prologue

There are twelve slats of wood under my bed. I know this because I count them over and over. Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineteneleventwelve. I whisper the numbers to myself and the sound of it comforts me as I’m sure a prayer would comfort someone who believes in God. It’s amazing how loud a whisper can be. Surrounded down there by the white glow of my bed skirt, the sound of my own voice in my ears, I can almost block out the screaming, the horrible keening. And then there’s the silence, which is so much worse.

In the quiet, which falls like a sudden night, I can hear the beating of my own heart, feel it thudding in my chest. I lie very still, willing myself to sink into the pile of the carpet lower and lower until I don’t exist at all. There is movement downstairs. I hear the sound of something heavy scraping across the dining room floor. What is he doing?

I have come to this place before. Here, I have hidden from the frequent and terrible storms of my parents’ miserable marriage. And I have listened as their voices break through the thick walls and the heavy, closed doors. But usually I can only hear the angry cadence of their voices, and very rarely their words, which I know to be hateful and spiked with old hurts and bitter resentments. It is a poison in the air, a toxic cloud. Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineteneleventwelve. Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can break your heart.

Tonight it is different. My palms feel hot and sticky. I lift them up and look to see they are covered in blood, the lines on my hands in stark white relief against the red black. I am overcome by a panicked confusion. What happened? Already, it’s slipping from my grasp, the last few hours. I have a kind of amnesia when it comes to my parents’ battles. I try to forget them and often succeed. Everything okay at home? my teacher asked recently. Great, I said. Fine. And the surface me meant it, even though the deep and buried part knew it wasn’t true. I should have been sending up flares, instead I was offering smiles. I just wanted so badly for things to be normal. I had worked so hard for that.

Downstairs, my father issues a grunt of effort. What happened? I push hard into my own memory, but a big part of me is shutting down. I can see my own hand (clean) reaching for the front door, hear the hiss of the school bus moving away, and my friend Joelle knocking on her bus window. I turned to wave; she motioned for me to call her.

I had the familiar stone of dread in my chest as I pushed inside. My dad has been out of work, a journalist in the age of digital media. His department got smaller and smaller and smaller, until he, too, was called into the editor’s office. He kept a good outlook at first. But as the months turned into a year, his attitude grew ever more sour. And my parents were home together, all day long. I never knew what I was going to come home to, as they swung between poles of giddy optimism and bleak despair.

But when I open that door in my memory, it’s only a black tunnel that I see. Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineteneleventwelve. And now I hear my father’s footsteps. He is walking from the dining room, slow and steady down the hall. He pauses, as he always does, at the mirror. I hear the familiar creak on the bottom stair and then he’s climbing up, his footsteps heavy and weary. Halfway up, he stops. He says my name but I don’t answer. My whole body is quivering. I am in the tunnel, falling and falling, swirling and tumbling like when they put that anesthesia mask over your face and tell you to count backward from one hundred and you can’t make it even to ninety-eight.

He’s on the upstairs landing and walking toward my room. He says my name again, but I still don’t answer.

We have to talk. Don’t hide from me. There’s nowhere to hide from this.

And then he’s in my doorway. I can hear him breathing; it sounds like the ocean or the way my mother breathes when she’s practicing yoga on the back porch, or the wind through the leaves outside my window.

And then the screaming starts again, it slices through me. It takes me a second to realize that it’s not my mother screaming, it’s me, loud and long in all my fear and misery. My father drops to his knees and I see his face made strange and unrecognizable by all that has passed. Then he reaches under the bed for me.

PART ONE: lana

1

The winter day was gray and cool, not frigid as it had been. But still it was a very typical January day in upstate New York—barren, chill, flat. I rode my bike around the small, deserted campus, reveling in a quiet that is at its most total right before everyone returns from winter break. The trees were bare, twisted fingers reaching up into the thick, low cloud cover.

I had just returned to school from an unbearable holiday spent with my unbearable aunt and unbearable cousins. (And I know for a fact that they feel exactly the same way about me.) But we did bear up, because that’s what family does, isn’t it? We bear up, together, like it or not.

And so they tolerated the dark-haired, dark-eyed sulking interloper, a wraith in their sunny, golden-haired midst. And I tolerated their terrible happy togetherness. But I knew, and so did they, that I had not quite been folded in. I was a cockroach in the batter of their sweet lives. Too polite to remove me, they ate around me.

I can’t fault them, really. Because they are kind and good, and they took me in against all advice and good sense. And I do try to be polite, and they do, as well. And we are all very good at enduring unhappiness, especially my aunt, who had a great deal of practice early on.

