The Long Way Back, page 1
Praise for The Long Way Back
“For any parent, the most frightening nightmare is the disappearance of their child. In Nicole Baart’s extraordinary novel The Long Way Back, not only is a mother tortured by this terrible circumstance, but she also becomes a primary suspect. Baart writes with a poet’s eye for language and a storyteller’s gift for suspense. Readers already won over by Nicole Baart’s fine body of work will discover another sparkling gem, and new readers couldn’t find a better place to begin.”
—William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author of This Tender Land
“The Long Way Back is a beautifully written, atmospheric page-turner that brilliantly explores the complexities of the mother-daughter bond, finding it as fraught as it is profound.”
—Kimberly McCreight, New York Times bestselling author of A Good Marriage and Friends Like These
“In Nicole Baart’s gripping new thriller The Long Way Back, a mother creates a perfect Instagram life for herself and her teenage daughter, traveling the country while chronicling their adventures for legions of fans. But despite doing everything right, never posting her daughter’s face and never identifying their location until they’ve moved on, things go horribly wrong. Timely and provocative, Baart’s marvelously relatable characters and gifted storytelling take the reader on a wild and unexpected ride. I loved this book!”
—Karen Dionne, #1 internationally bestselling author of The Marsh King’s Daughter and The Wicked Sister
“Riveting and timely, The Long Way Back is not just an unforgettable mother-daughter thriller, it’s a deeply felt love story about the natural world. In beautiful prose, Nicole Baart has penned a novel that will stick with me for a very long time.”
—Jo Piazza, bestselling coauthor of We Are Not Like Them
“Nicole Baart is the queen of the family thriller! This tender, propulsive story reveals a heart-twisting understanding of human nature and the risks we take to get what we want. Timely and thought-provoking, this “turn the pages as fast as you can” cautionary tale about the danger of the spotlight and the steep price of privacy will surprise you and haunt you, even after the gasp-worthy conclusion. Baart crafts her mother-daughter suspense not only with soul and passion and stomach-churning tension—but also a deep and important wisdom. Book clubs rejoice: this is the novel for you!”
—Hank Phillippi Ryan, USA Today bestselling author
“In The Long Way Back, Baart achieves the nearly impossible feat—writing that is tense and propulsive as well as poetically rendered. A beautiful story about the fraught relationships between parents and their children, the tension between growing up and learning the difficult truths about the dangers of independence, The Long Way Back will have you turning pages late into the night and holding your breath until the final, emotional scenes. I absolutely loved it.”
—Danielle Girard, USA Today bestselling author
Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.
Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.
For all the free spirits, wild hearts, and brave explorers.
PART I Charlie
INSTAGRAM POST #1
I must be a mermaid,
I have no fear
of depths and
a great fear
of shallow living.
Anaïs Nin
[IMAGE CONTENTS: A raven-haired girl beneath a waterfall.]
It was a hollow caption, as empty and desolate as the husk of a seed. The photo had to be experienced, and Charlie felt sorry for anyone who couldn’t see Eva with the water cascading down her face and across her narrow shoulders. She was thirteen, sleek and plump, with a pointed nose, pointed chin, and two perfectly pointed ears that hinted at what she would one day be. Not pretty, per se—at least, not yet—but arresting, and made all the more extraordinary by the cold disdain in her sapphire eyes.
Incongruous. That’s what it was. The petal-soft blush of her full cheeks paired with the penetrating wisdom of her gaze. A child caught at the exact intersection between girl and woman.
“Mom,” Eva said, in the moment before Charlie snapped the picture, “don’t.”
But Charlie did. It was a moment of madness, of ferocious love, that disintegrated after the shutter snapped and Eva tumbled off the slippery rock, falling headlong beneath the foamy spray of the waterfall. There was laughter then, and Charlie carefully packed away her camera and dove in to join her daughter. But the moment was resurrected later, when the image lit up Charlie’s computer screen.
