The Other Mrs (ARC) Read online

  PRAISE FOR MARY KUBICA

  “Mary Kubica knows how to do thrillers.” — theSkimm

  “Kubica is a helluva storyteller.” — Kirkus Reviews

  “If you haven’t read Mary Kubica yet, you need to start right this

  minute.” —Lisa Scottoline

  “A page-turning whodunit.” —Ruth Ware

  “Chilling.” — Redbook

  “Lots of twists and turns…. Comparisons to Gone Girl and The Silent Wife are deserved.” — Huffington Post

  “Master of thrills [Mary Kubica] concocts the perfect suspense

  page-turner.” — BuzzFeed

  “Mary Kubica has a knack for crafting engrossing psychological

  thrillers.” — InStyle

  “Kubica [is] a writer of vise-like control.” — Chicago Tribune

  “Intricately wrought suspense.” — Vulture

  “[Kubica] practically has you holding your breath for all 300 pages.”

  — Bustle.com

  “A twisty roller-coaster ride.” —Lisa Gardner

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  Also by Mary Kubica

  The Good Girl

  Pretty Baby

  Don’t You Cry

  Every Last Lie

  When the Lights Go Out

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  THE OTHER MRS.

  Mary Kubica

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  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and

  destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the

  publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

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  ISBN-13: 978-0-7783-6911-0

  The Other Mrs.

  Copyright © 2020 by Mary Kyrychenko

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Park Row Books, 22 Adelaide St. West, 40th Floor, Toronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canada.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Enterprises Limited or its corporate affiliates. Trademarks indicated with a ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.

  For questions and comments about the quality of this book, please contact us at [email protected].

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  Printed in U.S.A.

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  For Michelle and Sara

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  THE OTHER MRS.

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  Sadie

  There’s something off about the house. Something that nags at

  me, makes me feel uneasy, though I don’t know what it is about

  the house that makes me feel this way. On the surface, it’s per-

  fectly idyllic, gray with a large covered porch, one that runs the

  full width of the house. It’s boxy and big, a foursquare farmhouse

  with windows aligned in rows, symmetrical in a way I find eye-

  pleasing. The street itself is charming, sloped and tree-covered,

  each house as lovely and well-kept as the next.

  On the surface, there’s nothing about the house that’s not

  to like. But I know better than to take things at face value. It

  doesn’t help that the day, like the house, is gray. If the sun were out maybe I’d feel differently.

  “That one,” I say to Will, pointing at it because it’s identical to the one in the picture that was given to Will from the executor

  of the estate. He’d flown in last week, to Portland, to take care

  of the official paperwork. Then he’d flown back, so we could

  drive here together. He hadn’t had time to see the house then.

  Will pauses, bringing the car to rest in the street. He and I

  lean forward in our seats at exactly the same time, taking it in,

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  as do the boys in the back seat. No one speaks, not at first, not

  until Tate blurts out that the house is gigantic—transposing his soft and his hard g’s as seven-year-olds have a tendency to do—

  and Will laughs, overjoyed that someone besides him can see

  the advantage of our move to Maine.

  The house is not gigantic, not really, but in comparison to a

  1,200-square-foot condo, it is, especially when it comes with its

  own yard. Tate has never had his own yard before.

  Will gently steps on the gas, easing the car into the driveway.

  Once in Park, we climb out—some more quickly than others,

  though the dogs are the quickest of all—stretching our legs,

  grateful, if for nothing else, to be done with the long drive.

  The air outside is different than what I’m used to, infused with

  the scent of damp earth, salty ocean, and the woodsy terrain. It

  smells nothing like home. The street is quiet in a way I didn’t

  like. An eerie quiet, an unsettling quiet, and at once I’m re-

  minded of the notion that there’s safety in numbers. That bad

  things are less likely to happen among crowds. There’s a mis-

  conception that rural living is better, safer than urban living,

  and yet it’s simply not true. Not when you take into account

  the disproportionate number of people living in cities, the in-

  adequate healthcare system in rural parts.

  I watch Will walk toward the porch steps, the dogs running

  along beside him, passing him up. He’s not reluctant like me.

  He struts as much as he walks, anxious to get inside and check

  things out. I feel resentful because of it, because I didn’t want

  to come.

