And yet Esther grew up believing it was her fault. She also grew up feeling like a piece of her was missing. Because of her, her sister was dead. The grief was hard to handle; she sought help, a psychologist in the city, the one whose business card I found: Thomas Nutting. He helped, but only ever a little bit, never enough. And the grief, it came and it went time and again, weighing Esther down. She couldn’t breathe. Until the day her mother admitted to her that Genevieve was never really dead. “She’d lied to me,” Esther says. “She lied to everyone. I could never forgive her for what she’d done.”
And Esther, who does everything one hundred and ten percent, decided to find Genevieve, and she did. She tells me she found her, about a year and a half ago. She located her on an adoption site online, and the two of them made plans to meet. What Esther imagined was a happy family reunion. She was filled with glee.
Instead, the reunion was suffused with blackmail and threats. Genevieve planned to expose their mother for what she’d done: the adoption, the cover-up, the abandonment. She started stalking her, calling her phone over and over and over again, though twice Esther had her number changed. Genevieve kept finding her. She showed up at her apartment door; she sent her letters. But Esther wouldn’t let it happen; she couldn’t be a part of exposing their mother no matter how upset she was. Genevieve said she wanted to be a happy little family, but Esther knew that could never be. And so Esther planned to disappear. She changed her name; she got a passport. She wanted to leave and begin somewhere new, a fresh start without her mother and Genevieve.
“I couldn’t just abandon you like that,” she says to me. “I didn’t want to leave you alone. The roommate,” she explains, “was for you.”
Esther was interviewing roommates to find the perfect one for me.
She wanted to make sure I was okay before she could leave. Now that sounds like something Esther would do.
“But then Genevieve began sending letters.” They were harmless at first, she says, but always odd. Most of them she threw away, not really thinking Genevieve had it in her to make good on the threats. Genevieve was screwed up, that much she knew, but she was sure she was simply an annoyance. Harmless. Until the letter came where she admitted to having killed Kelsey.
“Kelsey,” Esther says, and with this begins to cry. It was her fault, she believed, that Kelsey was dead. Dead by association. Kelsey hadn’t done a single thing wrong. “That’s when I knew I had to go to the police. This was out of my control. It had gone too far.” And she admits to me that maybe her mother wasn’t wrong, after all. Maybe she was right to get rid of Genevieve.
Saturday night, the night the last note arrived, she contacted Mrs. Budny to have the locks on our apartment door changed so that Genevieve couldn’t let herself inside and do something to harm me, too. Esther was trying to protect me. She called Detective Davies and told him they needed to meet; she had something to show him. The note.
And it’s in that moment that everything makes perfect sense.
That night after Esther locked the doors and climbed into bed, Genevieve rang the buzzer over and over and over again, and when Esther refused to answer, she appeared at her bedroom window and towed her away. “Either you come,” she told Esther as she dragged her down the fire escape, or she would hurt me, too. She had a photograph to prove it: me walking down a city street in my purple sweater, one Genevieve slipped into the paper shredder before they left. She’d been following me. Esther was trying to protect me.
Esther had no idea where they were headed, but she knew this: Genevieve was trying to pass herself off as Esther. “She was trying to be me,” she says, “in the hopes that our mother would love her more. You were always her favorite, she said, but how would I know? I was only a baby when she went away,” she cries.
For five long days and five nights Esther laid on that concrete floor, breathing through her nose because the gag in her mouth made it impossible for air to pass through. There can’t be two of us, now can there? Genevieve said before locking Esther in the storage facility. That would just be weird. And so Genevieve did away with Esther so that she could be Esther. EV. Esther Vaughan.
It’s then that Detective Robert Davies reappears with Esther’s cell phone in his hand. Esther’s cell phone, which he confiscated earlier for his techies to review. “It’s for you,” he says to Esther with a rigid, weary sort of smile, and asks if she feels up to taking the call. Esther nods her head weakly and, peering toward me, asks if I’ll hold the phone for her. “I’m tired,” she confesses, a disclosure which is plain to see. “I’m just so tired.”
“Of course,” I say, leaning in close, pressing the phone to Esther’s ear, close enough that I can hear every word that is exchanged over the call. It’s her mother, Esther’s mother, the one from which she’s been estranged all these years.
From Esther comes a great big sigh of relief at the sound of her mother’s voice, and then she begins to weep. “I thought I had lost you,” she says, and Esther’s mother, also crying, says the same. “I thought I had lost you, too.” Apologies are offered; promises are made. A clean sweep. A fresh start.