Without a doubt, the picture of Eva in the waterfall was the most powerful portrait that Charlie had ever taken. Eva was just turning, framed between a wall of greenish water on one side and slick, brown stone on the other. One slender hand was on the rock, and one hand was tangled in her long hair as she pushed damp curls out of her eyes. Before that, she had been posing. All artificial smiles and a self-conscious thrust to her jaw. But the last click of Charlie’s camera had captured a singular moment, an unexpected window into Eva’s soul. Something wild lived there, raw and untamed, a whole world contained in her eyes.
Charlie couldn’t print it, not something so intimate and vulnerable, but it also seemed cruel not to share. So she cropped it close—one shockingly blue eye, a wet ribbon of hair against the blade of her cheekbone, the sparkle of sunlit water—and showed it to Eva.
“That’s me?” She couldn’t suppress her grin, but tried by pinning her bottom lip between her teeth. “Wow, Mom. I mean, wow. Can we post it?”
Their Sutton Girls Instagram page had been the only thing Eva truly wanted for her thirteenth birthday. Allegedly, all the kids in her class were already on social media (age limits be damned), and Eva felt the pinch of isolation when they chatted over chicken nuggets in the school cafeteria about accounts they followed, funny memes they saw, and photo ops they were staging. It was obvious Eva thought that maybe this was her in. Still, Charlie couldn’t stomach the thought of her daughter online at such a young age, so they had compromised: The Sutton Girls. A joint account to chronicle their life as a little party of two. At first Eva had argued, but it was half-hearted, and in the end the very first photo they posted was the close-cropped waterfall shot. Eva found and carefully typed out the mermaid quote all by herself.
They only had a handful of followers (mostly family and friends), but the photo took on a life of its own. Strangers liked it and commented, put it in their stories and archived it for later. Charlie’s phone pinged incessantly with notifications until Eva showed her how to turn them off.
Somehow the picture garnered a hundred likes within the first day. It quickly blossomed to two hundred. Then, suddenly, a thousand. Friends of friends and members of their Duluth, Minnesota, community and total strangers who double-clicked and then expressed their deep appreciation by sharing to Stories and hitting Follow—hoping for more. By the time ten thousand people had liked their post, and there were more comments than Charlie or Eva could ever hope to keep up with, everything had changed. Even if they didn’t know it yet.
“I think we just went kind of viral,” Charlie said. “They’re calling you the Little Mermaid.”
One side of Eva’s mouth quirked in an abashed smile. “I know.” Then she giggled. “Does that make you Ursula?”
And Charlie started to sing: “You poor, unfortunate soul!”
Four Years Later…
CHAPTER 1
SATURDAY
Charlie is dreaming of mermaids.
Monsters of the deep. No wide-eyed, nubile princesses here. These mermaids are murderous and cold, grim with the flash of iron scales, sharp nails, a slash of razor teeth. Charlie can feel the bite of a powerful hand circling her wrist, a plume of liquid hair as it tangles around her neck. Then a sudden tug and she is drawn deeper still, drowning beneath the weight of leagues pressing down above her.
She can’t wait a second longer. Her lungs are pulsing with the need to breathe, and the gasp propels her right off the chilly vinyl bench.
It happens all at once: the understanding that she isn’t living a nightmare, that she is breathing and safe and dry, and that she is on Frank’s offshore fishing boat. Belowdecks, to be specific, in the little cabin with the long, matching seats and the tiny marine toilet behind a half-sized door. She can smell the lemony-chemical tang of the tank treatment layered beneath gasoline.
Still, the tendrils of the black dream cling—she feels wrong. Her elbow stings and she knows without looking that the traction tape she spread across the narrow floor so many years ago has scraped her skin. It’s a tangible hurt, easier to address than the malice of a nightmare, so she pulls her knees to her chest and leans against the bench to survey the damage. A patch of sanded skin, pink and already bubbling where the textured grips dug deep, but nothing a bandage won’t fix.