I have created my life, she said, in one of the torturous heart-to-hearts she tried to have with me. And you’re smart enough to do the same.

She believes that, she really does. She thinks that we are made and not born, that it is the power of choice that forms our lives. With enough positive energy and good feng shui we can overcome almost anything. She’s one of those, the magical thinkers. I think I envy her, even if I can hardly suppress my disdain.

It was that time, with graduation right around the corner, when people wanted to know what you were going to do with your life. Graduate school seemed like a good bet, if for no other reason than it delayed my emergence from the freedom and indulgence of academics into the world of alarm clocks and ambition, and nine-to-five. I couldn’t see myself sitting in a cube somewhere—file cabinets and ringing phones, office birthday cakes and paper cuts. What was a psychology major fit for, if not for more education? The human mind, with all its mystery, bears endless study. Doesn’t it?

But if I hadn’t quite made any decisions on that front, I knew one thing. I needed a job. There was money for everything—for school and housing, for books and extras. My parents, whatever their failings, had made sure of it. There was an account, and I had a lawyer whom I called if I needed something: Skylar Lawrence, the man with the checkbook. He always sounded young on the phone, like a teenage girl. But he was old, ancient even—stooped and bald, draped in expensive suits, sporting gold-rimmed spectacles. He had known my parents for many years, and was the executor of my mother’s estate and manager of my trust. We’d met a couple of times over the years—solemn visits in his office, where he droned on about the status of my mother’s investments, budgets, conditions of the trust. I would sit, nodding sagely, with no idea what he was talking about, too shy to ask many questions.

When I thought of him, which was really only when I needed money, I always envisioned him dwarfed in his huge leather chair, with his stunning view of Manhattan spread about him like a glittering carpet. With a gnarled hand, he’d press a button and money would appear in my checking account. I know: a trust-fund baby, how annoying. Believe it, you wouldn’t want to be me.

During my last conversation with Sky, he suggested that I might find some work since my class schedule was light.

It would be a good thing for you, he said. I heard a sharp inhale and slow exhale. He was a smoker; there was an occasional edge to his otherwise youthful voice, sudden bursts of wet, rattling coughs. To earn something of your own.

Okay, I said. I always said that. It was my stock response when I didn’t know what to say.

Because you’re an adult now, he went on, as though I’d put up an argument. And you need to decide what you are going to make of your life. Earning your own way is part of that.

You sound like Aunt Bridgette.

I heard the hiss of a match lighting, and he drew in another breath sharply. I suppose it wasn’t a stretch to think that this was a scheme they’d hatched together. We choose who we are, she’d said over break, certainly not for the first time. And I could tell that it was important to her that I believe that. We don’t inherit everything.

Am I out of money or something? I asked.

Not yet, he said. But as you know, there is a period of diminished support after graduation. You won’t come into your trust until you’re thirty. It was your mother’s wish that you find your calling, and earn your own way.

Right, I said. Of course, I knew this. Both Sky and Bridgette had mentioned it repeatedly. But somehow it had always seemed so very far away, that time when I’d spread my wings and fly on my own. Here I was, on the edge of the academic nest and looking down. I had no idea whether I’d take to the air or crash into a pile of bones.

So, when you say ‘diminished support,’ you mean . . . ?

He told me the small yearly sum I would receive, just to help make ends meet and to provide for some extras should I have a low-paying job. Your mother wanted you to follow your dreams, make a difference. It was her hope that you’d help people. She didn’t want you to choose your career based on how much it paid, but she did want you to do something.

Of course, no one ever mentioned my father or what he wanted from me.

I know, I said. I will.

So, that first day back after my winding, solitary bike ride around campus, I walked to the office of student affairs to gaze at the job board. I was weirdly excited. I liked the idea of doing something other than studying, which I had been doing diligently for years. I had been the valedictorian of my high school class. I had a perfect 4.0 average at university. Knowledge and the regurgitation of such in the form of essay and exam came very easily to me. It was everything else that came hard.

Dog walker? Coffeehouse waitress? Bookstore clerk? Librarian assistant? Math tutor? The board was a colorful riot of help-wanted notices, and the possibilities seemed endless. The office assistant was typing behind me. Beside me the phone rang three times, went silent, then started ringing again. I ripped off little paper tags with phone numbers on them. I imagined myself tugged down the street by five dogs with bladders about to burst, or rushing between bistro tables delivering espressos to the undercaffeinated, or quietly filing homeless books, putting them in proper order. Is that what my mom would have wanted for me? Did these jobs qualify as helping people?

