Smoke
Authors: Catherine McKenzie
PRAISE FOR HIDDEN BY CATHERINE M
C
KENZIE
“[A] delicate, honest exploration of secrets, family, and the varied meanings of true love . . .”
—Booklist
“Sure to please her many fans and appeal to readers who enjoy women’s fiction with an element of suspense.”
—Library Journal
“McKenzie has written a compulsively readable novel about grief and infidelity with great insight and great heart. A truly engaging read.”
—H
EIDI
D
URROW
, author of
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
“Catherine McKenzie’s latest book may be her finest.
Hidden
explores the intersecting lives of a man, his wife, and a woman who may or may not be his mistress. Imaginatively constructed, filled with nail-biting tension and gracefully written,
Hidden
is a winner.”
—S
ARAH
P
EKKANEN
, author of
These Girls
and
Skipping a Beat
“What I love about this deft, intimate novel is that there are no angels or demons here, just adults—husbands, wives, mothers, fathers—leading complex, messy, very human lives. They all struggle to weigh desire against obligation, what they want against what is right. I found myself in the impossible, wonderful position of rooting for all of them—and of missing them when the book was over.”
—M
ARISA DE LOS
S
ANTOS
, author of
Belong to Me
and
Love Walked In
“A compelling novel that kept me turning pages at a breakneck speed. Heartbreakingly honest and real, Hidden is a wonderfully relatable tale.”
—T
RACEY
G
ARVIS
G
RAVES
, author of
On the Island
“Gripping, smart, beautifully written, Catherine McKenzie’s books are always a must read. Hidden should be at the top of your list.”
—A
LLIE
L
ARKIN
, author of
Stay
and
Why Can’t I Be You
“Catherine McKenzie breaks your heart in this story of two grief-stricken women mourning the same man. Hidden’s complex grace and page-turning sympathy left me satisfied through the very the last page.”
—R
ANDY
S
USAN
M
EYERS
, author of
The Murderer’s Daughters
and
The Comfort of Lies
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 Catherine McKenzie
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of
Amazon.com
, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503947214 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1503947211 (hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9781503945654 (paperback)
ISBN-10: 1503945650 (paperback)
Cover design by Kimberly Glyder Design
For my sister, Carolyn McKenzie Ring, who goes by Cam now, but will always be Cammy to me.
Contents
PROLOGUE Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
CHAPTER 5 You Take Sugar with That?
CHAPTER 8 Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner
CHAPTER 9 How a House Became a Home
CHAPTER 13 There’s Going to Be a Change of Plans
CHAPTER 18 I Know What You Did
CHAPTER 25 Fight Fire with Fire
CHAPTER 32 Way Over Yonder in a Minor Key
CHAPTER 36 All Through the Night
CHAPTER 40 I Know What You Did
CHAPTER 41 Flaws in the System
PROLOGUE
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Smoke.
Everything about it had always meant
away
to her, so now that she was safe at home, it was a smell that didn’t track.
But it was smoke she smelled—green campfire smoke—tugging at her consciousness, telling her to
wake up
,
wake up
,
wake up!
Elizabeth’s eyes opened. Ben was snoring softly beside her, out like the dead as he always was, and despite everything.
The tang of smoke was both stronger and fainter now that she was half-awake, and she wasn’t sure if she’d dreamt it. She knew she should get up to check, but she hesitated, like you do in the middle of the night when you think you might have left the oven on.
I should get up, you think, but maybe it’s nothing. I can fall back to sleep, take up my dream where I left off.
But no.
Something was on fire.
Something close, or something big.
Elizabeth’s feet hit the cold floor. She shivered through the pajamas she’d put on after she and Ben had finally decided they’d said enough for the night and climbed wearily into bed.
She followed the scent through the house, stopping to check that the smoke detectors were working. They were. They should be; she checked the batteries religiously with the change of season. She felt herself relax and then tense again. The fire wasn’t in the house, but it had to be close.
She stopped at the window at the end of the upstairs hall, scanning the horizon of jagged mountains until she saw it: a stack of smoke and heat wavering in the moonlight, racing up into the night, obscuring the stars.
She did a quick mental calculation as to distance and size, a computation she’d performed what felt like a thousand times before, and then went to wake Ben.
“Wake up,” she said, shaking his shoulder harder than she needed to. “There’s a fire.”
DAY ONE
From: Nelson County Emergency Services
Date: Tues, Sept. 2 at 2:32 A.M.
To: Undisclosed recipients
Re: Cooper Basin Fire Advisory
A fast-spreading ground fire has started at the edge of the Cooper Basin. Housing structures are threatened. Responding crews are clearing the area. Nelson County has issued an evacuation advisory for the entire Cooper Basin, and the area of West Nelson bounded by Oxford and Stephen Streets. Residents are advised to pack important papers and personal items and be ready to leave on short notice.
A temporary shelter is being established at Nelson Elementary. Classes are suspended for the day, and parents are asked to keep their children away from the school. Parents will be contacted directly by the administration regarding the resumption of studies and their location.
More information is available at www.nelsoncountyemergencyservices.com.
Further advisories will be issued as necessary.
CHAPTER 1
Houseguests
Elizabeth
We have a fight
—
Ben and I
—about where to go.
In fact, first we have a fight about whether we have to go anywhere at all.
“You’re freaking out for nothing,” Ben says when he’s shaken the sleep from his brain and understands that the fire isn’t in the house but I want to leave anyway.
“We’re in the evacuation area.”
I show him the e-mail I received from the county’s emergency services unit, my phone’s glow creating a halo around his face.
He reads it, slowly, meticulously. Doubting me, I can’t help but think, even when it’s clearly within my area of expertise.
“We’re in the evacuation
advisory
area,” he says as he hands me back the phone.
He’s right, but I know how quickly things can change, particularly in a year like this.
Look at how things have changed between us.
“Right,” I say. “As in, you’d be well advised to skedaddle before it’s too late.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“As if the fire cares what time it is? Please, Ben, will you . . . will you just this once let me have my way?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I don’t answer him. Instead, I start pulling clothes from the clean laundry basket where they’ve been sitting for days, neither of us taking responsibility. We’ve had this kind of standoff about a lot of things lately, communicating through the things not done, the words not said, our inaction as loud and grating as an unfixed faucet’s slow drip.
“Elizabeth? Hello?”
I shove the clothes into the backpack I use for my running stuff.
“I’m going. You want to stay? Fine. But I’m going.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll come. All right? I’m coming.”
I add some of his clothes to the bag. It smells faintly of sweat, but that probably isn’t the most important thing right now.
Ben shuffles to the dresser and puts on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. In the bathroom, he collects our toiletries, grabbing my face cream when I remind him.
We work silently for the next ten minutes, gathering laptops, closing windows, unplugging appliances. It’s only when we’re standing in the doorway, me balancing the plastic crate where I keep our in-case-of-emergency papers against my hip, that the obvious strikes us.
“Where are we going?” we ask simultaneously, then smile at one another the way we always do when we say the same thing in unison, though that almost never happens anymore.