PROLOGUE
Nothing ever happens in Brighton Hills. Well, nothing you can see, anyway. It all happens in whispers and behind closed doors: it swirls around in rumors and sideways glances, even though the surface is glossy and calm. Underneath, though, it’s filled with desperate women who turn their heads from their husbands’ affairs so they can keep their Gucci and Birkin, and dads are buying recreational coke from a high-school kid to get them through soul-stealing jobs they hate. It’s Abby Rosen, whose nanny stole her three-karat diamond to sell and replaced it with a cubic zirconia, and Abby never found out. It’s Martin Landry, who eloped with his seventeen-year-old stepdaughter. It’s a million stories like that that make up this lonely, unknowable place. Who knows what’s true? The people seem too beige and plastic to be that interesting, but something is indeed happening beneath the manicured facade. When you walk down the sidewalks of Brighton Hills, it’s green and tidy and...a lie. People are polite, and it’s always so quiet, but on this night, something very loud happened.
He just wanted to talk, but instead he found himself yelling, his voice choked with tears—he needed help. The rain fell in torrents, and the thunder forced him to scream over the noise, but he wasn’t trying to be threatening. It just sounded that way. As he stood in front of the car, dripping in the rain, he pleaded for understanding to the figure sitting inside it. He apologized for everything, but it wasn’t enough.
There was a gunshot, he thinks. Who shot it? He felt far away from himself and couldn’t piece together what was really happening.
All he could see were headlights in the darkness, suddenly coming toward him. The figure hit the accelerator, wheels howling against the wet pavement, barreling toward him. There was no time to run: it happened too fast. He felt the impossible weight of the bumper crash into his hip, and then he was flying, floating.
He hit the ground so hard his head didn’t even bounce. He felt his skull crack and soften, and then warm blood pooled around the base of his skull. He closed his eyes against the black rain on his face and told himself it would be okay, he wasn’t going to die. As the car pulled away, another must have passed as it pulled into the community, and he thought maybe he would be helped: he could be saved still, he was certain. The car stopped. It stopped to help him! Doors opened and closed, and he heard the voices of two people, a man and a woman.
“Oh, my God!” the female voice said. “Call—Oh, my—Jesus, call for help.” And just then the wail of sirens could be heard, blaring in their direction; he was sure they must be coming for him.
“Let’s get outta here!” the male voice said.
“What?” The woman kneeled next to Caleb, and he tried to reach out his hand but couldn’t make it move. The man pulled her away.
“Help is coming. We can’t be here,” he said. He could feel her hesitate but then sensed that she wasn’t there anymore. He heard the car pull away, and tears escaped the corners of his eyes, washed away by the rain. Had the gunshot made the neighbors call the police? They were probably coming. He waited, alone, the cold permeating his clothes and making him tremble.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, but before help could arrive, he was gone.
1
ONE YEAR LATER
PAIGE
Paige stands, watering her marigolds in the front yard and marveling at how ugly they are. The sweet-potato-orange flowers remind her of a couch from the 1970s, and she suddenly hates them. She crouches down, ready to rip them from their roots, wondering why she ever planted such an ugly thing next to her pristine Russian sage, and then the memory steals her breath. The church Mother’s Day picnic when Caleb was in the sixth grade. Some moron had let the potato salad sit too long in the sun, and Caleb got food poisoning. All the kids got to pick a flower plant to give to their moms, and even though Caleb was puking mayonnaise, he insisted on going over to pick his flower to give her. He was so proud to hand it to her in its little plastic pot, and she said they’d plant it in the yard and they’d always have his special marigolds to look at. How could she have forgotten?
She feels tears rise in her throat but swallows them down. Her dachshund, Christopher, waddles over and noses her arm: he always senses when she’s going to cry, which is almost all the time since Caleb died. She kisses his head and looks at her now-beautiful marigolds. She’s interrupted by the kid who delivers the newspaper as he rides his bike into the cul-de-sac and tosses a rolled-up paper, hitting little Christopher on his back.
“Are you a fucking psychopath?” Paige screams, jumping to her feet and hurling the paper back at the kid, which hitshimin the head and knocks him off his bike.
“What the hell is wrong with you, lady?” he yells back, scrambling to gather himself and pick up his bike.
“What’s wrong with me? You tried to kill my dog. Why don’t you watch what the fuck you’re doing?”
His face contorts, and he tries to pedal away, but Paige grabs the garden hose and sprays him down until he’s out of reach. “Little monster!” she yells after him.
Thirty minutes later, the police ring her doorbell, but Paige doesn’t answer. She sits in the back garden, drinking coffee out of a lopsided clay mug with the wordMomcarved into it by little fingers. She strokes Christopher’s head and examines the ivy climbing up the brick of the garage and wonders if it’s bad for the foundation. When she hears the ring again, she hollers at them.
“I’m not getting up for you people. If you need to talk to me, I’m back here.” She enjoys making them squeeze around the side of the house and hopes they rub up against the poison oak on their way.
“Morning, Mrs. Moretti,” one of the officers says. It’s the girl cop, Hernandez. Then the white guy chimes in. She hates him. Miller. Of course they sent Miller with his creepy mustache. He looks more like a child molester than a cop, she thinks. How does anyone take him seriously?
“We received a complaint,” he says.
“Oh, ya did, did ya? You guys actually looking into cases these days? Actually following up on shit?” Paige says, still petting the dog and not looking at them.
“You assaulted a fifteen-year-old? Come on.”
“Oh, I did no such thing,” she snaps.
Hernandez sits across from Paige. “You wanna tell us what did happen, then?”
“Are you planning on arresting me if I don’t?” she asks, and the two officers give each other a silent look she can’t read.
“His parents don’t want to press charges, so...”
