She Lies Alone: An utterly compelling psychological suspense novel, page 31
I imagined Phoebe’s dad was avoiding women with loose screws and crossed circuits, although a science-minded person like me couldn’t help but wonder if Scott Granger was the cause rather than the effect.
Phoebe moved her cup toward me. “What about you? How’s your husband? And Moose?”
“Everyone is good. Thanks for asking.” Despite the information Phoebe shared about the messed-up adults in her life, I got the feeling she was going to be okay. I checked my watch, a surge of panic rushing through me. “Actually, we have kind of a big night. I should probably get going soon.”
Phoebe leaned in. “What’s going on?”
“Just between you and me, we’ve been trying to adopt a baby from China for a while now. We’re on our second agency. There’s an important meeting tonight at our house. I need to make sure everything is organized and figure out what I’m going to wear. Get prepared, and all that.” I looked down, finding my empty cardboard cup crushed inside my hand.
“That’s really cool.” Phoebe dipped her head toward me, a sad smile curving across her lips. “Good luck, Mrs. Bryson. I think you’ll be a great mom.”
Epilogue
The jogger marched in place and pumped his arms, maintaining his cardio while he waited for the light to change. According to his smartwatch, he’d traveled 1.6 miles so far. He thought he’d gone further. A warm May breeze brushed against his cheek, the sun cracking through the puffy clouds. At the first break in traffic, he jogged across the road toward the grassy park, ignoring the red, flashing hand above the crosswalk. His breath felt labored, sweat dripping down his forehead. In recent weeks, he’d been running a different route through the neighborhoods, a route that bypassed the high school. Today, he’d left work early. His co-worker suggested this jogging path through the West Town Park.
A cramp stabbed at his side as he reached the far curb. Once safely on the asphalt path, he slowed his pace. He normally ran in the early morning, and the afternoon heat was affecting his endurance. His hands squeezed his sides as he walked along the path, his head tilting at a chirping songbird flitting overhead. He paused to listen. It had been a long winter.
“Ba, ba, ba.”
A different melody caught his ear. He turned toward the babbling, finding a woman sitting under a tree about twenty feet away. She propped a pudgy baby up on a colorful blanket while a black lab with worried eyes lay next to them.
The man couldn’t help but smile at the baby’s brown, saucer-shaped eyes, the plump legs, and shock of black hair. It seemed like only yesterday his son—now twenty-five and living in Seattle—had been the same age. Emboldened by the beautiful day and desperate for a break from his exercise, he angled closer to them. He stopped about six feet away, not wanting to alarm the woman or the dog.
“Beautiful day for the park,” he said between jagged breaths.
“Sure is.”
“Cute baby.”
The woman’s eyes sparkled. “Isn’t it funny how rolls of fat can look so cute on an infant, but not on an adult?”
The man chuckled, caught off guard by the woman’s humor. “How old?”
“Four months.”
The baby squealed and flapped her arms, patting a mat decorated with starfish and sea creatures. The infant’s skin was the color of milky tea, and her tiny mouth formed something close to a smile. A scar on her upper lip only made her more adorable.
“She looks very happy.”
The mother raised her eyebrows. “Maybe. Or it could be gas. She’s tricked me before.”
The man laughed in spite of himself. The cramp in his side had disappeared. The woman jiggled the baby.
Afraid of overstepping his boundaries, he raised his hand. “Enjoy your day.” He turned toward the path, ready to tackle the rest of his run.
“Say bye-bye, Elena.”
The man’s feet stopped, his heart lurching into his throat. Elena? A strange mixture of dread and exhilaration prickled through his veins as he remembered the dark morning on the soccer field a year and a half earlier. The body in the grass. The name on the lanyard. Elena. What were the odds? Panic expanded in his chest. He swung his head behind him as if he expected to see a ghost. No one was there. His feet staggered, the ground suddenly uneven beneath him.
“Are you okay, sir?”
It was the woman. She was leaning forward, her mouth opened in concern.
“Yes. Sorry.” He scratched an imaginary itch on his arm, a cold sweat erupting across his skin. “It’s just… your baby’s name reminded me of someone.”
The woman’s face sagged. “We named her after a friend.”
They locked eyes for a moment as an understanding passed between them. They were talking about the same person. The teacher he’d discovered on the soccer field had been this woman’s friend. He wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come out.
A fleeting cloud drew his gaze upward, the spring sun bursting through and embracing him. His chest flooded with warmth. He was overwhelmed. For the last eighteen months, Elena Mayfield’s pale and lifeless face had surfaced in his mind at unexpected times. He’d followed the investigation and attended her memorial but kept his emotions buried, ignoring his wife’s pleas to talk to a therapist. Now, a force bigger than himself surrounded him, a feeling of fate intervening. Something beyond his grasp had guided him here, offering closure to a wound he didn’t know was still open. Things had come full circle, one life remembered and another just beginning.