I don’t eavesdrop, not per se, and yet standing within hearing range, I gather this. After Genevieve locked Esther inside the storage facility, she sought their mother out. Esther’s mother and Genevieve’s mother. She threatened her; she told her Esther was dead. A boy from the neighborhood saved her, giving his own life for hers. “Alex Gallo,” she says. “Do you remember him?” Esther shakes her head; she doesn’t remember him. “He’s a hero—” I hear Esther’s mother’s voice through the phone, along with these conclusive words “—he saved me. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be dead.”
And then there’s an interlude—a brief interlude which is full of sobbing and grief—before she decisively says, “Genevieve will never bother us again,” for as it turns out, Genevieve will spend the rest of her life behind bars for a murder charge.
“We need to get her to the hospital,” the EMT says, and I nod my head okay. I pull the phone from Esther’s ear and tell the woman on the other end of the line that Esther will call her back just as soon as she can. I promise Esther that I will be there; I’m following right behind. She doesn’t have to do this alone. I’m here.
I return to Ben just as his cell phone begins to ring. It’s Priya. He draws the phone from his pocket and excuses himself to drift away to a quiet space where they can speak. Ben will soon leave, and when the police say that I can go, I’ll go, too. To the hospital to be with Esther.
I watch as Ben and Priya talk, feeling more alone than I’ve felt before, though I’m surrounded by all these people.
When Ben returns, I say to him, “You don’t need to stay with me,” and, while pointing at the phone in his hand, I say, “I’m sure Priya is expecting you.” His nod is slothful and listless.
Priya is indeed expecting him.
“Yeah,” he says, and again, a mundane, “Yeah. I should go,” he decides.
Priya has made dinner, he tells me. She’s waiting. But I don’t want him to leave. I want him to stay. Stay, I silently beg.
But Ben doesn’t stay.
He embraces me in a final hug, wrapping those snug arms around me in a way that swallows me whole, that warms me from the outside in. And then he stands just inches away and says to me, “Goodbye,” while I stare into his magnificent eyes, the five-o’clock shadow that now decorates his chin, the arresting smile.
But I wonder: Is it more of a Goodbye, my love, or a See ya later, pal?
Only time will tell, I suppose, as I say goodbye and watch as he goes, turning on his heels and drifting off toward the intersecting street.
But then just like that, he turns and comes back again and there—on the corner of the city street, surrounded by men and women in uniform, the gridlock of afternoon traffic, newscasters with cameras filming for the evening news??
?we kiss for the very first time.
Or maybe it’s the second.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from PRETTY BABY by Mary Kubica.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the brilliant editorial team of Erika Imranyi and Natalie Hallak, whose diligence and sage advice helped make this novel shine, and to my agent, Rachael Dillon Fried, whose tireless emotional support and encouragement kept me going.
Thank you to the dedicated Harlequin Books and HarperCollins teams for helping bring my novel out into the world, with special thanks to Emer Flounders for the incredible publicity, and to the wonderful people of Sanford Greenburger Associates.
Many thanks to the entire Kubica, Kyrychenko, Shemanek and Kahlenberg families, and to dear friends for all the support and constant reassurance: for helping care for my family when I couldn’t be there; for being the happy, smiling faces at my signing events; for driving hundreds of miles to hear me say the same thing again and again; for delivering bottles of wine when I needed them most; and for putting up with my forgetfulness and constant shortage of time. I can’t thank you enough for your love, your support and your patience.
And finally, to my husband, Pete, and my children, my very own Quinn and Alex, who inspire me every day. I couldn’t have done it without you.
“Thrilling and illuminating...[Pretty Baby] raises the ante on the genre and announces the welcome second coming of a talent well worth watching.”
—LA Times
If you enjoyed reading Don’t You Cry, then you’ll love these riveting and nail-biting thrillers by New York Times bestselling author Mary Kubica:
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Pretty Baby
by Mary Kubica
Heidi
The first time I see her, she is standing at the Fullerton Station, on the train platform, clutching an infant in her arms. She braces herself and the baby as the purple line express soars past and out to Linden. It’s the 8th of April, forty-eight degrees and raining. The rain lurches down from the sky, here, there and everywhere, the wind untamed and angry. A bad day for hair.
The girl is dressed in a pair of jeans, torn at the knee. Her coat is thin and nylon, an army green. She has no hood, no umbrella. She tucks her chin into the coat and stares straight ahead while the rain saturates her. Those around her cower beneath umbrellas, no one offering to share. The baby is quiet, stuffed inside the mother’s coat like a joey in a kangaroo pouch. Tufts of slimy pink fleece sneak out from the coat and I convince myself that the baby, sound asleep in what feels to me like utter bedlam—chilled to the bone, the thunderous sound of the “L” soaring past—is a girl.
There’s a suitcase beside her feet, vintage leather, brown and worn, beside a pair of lace-up boots, soaked thoroughly through.
She can’t be older than sixteen.
She’s thin. Malnourished, I tell myself, but maybe she’s just thin. Her clothes droop. Her jeans are baggy, her coat too big.