“Eva?” Charlie’s voice hitches. She swallows, stunned that her mouth can be so dry only moments after a potential drowning. But she wasn’t drowning, was she? And then she tastes it. “Dammit,” she groans, and covers her face with her hands.
How much did she have? A glass? Two? Surely not the whole bottle, because she can remember forcing the swollen cork back into the neck with at least half the wine still sloshing about inside.
“Eva?” Charlie tries again, regret curdling in her stomach. But of course Eva can’t hear her down here. The hatch door is shut. Maybe that’s for the best.
There’s no mirror in the pocket-sized bathroom, just a bucket with a toilet seat, but Charlie doesn’t need one anyway. She finger-combs her short waves into place and sweeps a bit of salve on her chapped lips. She hopes that Eva can’t see straight through her—that her eyes aren’t bloodshot, her skin isn’t sickly sweet with the scent of wine. How long has she been down here?
A wave of nausea rolls over her, but it has nothing to do with her being tipsy belowdecks on a fishing boat, and everything to do with shame.
Charlie sucks in a deep breath and takes the few stairs bent at the waist. The door isn’t latched, just resting against the T-Molding in a testament to the quiet day. She’s remembering now. The uncharacteristic sunshine as the temperatures in Landing soared to eighty in May. The siren call of still water in the man-made bay, pooling out into Lake Superior like spilled honey.
“Let’s go!” Eva had said, a spark in her eyes that Charlie hadn’t seen in forever. “Come on—take the boat out with me. Just the two of us.”
She hadn’t even paused to think. It was Eva’s idea, how could Charlie say no? The last few weeks had been exhausting, filled with drama and disagreements, and Charlie leapt at the opportunity for some (hopefully) fight-free time with her daughter. They slapped together ham sandwiches and snagged a half-eaten bag of baby carrots from the fridge. A couple of Frank’s famous peanut butter cookies rounded out their impromptu picnic. They forgot sunscreen, towels, and live bait. But Eva had remembered the old bottle of yellowing chardonnay that had been collecting dust on top of the refrigerator. They were supposed to be celebrating.
“Hey,” Charlie says now, pushing out into an unexpected dusk. A mere slice of sun is balanced at the edge of the horizon and a bank of purple clouds unfurl like a cape to the southwest. Storms rise from that corner of Minnesota, often fast and unpredictable, and Charlie makes some quick calculations to figure out how long it will take to get back to the harbor. A cold wind raises the hairs on her arms, and she opens her mouth to ask Eva to toss her a coat.
But the boat is empty.
Frank’s offshore fishing boat, the reliable, if run-down Summer Moon, is as bare and vacant as the miles and miles of lake surrounding her.
Charlie whips around to search the small crow’s nest above the cabin, but she already knows that Eva isn’t there. Her daughter hates the height, the tremulous climb up a flimsy ladder. Forget it if there’s even the hint of a breeze, and this wind is enough to clip the top off the small waves and send sprays of water against the side of the Summer Moon.
The boat trims aft and for a second Charlie loses her footing. Whether it’s the wine or the crush of her growing panic, she slams into the transom. Pain zings through her hip, but it only fuels her. There’s storage in the stern, insulated compartments for fish beneath the bench seats, and Charlie lunges for the hand loops, yanking off the lids with a stifled scream. It’s ludicrous to imagine that Eva might be hiding there—small as she is, a seventeen-year-old would never fit—but it’s all Charlie can think to do. Then she scours the inboard engine mount, crawls on her hands and knees to the helm, and touches every switch and dial as if there are clues hidden on the impassive faces of the Summer Moon’s tachometer and water temperature gauges. Nothing.
“Eva!” Charlie screams her name, the syllables fracturing apart as she scrambles port side and looks over. Gray water in a slow churn, white bubbles simmering across the surface. Starboard is the same. No life jacket, no flash of color, no telltale ripple.