What about this one?

Startled from my reverie, I saw my psychology professor lingering nearby. He was looking at yet another board brimming with offers. So many people with menial needs, offering positions to those of us desperate for pocket money. It was a sub-economy: easy jobs for overprivileged youth. It seemed like an inside joke. While the larger economy faltered and the working poor labored tirelessly only to make ends meet, some of us drifted on a silly cloud, only asking to receive. Or maybe that’s just me being cynical.

I walked over to stand beside him. He was squinting through his glasses as he pulled a notice off the board and handed it to me.

‘Single mother looking for afternoon help with her eleven-year-old son,’ I read. ‘After school through dinner, some overnights.’

Should work with your schedule, he said easily. I had mentioned to him my need for a job before break and he’d promised to be on the lookout for something suitable.

In addition to being my teacher, he was also my school counselor. He’d come to the university shortly after I started. And we’d always walked the line of friendship, which was easier now that I was older.

Langdon Hewes was a study in propriety. We had only met in public places, or with the door to his office wide open. He was too young to be so cautious, but he hinted at having had some kind of negative past experience. And I didn’t pry—because I certainly didn’t want to talk about my past either. He ran a hand through the perpetual tousle of his dark hair, and looked down at me from his towering height.

Nanny? I said, skeptical.

More like babysitter, he said.

What’s the difference?

He shrugged, looked up. He had this way of searching the sky or the ceiling for his answers. He’d tilt his head up and squint into nothingness, as if it were all there in the ether, just waiting to be found.

Nannies are for little kids, he said finally. It’s more of a full-time position. Babysitting is, like, more casual, more as needed.

He said this with a firm nod that brooked no questioning. Even though he surely knew nothing about nannies or babysitters, I took him at his word. He did have a Ph.D. in child psychology, was the known expert in childhood psychopathy. He’d published several articles in major consumer magazines—including the New York Times Magazine, Psychology Today, Vanity Fair, as well as the ever-important academic journals. Publish or perish; it was no joke at this school. He was currently at work on a book, a collection of case studies that was, he hoped, a blend between a text and something more mainstream. So maybe his opinion on this topic counted for something. At least that’s what I told myself.

I held the ad in my hand. Unlike the other pink and green and yellow sheets, with their fun or fancy typefaces, this was just a plain white paper, with centered Times New Roman text. It offered nothing but its own simplicity. A need in black and white, waiting to be filled.

You only have three classes this term, he said. Mine, criminal psychology, and art. Light load. Never a good idea to have too much time on your hands.

I wouldn’t call him handsome, but there was something pleasant about his aspect. Even his slouch, his perfectly pressed oxfords and chinos (sometimes jeans), those Merrell cross-training shoes, had a kind of comforting predictability. With Langdon, there were never any surprises. My own inner life was always chaotic, churning. I wondered what it was like to be so even, so measured. His presence never failed to calm me.

I’ll be your reference.

I don’t have any babysitting experience.

You’re a psych major, he said. There was your internship at Fieldcrest. You were fabulous with the kids. He said this with a smile, as though it was a little private joke. You got an A in my class.

My work at Fieldcrest, a school associated with the university for troubled and emotionally challenged young people, had been intense, to say the least. I was pleased that he thought I’d done a good job there. It was the first time he’d said so out loud, even though the internship evaluation he’d written had been glowing. I shifted forward, closer to him, feeling a little jolt of excitement. There was something about the paper in my hand, about his being there, about the prospect of something new in my life.

I fished my phone from my backpack and dialed the number as we walked into his office. I sat across from his desk and he sat, spun to face his computer, and started typing.

My name is Lana Granger, I said when a woman answered. I’m answering your ad.

Oh, great, she said. She sounded slightly breathless. I heard paper rustling in the background. Can you come for an interview today?

Outside the window, it seemed like a ray of sun had broken through the cloud cover and I saw a little bit of blue in the sky for what seemed like the first time in months.

Uh, I said stupidly. I hadn’t expected things to progress so quickly. But why not? I guess when you needed a sitter, you really needed a sitter. I looked at my wrist only to realize that I wasn’t wearing a watch. I didn’t even own a watch. And I knew that I had nothing whatsoever to do that day anyway. Sure.

Perfect, she said. She sounded bright and cheerful; nice, I guess. After lunch, say twoish?