A CTA announcement signals a train approaching, and the brown line pulls into the station. A cluster of morning rush hour commuters crowd into the warmer, drier train, but the girl does not move. I hesitate for a moment—feeling the need to do something—but then board the train like the other do-nothings and, slinking into a seat, watch out the window as the doors close and we slide away, leaving the girl and her baby in the rain.
But she stays with me all day.
I ride the train into the Loop, to the Adams/Wabash Station, and inch my way out, down the steps and onto the waterlogged street below, into the acrid sewage smell that hovers at the corners of the city streets, where the pigeons amble along in staggering circles, beside garbage bins and homeless men and millions of city dwellers rushing from point A to point B in the rain.
I spend whole chunks of time—between meetings on adult literacy and GED preparation and tutoring a man from Mumbai in ESL—imagining the girl and child wasting the better part of the day on the train’s platform, watching the “L” come and go. I invent stories in my mind. The baby is colicky and only sleeps in flux. The vibration of approaching trains is the key to keeping the baby asleep. The woman’s umbrella—I picture it, bright red with flamboyant golden daisies—was manhandled by a great gust of wind, turned inside out, as they tend to do on days like this. It broke. The umbrella, the baby, the suitcase: it was more than her two arms could carry. Of course she couldn’t leave the baby behind. And the suitcase? What was inside that suitcase that was of more importance than an umbrella on a day like this? Maybe she stood there all day, waiting. Maybe she was waiting for an arrival rather than a departure. Or maybe she hopped on the red line seconds after the brown line disappeared from view.
When I come home that night, she’s gone. I don’t tell Chris about this because I know what he would say: who cares?
I help Zoe with her math homework at the kitchen table. Zoe says that she hates math. This comes as no surprise to me. These days Zoe hates most everything. She’s twelve. I can’t be certain, but I remember my “I hate everything” days coming much later than that: sixteen or seventeen. But these days everything comes sooner. I went to kindergarten to play, to learn my ABCs; Zoe went to kindergarten to learn to read, to become more technologically savvy than me. Boys and girls are entering puberty sooner, up to two years sooner in some cases, than my own generation. Ten-year-olds have cell phones; seven-and eight-year-old girls have breasts.
Chris eats dinner and then disappears to the office, as he always does, to pore over sleepy, coma-inducing spreadsheets until after Zoe and I have gone to bed.
* * *
The next day she’s there again. The girl. And again it’s raining. Only the second week of April, and already the meteorologists are predicting record rainfall for the month. The wettest April on record, they say. The day before, O’Hare reported 0.6 inches of rain for a single day. It’s begun to creep into basements, collect in the pleats of low-lying city streets. Airport flights have been cancelled and delayed. I remind myself, April showers bring May flowers, tuck myself into a creamy waterproof parka and sink my feet into a pair of rubber boots for the trek to work.
She wears the same torn jeans, the same army-green jacket, the same lace-up boots. The vin
tage suitcase rests beside her feet. She shivers in the raw air, the baby writhing and upset. She bounces the baby up and down, up and down, and I read her lips—shh. I hear women beside me, drinking their piping-hot coffee beneath oversize golf umbrellas: she shouldn’t have that baby outside. On a day like today? they sneer. What’s wrong with that girl? Where is the baby’s hat?
The purple line express soars past; the brown line rolls in and stops and the do-nothings file their way in like the moving products of an assembly line.
I linger, again, wanting to do something, but not wanting to seem intrusive or offensive. There’s a fine line between helpful and disrespectful, one which I don’t want to cross. There could be a million reasons why she’s standing with the suitcase, holding the baby in the rain, a million reasons other than the one nagging thought that dawdles at the back of my brain: she’s homeless.
I work with people who are often poverty stricken, mostly immigrants. Literacy statistics in Chicago are bleak. About a third of adults have a low level of literacy, which means they can’t fill out job applications. They can’t read directions or know which stop along the “L” track is theirs. They can’t help their children with their homework.
The faces of poverty are grim: elderly women curled into balls on benches in the city’s parks, their life’s worth pushed around in a shopping cart as they scavenge the garbage for food; men pressed against high-rise buildings on the coldest of January days, sound asleep, a cardboard sign leaned against their inert bodies: Please Help. Hungry. God Bless. The victims of poverty live in substandard housing, in dangerous neighborhoods; their food supply is inadequate at best; they often go hungry. They have little or no access to health care, to proper immunization; their children go to underfunded schools, develop behavioral problems, witness violence. They have a greater risk of engaging in sexual activity, among other things, at a young age and thus, the cycle repeats itself. Teenage girls give birth to infants with low birth weights, they have little access to health care, they cannot be properly immunized, the children get sick. They go hungry.