Where I Lost Her E-Book

T. Greenwood

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

How far would you go to save a child? Where I Lost Her follows one woman's journey through heartbreak and loss, as she searches for the truth about a missing little girl. Tess is visiting friends in rural Vermont when she is driving alone at night and sees a young, half-dressed toddler in the middle of the road, who then runs into the woods like a frightened deer. The entire town begins searching for the little girl. But there are no sightings, no other witnesses, no reports of missing children. As local police point out, Tess's imagination has played her false before. And yet Tess is compelled to keep looking, in a desperate effort to save the little girl she can't forget. A superbly crafted and suspenseful thriller, Where I Lost Her is a gripping, haunting novel from a remarkable storyteller. Eloquent, pacy and compelling, this is a book to be devoured whole - I couldn't put it down. - Sunday Independent (Ireland) Spellbinding. I loved everything about Where I Lost Her. - Mary Kubica, bestselling author of The Good Girl

Leseprobe

For Esmée

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

—from “The Stolen Child” by W. B. Yeats

Contents

Chapters

Acknowledgments

A Reading Group Guide

Outstanding Praise for the novels of T. Greenwood

About the Author

Also by T. Greenwood

Copyright

Guatemala City, 2007

Istand in the shadowed doorway, staring at the heavy wooden door. I feel the sweat trickling down my neck. The air is hot and fragrant, the smells unfamiliar. Strong. I think the sweetness comes from the jacaranda, those trees that stand sentry along this street, an explosion of violet petals. The pavement is littered with their castoffs, like purple confetti after a parade. The impossible beauty of all that color, the cloying sweetness, brings tears to my eyes. But there is another scent, lingering beneath. Tainting it. It smells like something burned. Like something spoiled.

The phone call came this morning, to the hotel, where we have been staying. Waiting. I have learned such tremendous patience in the last five years, though sometimes I worry the line between patience and foolishness is a thin one. I have been made a fool before. Believed promises. Paid dearly for my optimism and blind faith. And yet, trust is like an affliction. Hope overriding all sensibility. This has become my religion: my faith, like all other faiths, driven by the most simple and primitive, selfish want. Accompanied by a willful and necessary blindness.

Our lawyer said to come right away. She didn’t explain. I assume this means the adoption paperwork has come through, that everything has been finalized. That we are finally being offered passage from the purgatory of that hotel room with its rocking ceiling fan and stiff sheets, with the garbage smell that rises from the Dumpsters two stories below and the thin walls like placental membranes separating us from the other couple, who is also waiting. We see them in the dim hallway, at breakfast in thelittle café next to the hotel. They are from the Midwest, both of them tall and big and loud. We nod our unspoken acknowledgment to these, our fellow congregants, but we do not speak. And then, this morning, through these thin walls, we heard the sounds of their departure. The man’s husky voice, the woman’s exasperated huffs. And then the sound of a baby crying. Lying in that narrow bed, both of us were wide awake. Listening.

When the phone rang, I almost knocked it on the floor reaching for it. My heart fluttering like a bird inside my chest.

“You must come right away,” she said.

And now, here we stand at that doorway again. I have been here so many times now, it is as familiar as our own heavy door with its leadedglass window back in Brooklyn. I have studied the intricacies of it, the ornate carvings, the brass knocker shaped like a boar’s head. I know the hollow announcement the brass makes when it knocks against the wood.

“Wait,” you say.

And I can’t believe that you are asking me to wait even another moment. I stare at you in disbelief. But you just reach out and pluck one of those purple tissue paper petals from my hair. Smile. “Okay,” you say. “Go ahead.”

Lake Gormlaith, Vermont, June 2015

The girls.

I see the girls first, before the camp, before the lake even. As we drive the last stretch of the winding dirt road, through the dappled light, I can see them on the wide expanse of grass in front of Effie and Devin’s cabin. They are shadows at first, just silhouettes. Paper cutouts. But as we approach, they quickly come into focus. Sharpening.

They are both barefoot and beautiful. Plum, who is ten now, sits on the ground plucking dandelions, her long brown fingers nimbly weaving them into a chain. This is ten, I think: grass stains, nails bitten to the quick, scabby knees. Zu-Zu, who is thirteen, a dancer, pirouettes effortlessly across the grass. I am stunned, she is stunning: long legs, long neck, graceful hands. This is thirteen, I think: precipice, flight.

I turn to Jake, to see if he sees. I am so desperate for a moment of connection, to share a single glance imbued with something. Remorse? Regret? Sometimes it feels that he is so willful in his refusal to relinquish anything to me, even this: a single, goddamned moment of recognition. Even now. I just want him, for once, to feel what I feel. Instead, he stares straight ahead, navigates this last turn with his hands gripping the wheel, his eyes trained on the road. I don’t know why I persist. I don’t know how this could fix anything. I am alone now in this endless longing, the sole proprietor of this relentless ache. Maybe I always have been.