Prologue
My hand fishes surreptitiously through my bag for my phone while a string quartet plays Albinoni’s “Adagio” and reduces everyone around me to tears. My throat is aching from the stress. I try to wring moisture out of dry eyes, judgment burning from all corners of the Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in Waverley, and I fight the urge to escape.
I simply cannot be here.
Shouldn’tbe here.
I don’t know these people. Not my mother-in-law, Gwendolyn, dabbing her eyes beside me in that careful way that prioritizes the integrity of your mascara over letting go of any real emotion. Not her husband, who hasn’t said a kind word to me since I woke up in the hospital a week ago. Not the Gucci suits fidgeting in the pews behind us, glancing at watches and mourning the passing of billable six-minute increments.
And not Oliver Roche. Gloriously good-looking, wildly successful commercial lawyer. Property investor. Philanthropist and taker of extravagant skiing holidays and European shopping trips, according to the “celebration of life” slideshow in which I am currently costarring on the big screen.
Love of my life, apparently.
Romantic evidence is blaring in polished, cinematic glory. There I am, growing up at warp speed beside him in thePowerPoint. He’s at his shiny best, all through school and university, on sports fields, at work, socially. I can’t help wondering what it would be like if the accident had claimed my life too, and these same people had to scramble together some sort of highlight reel aboutme.
A large teardrop diamond flashes on my left ring finger. Gwendolyn, urging me to wear it, frowning as though she couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t want to, said it wasn’t safe to leave the rings lying around at home. I try to feel grateful for it. For all of this. This luxurious life that Oliver and his family brought me into, even though I can’t imagine the steps I must have taken to get tangled up in it.
She looks my way for a second and I strive to squeeze out some sadness. If I concentrate really, really hard and bore the images into my brain of Oliver and me tapping champagne glasses at our engagement party, and the way he looks at me in that wedding photo—like I amthe worldto him—perhaps I’ll remember?
But as sunlight streams through stained-glass windows and bounces off the handles of the elaborate mahogany-and-brass coffin, roses trailing up the aisle Royal Wedding–style—every aspect of this showy farewell is another beacon of the kind of excess I loathe—I don’t feel anything. Except guilt that I am not the perfect widow.
My heart quickens as I imagine the lavish reception the Roches planned for afterward. It sounds like a Who’s Who of Sydney’s high society. I’ll be expected to make small talk with the kind of people I’ve only ever known from magazine covers and social pages while I continue, in vain, to search the room for Mum, Dad, and my best friend, Bree, who I desperately wish were here and who I’ve completely failed to reach. It’s asif I am dead too. Or trapped in some fever-induced nightmare from which I’m longing to wake up and can’t.
But there’s no fever. I’m not sick. And their inexplicable absence is snowballing even more panic—adrenaline coursing, nausea brewing, until I can’t take another second of this whole performance. Which brings me to my phone, the Uber I ordered during the Lord’s Prayer, and the fact that I am about to cause a major scene as I bolt out of here like some rebellious millennial runaway widow, straight through a throng of paparazzi outside the church. I’m about to hand them the scandal they all seem so breathless for …
1
One week earlier
Last night’s party is still throbbing in my head as I scramble awake, a tsunami of remorse crashing over me. Whatever I did that made me feel this horrendous, I willneverdo it again.
The worst part is, I don’t even recall having fun. But then, I’m a person who normally spends Saturday nights drinking raspberry tea and debating costuming inaccuracies in period dramas on Facebook. Not loving a wild party isn’t far off script.
I make the mistake of inching my head to the right. Pain shoots into my eye sockets and I want to die.Mypoor brain. Is it true that alcohol kills brain cells, or is that an urban myth? I don’t actually remember drinking last night. Certainly not enough to make the world feel this heinous.
Please don’t let me have been drugged.
I wish whoever owns that alarm would switch it off. Scratchy, starched sheets bunch into a ridge under my back. As I wriggle, the plastic mattress beneath me squelches, and the tube that’s sticking out of my hand pulls at my skin where the tape is stuck.
My eyes shoot open. Harsh fluorescent lights bounce off stark white walls around me. A tangle of cords and wires and an oxygen mask dangles where my thrifted scarf collection is meant to be draped romantically over the headboard with fairylights. Where is the framedPride and Prejudiceposter of Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth? Breanna says it is one of the many reasons I will never get a boyfriend. Admittedly, getting a boyfriend seems like the least of my problems right now …
I try to sit up. Pain sears across my chest, forcing me back against the bed. My mouth is so dry, I can’t even clear my throat as my heart pounds and the beeping from the machine beside me gallops. A blond nurse in blue scrubs and Crocs rushes over, presses buttons to silence it, and looks at me kindly.
“Hello, Evelyn,” she says, glancing at her watch. “I’m Liz.”
“Where am I?” My voice is groggy, like I’ve emerged from some sort of swamp. “I want my mum,” I squeak out. I sound like a five-year-old, gripped by separation anxiety at kindergarten. Liz places a gentle hand on my shoulder as I try to straighten my spine and act my age, but the pain makes me wince.
“You’re in Saint Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney. I’m afraid you’ve been in a car accident.”
Oh, God.Breanna …
Liz checks the tube sticking out of my hand, which trails past purple bruises on my wrist up to a bag of fluid hanging from a metal pole. My gaze travels from the drip and snags on an unfamiliar scar on my hand, just as my hair tumbles across my face. Dark. Is itcolored?
Who dyed my hair? I must have done it. Drunk. I take back that thing about wanting Mum. She’s going to kill me …
“Who was I with?” I ask. “In the car?” I can barely get the question out. What if Bree isdead? What if I killed her?
Liz signals to a doctor in the corridor, who looks like she belongs on the set ofDays of Our Livesinstead of in a frenzied emergency room. She sweeps into my cubicle, shunts bluepapery curtains closed for privacy, then stands at the end of my bed like the grim reaper.
