandma’s voice trembles with emotion. “Brynn can’t come to the phone.” There’s a pause as she listens. “She’s doing great … just great …”

I can’t stand it anymore; I hurry back to the kitchen, grab my sandwich and leave out the back door to my car. Animals are so much easier to deal with than people. I learned that a long time ago. My parents never let me have a pet—too furry, too messy, too time-consuming. Every time I brought home strays, I would hope, pray, that they would let me keep them. Just once. I tried to spiff them up—I smoothed their tangled fur with an old comb, spritzed their fur with body spray, scrubbed their teeth with an old toothbrush. Ancient, arthritic mutts, one-eyed cats with notched ears. I would parade them in front of my parents. See how good he is? See how soft her fur is? See how tame, how sweet, how smart? See how lonely I am? Do you see? But no. No pets allowed. My dad would take me to drop the animal off at the shelter and every time I would cry and hold so tight to the animal that it would claw and scramble to get away from me.

My grandmother lets me have animals in her house, though she has drawn the line at five. We have two cats, a mynah bird, a guinea pig and Milo. Grandma said enough is enough, that she doesn’t want to turn into one of those dotty old cat ladies that animal control has to come out and visit.

I’m training Milo to be a therapy dog. He’s learning how to sit-stay or down-stay for thirty seconds and to come when he’s being called. Grandma is helping me to teach him how to sit quietly by, when two people are arguing. We make up silly fights about whose turn it is to take out the garbage or make dinner. I think Milo knows we’re not really serious; he just yawns and lies down and looks back and forth at us until we both start laughing. When we’re finished with the training I hope to be able to take Milo into nursing homes and hospitals. It’s a proven fact that animals are able to help ease pain and anxiety in the sick and elderly. One day I want to open my own business, training animals for pet therapy. For once in my life I’ve got a plan. A good one, for that matter. I don’t want anyone or anything to distract me from my goal. Not my parents and certainly not my sister.

If only Allison had done what she always did—made the right choice—things could have been so different. She wouldn’t have had to go away. Our parents would have been happy and I could have just faded into the background where I belong. But she didn’t. She screwed up royally, and she left me in that house alone with our parents.

I wasn’t the perfect girl like she was, and I never will be. Oh, but they tried. All through high school, it was pressure, pressure, pressure. Staying in that house, I couldn’t get my thoughts straight, couldn’t make a decision, couldn’t breathe. I tried to go to St. Anne’s College, tried to keep up with my classes, tried to make friends, but whenever I walked into the classroom a wave of panic would come over me. It always started in my ears, a strange buzzing sound that would trickle down my throat and out toward my fingertips, leaving them numb. My chest would tighten; I couldn’t catch my breath. The instructors and students would gawk at me and I would stare back until they seemed to melt before my eyes. Their ears would slide down their cheeks, their lips would dribble down their chins, until they were nothing but fleshy puddles.

It wasn’t until I swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills that I found in my mother’s medicine cabinet that my parents finally decided to leave me alone. They gladly sent me over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house with a suitcase and a prescription for an antidepressant.

Things feel right here. Grandma got me to go to a doctor; I took my medicine and it got me back on track. I’m doing fine. But I won’t talk to Allison. I can’t talk to her. It’s better this way. Better for her and better for me.

For once in her life, Allison got what she deserved.

Allison

I set the receiver back into its cradle, all the while knowing that Olene is watching me carefully with her quick, birdlike eyes. Once I get settled and find a job, one of the first things I’m going to buy is a cell phone so I can have a little privacy when I talk. I’m sure my parents would buy me a phone, but I don’t want my first interaction with them to be about money. Besides, I want to show them that I’m going to be okay, that I can take care of myself. I wonder if they are thinking about me right now. Secretly, I had hoped they would have been parked in front of Gertrude House to welcome me when I arrived.

Olene must be psychic, because she says, “Many of the residents have cell phones, but we have guidelines here that phones need to be turned off while doing chores or when we are having group sessions. We want to respect others’ need for quiet.”

Olene picks up where she left off with the tour. She leads me through the kitchen, where we will take turns making dinner, and to an octagonal room with a ceiling that extends above the second floor. This is where the residents watch television. A gray-haired woman wearing a waitress uniform is dozing on a sofa and a young, petite, dark-skinned woman is holding a toddler on her lap and singing softly to him in Spanish. The television is tuned to a soap opera, the volume muted.

“This is Flora and her son, Manalo,” Olene says in a whisper. “And that’s Martha.” Olene waves a hand toward the slumbering woman. Flora’s eyes narrow into suspicious slits and she gathers Manalo more closely to her. The little boy waves a chubby hand at us and grins.

“Nice to meet you,” I say.

Flora speaks rapidly to Olene in Spanish, her tone tight and hostile, and Olene responds back in Spanish, as well. I have the feeling that Olene is going to have to do a lot of talking to calm the other residents of Gertrude House when it comes to me.

“Let’s go on upstairs and I’ll show you your room,” Olene says, taking me by the elbow and steering me from the television room to the spiral staircase that leads to the bedrooms. I can feel Flora’s eyes on my back as I follow Olene up the steps. I’ve been here for all of twenty minutes and everyone already seems to know who I am and what I’ve done. I know I shouldn’t let it bother me so much, I had to deal with the same things in jail, but this seems different somehow.

“The expectation is that everyone takes an active role in the upkeep of the house,” Olene says, and I can see this is true. There isn’t a speck of dust anywhere and the floors gleam. Olene gently knocks on a closed door before opening it to reveal a small room with bunk beds and two small dressers. The beds are made up with blue and white floral comforters and thick, soft pillows. Another rush of exhaustion overtakes me and I want to go lie down. The walls are painted sky-blue and there are crisp, white curtains covering the windows. It’s a very peaceful room.

“Your roommate, Bea, is at work right now. She’ll be home in a few hours. Why don’t you unpack your things, get settled and I’ll come back in a little while and we can finish the orientation.” I look at the bunk beds and hesitate, wondering which one is mine. “You get the bottom bed,” Olene says. “Bea likes to sleep on the top bunk—she says that the bottom bed makes her feel claustrophobic.”

Olene pats me on the arm as she moves to leave the room. “Olene,” I say. She turns back to me, and I’m stricken by how kind her worn face is. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She smiles. “Get a little rest and holler if you need anything.”

My few belongings fit into one drawer of my bureau with room to spare. In a way, Gertrude House reminds me of the summer camp I attended when I was eleven. I share a room with bunk beds and, from what Olene has said, we follow a very specific schedule that is posted in the main gathering area. From the moment we wake up at five-thirty to lights out at ten-thirty, our day is filled with chores, and group sessions on everything from managing finances to anger management to mastering interview skills.

I sit on the lower bunk and bounce a bit. The springs are firm but giving. This feels like a real bed, not like Cravenville’s hard, institutional slab, with rough, scratchy sheets that smelled of bleach. I lift a fluffy pillow and bury my nose in it. It smells of lavender and I feel tears prick at my eyes. Maybe it won’t be so bad here. It couldn’t be any worse than jail. Maybe the other girls will learn to like me. Maybe my parents will forget about what the neighbors think and welcome me as their daughter again. And maybe, just maybe, Brynn will forgive me.

I inhale deeply one more time and lower the pillow from my face and that’s when I see it. Its blank eyes stare up at me and its smudged plastic face is frozen in a half smile. I pick up the baby doll. It’s old and battered and looks like it came out of a Dumpster. Across the doll’s bare chest is one word, slashed in black permanent marker, a word that I now know will follow me everywhere, no matter where I go. Killer.