We made all the arrangements, exchanged necessary information like her address ( just a quick bike ride away from campus), her name (Rachel Kahn, son Luke), my phone number. After I hung up, Langdon turned to look at me. He had an odd expression on his face, something I couldn’t read. But he was like that, a total brain, his mind always working, figuring, developing theories.

Good work, he said.

I didn’t do anything, I answered. It was just a phone call.

Today is the beginning of your real life, he said. "This could be your first actual job."

I couldn’t tell if he was making fun of me in that sweet, gentle way that he had. But I found myself smiling at him. It did feel like kind of a big deal, and my stomach was a little fluttery with happiness. And I was glad I had him to share it with.

I’ll take you out to lunch to celebrate, he said. Let’s go get some pizza.

I thought about my aunt Bridgette, who is not really so unbearable. Seriously. It’s only that she’s not my mother. Though I know she cares for me, she doesn’t love me. Only a child who has lost a mother knows how yawning and uncrossable is the space between those two things. Just because horrible things have happened to you doesn’t mean you can’t have a happy, normal life, she’d said to me once. I had felt sorry for her, only because I suspected that she might be wrong. I was marked, wasn’t I? Forever? But for whatever silly reason as we left Langdon’s office, I let myself wonder if maybe she was right after all.

2

I could have gone to college anywhere. My grades and test scores, essays and recommendations, garnered me admissions to Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford. I’m not bragging. It’s totally true. But I just couldn’t see myself in any of those places. They seemed big and impersonal, and I imagined myself wandering in crowds of people, sitting in the back of stadium-size classrooms. I saw myself moving dark and small, unwanted, out of place among the world’s financial and intellectual elite like a raisin in the sun.

"But a degree from one of these schools is your ticket to anything, said my uncle in dismay. Your mother would have been so proud of you."

What he didn’t understand was that, at that point, I didn’t actually want to do anything. I just wanted to hide. I wanted to find a safe place and disappear inside it. I didn’t want to Achieve Great Things or Make Everyone Proud or Prove Them All Wrong. I just wanted to be left alone.

I chose Sacred Heart College in The Hollows, New York. And if everyone was disappointed that I had decided on a tiny but well-regarded liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere, no one was surprised. Everyone expected bad decisions and unpleasant outcomes from my side of the family, and this was the least of them.

The minute I stepped on the campus, small and isolated on 132 acres of land, I felt ensconced, secreted away. I wouldn’t be asked to do anything special here, I thought with relief. It wouldn’t be expected that I distinguish myself. This town, The Hollows, this school, would wrap themselves around me, and keep me safe. Just like I wanted. I was immediately accepted and I enrolled right away without a second thought.

New, gleaming buildings stood shoulder to shoulder with historic structures. A tall Norman tower stood at the center of the campus and loomed high as you pulled down the long, tree-lined drive up to campus. One was greeted on arrival by a rambling five-story colonial, which housed the president’s office and her staff. Students and faculty assembled there, in the grand foyer, for all parties and gatherings. There was a stone chapel where services were held. Alongside that, in the spring and summer, was an elaborate herb and vegetable garden. Because of the competitive equestrian team, there was also a stable of horses, as well as a small barn of animals—including laying hens and three milking cows.

Winding running paths laced through the acres of woods populated by oak and maple, sycamore and birch. The dormitory buildings—Evangeline, Dominica, Marianna, and Angelica—were four renovated Victorian-era mansions with barely a right angle between them. It was my dream of a college dorm, with curved baluster staircases, bay windows, restored woodwork. Imagine towers of bookshelves packed with leather-bound volumes, secret attic rooms, and tiny, winding back staircases. And yet we had high-speed wireless, cable, and laundry in the basement, all the modern conveniences.

The classroom buildings and library, science center, gymnasium, and a newer dorm building were all gleaming glass and stone. Built to coordinate in essence with the older buildings, they seemed to mesh with rather than oppose the existing structures.

There was a part of me that hoped never to leave the safety and isolation of a school campus. Certainly, I knew it was possible; Langdon never had. He’d done his undergraduate work at Boston University. Then went on to get his master’s and his Ph.D. in childhood psychology, as well as his postdoctoral certificate in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Now, he was a full tenured professor here at Sacred Heart.

It’s a life sentence, he always joked.

He also worked as a clinical psychologist at the nearby hospital, and with troubled children at Fieldcrest. Fieldcrest was a school where children went when no one else would take them anymore—bring me your bipolar, your ADHD, your raging, your callous-unemotional.

I’d done several internships with Langdon at the school—art therapy, some poetry with the least disturbed of the kids. I could see myself following his path. I could see myself helping people in a significant way doing something like that. And I made the mistake of saying so over Christmas break. The leaden silence that followed was almost a scream.