The baby let out a gleeful squeal.
He swallowed back the emotion building in his throat and nodded toward them, taking a mental picture of the mother and baby on a spring day.
“Take care, Elena.” He turned on his heel and sprinted all the way home.
Looking for another dark, compelling suspense novel from Laura Wolfe? Try Two Widows, and discover what secrets Beth is hiding when she arrives in Gloria’s small town…
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Two Widows
I’d grown desperate for company since the discovery of the dead woman in town.
Gloria is used to solitude. Widowed and still grieving her late husband, she spends her days with only her faded photographs for company. But when a young woman is murdered nearby, Gloria grows anxious. Living alone in an old farmhouse, surrounded by empty woods, there’s no one for miles who would hear her scream.
When freelance travel writer Beth arrives with her trailer to live on Gloria’s land, Gloria is relieved not to be alone. The police have no suspects in the murder and fearless Beth makes Gloria feel safe. Then Gloria discovers Beth is a widow too: the women become closer and begin to share their secrets.
But soon Gloria starts to wonder… what does she actually know about Beth? About what brought her to this isolated spot? About how her husband really died? Is it a coincidence that she’s arrived just as this small town has seen its first murder in decades?
Gloria thought that Beth had told her all her secrets. She was wrong.
An utterly compelling suspense novel that will have you hooked, Two Widows is a gripping thriller that will keep you up all night. Perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell, The Couple Next Door and The Woman in the Window.
Get it here!
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Books by Laura Wolfe
She Lies Alone
Two Widows
AVAILABLE IN AUDIO
Two Widows (Available in the UK and the US)
A Letter from Laura
Dear reader,
I want to say a huge thank you for choosing to read She Lies Alone. If you enjoyed it and want to keep up to date with all my latest releases, just sign up at the following link. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.
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I set She Lies Alone in a high school because I was intrigued by the unique culture, social structure, and set of rules in this contained environment. The idea that someone within the confined space of a school has murdered one of their own limits the suspects and serves to increase the tension and suspicion. I also wanted to show glimpses of the teachers’ and students’ lives outside of school. Which parts of them are the same? Which parts of themselves do they hide when surrounded by peers? How are the values of the community reflected in the school? Finally, the idea of writing an unreliable narrator has been itching at me for some time, and I saw the perfect opportunity with the lonely and disgruntled perfectionist, Amy.
She Lies Alone touches on the sensitive subject of depression, particularly in teens. Depression is a mental illness that affects millions. This disease has affected me personally, as well as members of my family. If you or someone you know suffers from depression, please find information and resources on the websites of the American Psychological Association (www.apa.org/helpcenter), The National Alliance on Mental Illness (www.nami.org), or an equivalent organization in your country.
I hope you loved She Lies Alone, and if you did, I would be very grateful if you could write a review. Reviews make such a difference in helping new readers discover one of my books for the first time.
I love hearing from my readers – you can get in touch on my Facebook page, Goodreads, Instagram, or my website.
Thanks,
Laura Wolfe
www.LauraWolfeBooks.com
Acknowledgments
So many people supported and assisted me in various ways along the journey of writing and publishing this book. First, I’d like to thank the incredible team at Bookouture, especially my editor, Hannah Bond, for recognizing the potential in my novel. Her insights into my story’s structure, pacing, and characters made the final version so much better. Thank you to those who read the early versions, or portions thereof, and provided valuable feedback or other inspiration and encouragement: Karina Board, Stephanie Bucklin, Libby Wamsley, Torrey Lewis, David Peterson, Lisa Richey, and Meredith Lovelace. Thank you to my parents, brother, sister, mother-in-law, and other extended family for supporting my books. I appreciate everyone who has taken the time to ask me, “How’s your writing going?” Most of all, I’d like to thank my kids, Brian and Kate, for always cheering for me and for finding creative ways to occupy themselves, so that I could have time to write, and my husband, JP, for supporting my writing. He read every version of this novel over the many months I spent writing and revising it, and I wouldn’t have made it to the end without his encouragement.
We – both author and publisher – hope you enjoyed this book. We believe that you can become a reader at any time in your life, but we’d love your help to give the next generation a head start.
Did you know that 9% of children don’t have a book of their own in their home, rising to 13% in disadvantaged families*? We’d like to try to change that by asking you to consider the role you could play in helping to build readers of the future.
We’d love you to get involved by sharing, borrowing, reading, buying or talking about a book with a child in your life and spreading the love of reading. We want to make sure the next generation continues to have access to books, wherever they come from.
Click HERE for a list of brilliant books to share with a child – as voted by Goodreads readers.
Thank you.
*As reported by the National Literacy Trust
Published by Bookouture in 2020
An imprint of Storyfire Ltd.
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
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Copyright © Laura Wolfe, 2020
Laura Wolfe has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-80019-006-1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Laura Wolfe, She Lies Alone: An utterly compelling psychological suspense novel