  At the base of the steps he hesitates, aware only then that I’m

  not coming. He turns toward me, standing still next to the car,

  and asks, “Everything alright?” I don’t answer because I’m not

  sure if everything is alright.

  Tate goes dashing after Will, but fourteen-year-old Otto hov-

  ers like me, also reluctant. We’ve always been so much alike.

  “Sadie,” Will says, modifying his question, asking this time,

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  “Are you coming? It’s cold,” he says, a fact of which I was un-

  aware because of my focus on other thi
ngs, like how the trees

  around the house tower high enough to block the light. And

  how dangerously slick the steep street must be when it snows.

  A man stands up at the top of the hill, in his lawn with a rake

  in hand. He’s stopped raking and stands perched, watching me,

  I think. I raise a hand and wave, the neighborly thing to do.

  He doesn’t wave back. He turns away, goes back to raking. My

  gaze goes back to Will, who says nothing of the man. Surely he

  saw him as well as I did.

  “Come on,” Will says instead. He turns and climbs the steps

  with Tate beside him. “Let’s go inside,” he decides. At the front

  door, Will reaches into his pocket and pulls out the house keys.

  He knocks first, but he doesn’t wait to be let in. As Will un-

  locks the door and pushes it open, Otto moves away from me,

  leaving me behind. I go too, only because I don’t want to be

  left alone outside.

  Inside we discover that the house is old, with things like ma-

  hogany paneling, heavy drapery, tin ceilings, brown-and-forest-

  green walls. It smells musty. It’s dark, dreary.

  We crowd together in the entryway and assess the home, a

  traditional floor plan with the closed-in rooms. The furnish-

  ings are formal and unwelcoming.

  My attention gets lost on the curved legs of the dining room

  table. On the tarnished candelabra that sits on top of it. On the

  yellowing chair pads. I hardly see her standing at the top of

  the stairs. Were it not for the slightest bit of movement caught

  out of the corner of my eye, I might never have seen her. But

  there she stands, a morose figure dressed in black. Black jeans,

  a black shirt, bare feet. Her hair is black, long with bangs that

  slant sideways across her face. Her eyes are outlined in a thick

  slash of black eyeliner. Everything black, aside from the white

  lettering on her shirt, which reads, I want to die. The septum of 9780778369110_RHC_txt(ENT_ID=269160).indd 11

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  her nose is pierced. Her skin, in contrast to everything else, is

  white, pallid, ghostlike. She’s thin.

  Tate sees her too. At this, he moves from Will to me, hiding

  behind me, burrowing his face into my backside. It’s not like

  Tate to be scared. It’s not like me to be scared, and yet I’m well

  aware that the hairs on the nape of my neck now stand on end.

  “Hello,” I say, my voice weak.

  Will now sees her too. His eyes go to her, he says her name.

  He starts climbing the steps to her, and they creak under his

  feet, protesting our arrival. “Imogen,” he says with arms wide,

  expecting, I think, that she’ll fold herself into them and let him

  hold her. But she doesn’t because she’s sixteen and standing be-

  fore her is a man she hardly knows. I can’t fault her for this. And yet the brooding, melancholic girl was not what I’d imagined

  when we discovered we were given guardianship of a child.

  Her voice is acidic when she speaks, quiet—she doesn’t ever

  raise her voice, she doesn’t need to. The muted tone is much

  more unsettling than if she screamed. “Stay the fuck away from

  me,” she says coolly.

  She glowers down over the stair banister. My hands involun-

  tarily move behind me and to Tate’s ears. Will stops where he

  is. He lowers his arms. Will has seen her before, just last week

  when he came and met with the executor of the estate. It was

  then that he signed the papers and took physical possession of

  her, though arrangements had been made for her to stay with a

  friend while Will, the boys and I drove here.

  The girl asks, her voice angry, “Why’d you have to come?”

  Will tries to tell her—the answer is easy, for were it not for us,

  she’d likely have entered the foster care system until she turned

  eighteen, unless she was granted emancipation, which seemed

  unlikely at her age—but an answer is not what she wants. She

  turns away from him, disappearing into one of the second story

  rooms where we hear her futzing angrily with things. Will

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  makes a move to follow, but I say to him, “Give her time,” and

  he does.