Oh, but, said my aunt with that strained smile she always seemed to wear when I was around. There are so many other things you could do.

I felt myself bristle. My cousin Rose was at FIT; she wanted to be a fashion designer. My other cousin Lily (I know. My aunt is really into gardening) was studying film at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. They were bright and creative and gorgeous, both of them, full of life and energy and promise. Maybe that was because my aunt had created her life, as she was so fond of saying, and my mother had most certainly not created hers. But I wasn’t Bridgette’s child, was I?

I want to help people, I said weakly. My mother wanted me to help people.

Your mother wanted you to be happy and free and safe, said Bridgette with uncommon passion. She was usually so careful with me, so gentle. I always wondered if she wasn’t a little afraid of me, of what she might see if she pushed me too hard.

I don’t know what that means, I said.

My uncle and my two cousins had drifted from the room, presumably to play with their new iPads. We’d all gotten one from Santa.

"It means that you don’t spend your whole life with psychopaths, she said. This time she nearly shouted. And then she covered her mouth and bowed her head, blond waves bouncing, diamonds glittering. I’m sorry."

The Christmas tree was glimmering, the fire crackling (even though we were in Florida with the a/c cranking—I mean, come on, the planet, people!). A low strain of classical music—Mozart, Beethoven, who knows?—was coming from the mounted speakers. We sat on chintz sofas, leaning against perfectly coordinated throw pillows. I caught sight of myself in the mirror, a slim black line with folded hands and furrowed brow, an ink stain on cream silk.

But what if . . . I started to say. I hadn’t voiced this thought to anyone. And I almost didn’t want to. She stared at me expectantly, eyes wide open and caring.

What if ? she said. She was eager to make a connection to me, always had been. It was I who pushed her away, rebuffing her with chilly politeness and icy platitudes.

"What if I could help someone? I said. What if I could keep someone from doing something horrible?"

We locked eyes—hers a deep blue, mine coal black. Each of us had endured horrors most people don’t allow themselves to imagine. And so when we looked at each other, we could hardly see through all of it. But I saw her that afternoon. I saw how frightened and sad she was at her core, and that all the prettiness with which she surrounded herself was a kind of armor. Behind it, a little girl’s heart beat fast with terror and grief.

Then you’re a stronger person than I am.

We both knew it was true, so I didn’t bother to argue. When I saw her start to cry, I moved beside her and put my arms around her and she kissed my head. We stayed like that for a while with nothing resolved between us.

Come with a purpose and find your path. That was the school motto, and I’d had it ringing in my ears since I’d returned from break. Not that babysitting was exactly my path. But, for whatever reason, as I rode my bike through the crisp air down the winding road that led out of the school, and onto the street that would take me to town, I felt infused with a new forward momentum.

Skylar was right; it felt good to seek to do something, whatever it was. If not for the job interview, I’d have been buried in a book or at the gym, killing time until classes started. My suite mates weren’t back yet, so I didn’t even have their various girl dramas to entertain me—boys, and who said what on Facebook, and Lana, can you write my essay for me?

The Kahns’ house stood white and pretty, a small colonial just off the square. People in The Hollows called this area Soho, short for south Hollows. There were wreaths with white lights and red bows in each window—the remnants of Christmas past—black shutters and a shiny, red door. My aunt would have no doubt reminded me that red was an auspicious color and that a red door meant opportunity in the world of feng shui. I thought about texting her, just to be nice. But then, of course, I didn’t. I walked up the gray-painted steps to the front door and used the brushed gold knocker in absence of a bell.

I waited a moment and listened to a lone bird singing in the tree above me. I looked up at him, a gray-and-black sparrow sitting on a branch.

What happened? I asked him. Why didn’t you fly south for the winter?

He whistled at me long and low, annoyed as if I’d asked an embarrassing question that he would be compelled to answer out of politeness. We count so much on politeness, those of us who are hiding things. We count on people not staring too long, or asking too many questions. Finally, after a brief standoff, he flew away.

Thirty seconds passed, then a minute. Wondering if I’d gotten the time wrong, I knocked again. Then I heard the staccato rhythm of heels on hardwood, and the door flew open. She was tiny and powerful, like a ballerina, with dark hair pulled back into a tight bun. Her pale face was a spotlight and I felt the sear of her assessing gaze just briefly before she smiled. Unconsciously, my shoulders slouched a little, arching my body away from her gaze, as I am prone to do under too