“Eva! Eva! Evangeline!” She realizes she’s been shouting the entire time, her daughter’s name a howl ripped from her throat. It feels bloody and raw, but Charlie keeps yelling. “Eva!”
The wind swallows each word until it’s as if she never called at all. It’s hopeless, Charlie can feel that in every single bone, and it aches so much that she crumples to the deck. But just as quickly as she gives up, she galvanizes. She can just make out Split Rock Lighthouse along the southernmost edge of the western shore. They’re only a few miles out, but the sky is turning dark and threatening.
Charlie’s cell phone is in a waterproof compartment near the boat wheel, and she dives for it, scrabbling at the marine radio with her other hand. She’s two-fisting it, managing 911 on her cell with her left hand—only two wavering bars of service—while tapping channel 16 with her right. “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!” she shouts into both, her voice breaking. There’s a protocol she’s supposed to follow, a series of words and information to provide. But she can’t remember any of that right now.
“Help us!” Charlie cries. “We’re on the Summer Moon, and Eva… she’s gone!”
* * *
The boats come en masse, seemingly from every direction, their lights flickering over the growing swells. But by the time the first response boat is close enough to hail the Summer Moon over the intercom, Charlie is past the point of answering. She’s crouched on the floor of the fishing boat, still clutching her cell phone in one hand and the radio in the other. The dispatcher is shouting that help has arrived, but Charlie can’t acknowledge her. Or move.
Later, she won’t remember the firefighter carry or the treacherous few steps from the Summer Moon to the recovery platform of the coast guard responder. She won’t recall the cramped survivors’ compartment where she was wrapped in a Mylar blanket and handed a cup of coffee sweetened with three sugar packets. “It’ll help,” an EMT told her, but she choked on her first sip and couldn’t face another. Charlie won’t remember that Ted and Paula Shepherd were the first people on the scene, or that they hedged the Summer Moon like a warden keeping safe a wounded charge.
But when they pull into Stone Harbor and Charlie can see the familiar aquamarine boathouse beyond the three short rows of docks, she comes to as if she had fainted dead away and is suddenly, stunningly conscious. Against the EMT’s wishes, she goes to stand on the deck, arms curled tight against her body beneath the Mylar. Even in the growing dusk she can see they’re all there: Sue and Edith, the Russells, Weston all by himself because Thea gets her hair done on Saturdays. And Frank, standing at the end of the Summer Moon’s empty boat slip, a wooden chest with flaking green paint behind his bowed knees. When he sees her, he wavers, swaying as if the waves have somehow crested the breakwater and are slamming against the mooring poles.
Charlie can feel everything inside of her turn liquid at the sight of her foster father. They never made it official, Frank and Hattie were just granted temporary custody when her mother died, but “temporary” turned into the three years between Rosie’s death and Charlie’s eighteenth birthday. Frank Morrow is the closest thing to a father Charlie’s ever known. She can’t decide if she wants to throw herself into his arms or throw herself over the side of the boat and sink to the bottom of the bay. She ran away nearly twenty years ago and broke Frank’s heart. If he loses Eva—his unofficial granddaughter—now, it will be his absolute undoing.
Frank looks fragile from a distance—shoulders slumped, hair a scant tuft of white, hips so narrow his belt can nearly wrap twice around his waist—but Charlie’s heart doesn’t have room to contain his fear and grief, too. She turns away, but not before she sees him collapse. Thank God for the chest where they store extra life jackets, buoys, marine odds and ends. He lands on it, hard, and buries his face in his hands. He can’t be sure of anything, not yet. None of them can. And yet, Charlie knows that even the sight of her without her shadow, without Eva at her elbow, toothy smile flashing and arm held high in greeting, is unnerving enough to fill them all with dread.
The world is nothing at all without Eva in it.
INSTAGRAM POST #2
Just a couple of girls completely floored (get it?) that y’all liked our waterfall post.