  This girl is not the same as the little girl Will had shown

  us in the photograph. A happy-go-lucky freckled brunette of

  about six years old. This girl is different, much changed. The

  years have not been kind to her. She comes with the house, just

  another thing that’s been left to us in the will, mixed in with

  the house and the heirlooms, what assets remain in the bank.

  She’s sixteen, nearly able to be on her own—a moot point that

  I tried arguing, for certainly she had a friend or some other ac-

  quaintance who could take her in until she turned eighteen—

  but Will said no. With Alice dead, we were all that remained,

  her only family, though she and I were meeting just now for the

  first time. She needs to be with family, Will told me at the time, days ago only though it feels like weeks. A family who will love and care for her. She’s all alone, Sadie. My maternal instinct had kicked in then, thinking of this orphaned child all alone in the

  world, with no one but us.

  I hadn’t wanted to come. I’d argued that she should come to

  us. But there was so much more to consider, and so we came

  anyway, despite my reservations.

  I wonder now, and not for the first time this week, what kind

  of disastrous effect this change will have on our family. It can’t

  possibly be the fresh start Will so auspiciously believes it to be.

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  Sadie

  Seven Weeks Later…

  The siren woke us at some point in the middle of the night. I

  heard the scream of it. I saw the dazzling lights that streamed

  in the bedroom window as Will grabbed his glasses from the

  bedside table and sat up abruptly in bed, adjusting them on the

  bridge of his nose.

  “What’s that?” he asked, holding his breath, disoriented and

  confused, and I told him it was a siren. We sat hushed for a min-

  ute, listening as the wail drifted further away, quieting down

  but never going completely silent. We could hear it still, stopped

  somewhere just down the street from our home.

  “What do you think happened?” Will asked, and I thought

  only of the elderly couple on the block, the man who pushed his

  wife in a wheelchair up and down the street, though he could

  barely walk. They were both white-haired, wrinkled, his back

  curved like the hunchback of Notre Dame. He always looked

  tired to me, like maybe she was the one who should be doing

  the pushing. It didn’t help that our street was steep, a decline to the ocean below.

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  “The Nilssons,” Will and I said at the same time, and if there

  was a lack of empathy in our voices it’s because th
is is what is

  expected of older people. They get injured, sick; they die.

  “What time is it?” I asked Will, but by then he’d returned

  his glasses to the bedside table and said to me, “I don’t know,”

  as he pressed in closely and folded an arm around my waistline,

  and I felt the subconscious pull of my body from his.

  We fell back asleep that way, forgetting altogether about the

  siren that had snatched us from our dreams.

  In the morning I shower and get dressed, still tired from a

  fitful night. The boys are in the kitchen, eating breakfast. I hear the commotion downstairs as I step uneasily from the bedroom,

  a stranger in the home because of Imogen. Because Imogen has

  a way of making us feel unwelcome, even after all this time.

  I start to make my way down the hall. Imogen’s door is open

  a crack. She’s inside, which strikes me as odd because her door

  is never open when she’s inside. She doesn’t know that it’s open,

  that I’m in the hallway watching her. Her back is to me and

  she’s leaned into a mirror, tracing the lines of black eyeliner

  above her eyes.

  I peer through the crevice and into Imogen’s room. The

  walls are dark, tacked with images of artists and bands who look

  very much like her, with the long black hair and the black eyes,

  dressed in all black. A black gauzy thing hangs above her bed, a

  canopy of sorts. The bed is unmade, a dark gray pintuck duvet

  lying on the floor. The blackout curtains are pulled taut, keep-

  ing the light out. I think of vampires.

  Imogen finishes with the eyeliner. She snaps the cap on it,

  turns too fast and sees me before I have a chance to retreat. “What the fuck do you want?” she asks, the anger and the vulgarity of

  her question taking my breath away, though I don’t know why.

  It’s not as if it’s the first time she’s spoken to me this way. You’d think I might be used to it by now. Imogen scuttles so quickly to

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  the door that at first I think she’s going hit me, which she hasn’t ever done, but the speed of her movement and the look on her

  face make me think she might. I involuntarily flinch, moving

  backwards, and instead, she slams the door shut on me. I’m grate-

  ful for this, for getting the door slammed in my face as opposed

  to getting hit. The door misses my nose by an inch.