The Book of Someday
Read The Book of Someday Online
Authors: Dianne Dixon
Copyright © 2013 by Dianne Dixon
Cover and internal design © 2013 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Kelly Eismann
Front cover image © Elisabeth Ansley/Trevillion Images
Back cover image © Anton Oparin/Shutterstock
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dixon, Dianne.
The book of someday / Dianne Dixon.
pages cm
(hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Dreams—Fiction. 2. Self-realization—Fiction. 3. Secrets—Fiction. 4. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.I943B66 2013
813’.6—dc23
2013017019
Contents
Livvi: Los Angeles, California ~ 2012
AnnaLee: Glen Cove, Long Island ~ 1986
Livvi: Northern Dutchess County, New York ~ 2012
Micah: A Small Town in Kansas ~ 2012
AnnaLee: Glen Cove, Long Island ~ 1986
Livvi: Pasadena, California ~ 2012
Micah: Louisville, Kentucky ~ 2012
AnnaLee: Glen Cove, Long Island ~ 1986
Livvi: Flintridge, California ~ 2012
Micah: Louisville, Kentucky ~ 2012
AnnaLee: Glen Cove, Long Island ~ 1986
Livvi: Flintridge, California ~ 2012
Micah: Newport, Rhode Island ~ 2012
AnnaLee: Glen Cove, Long Island ~ 1986
Livvi: Rolling Hills Estates, California ~ 2012
Micah: Wiscasset, Maine ~ 2012
AnnaLee: Glen Cove, Long Island ~ 1986
Livvi: Pasadena, California ~ 2012
Micah: Boston, Massachusetts ~ 2012
AnnaLee: Glen Cove, Long Island ~ 1986
Livvi: Pasadena, California ~ 2012
Micah: Boston, Massachusetts ~ 2012
AnnaLee: Glen Cove, Long Island ~ 1986
Livvi: East Norwich, New York ~ 2012
Micah: Boston, Massachusetts ~ 2012
Jack: Glen Cove, Long Island ~ 1986
Livvi: East Norwich, New York ~ 2012
Micah: Boston, Massachusetts ~ 2012
Livvi: Kennedy Airport, New York ~ 2012
Jack: Passaic, New Jersey ~ 2012
A Conversation with the Author
Praise for
The Book of Someday
“Absolutely mesmerizing! Dianne Dixon’s
The Book of Someday
is packed with vivid storytelling and palpable emotion. This novel made me think of all the ‘somedays’ in my own life—the ones I dreamed about as a child, and the ones I’ve yet to add to my list.”
—Sarah Jio,
New York Times
bestselling
author of
Blackberry Winter
“In
The Book of Someday
, Dianne Dixon creates a spellbinding landscape, dictated by the haunted memories of a brilliant little girl. Dixon’s writing is both lush and restrained; she has a great gift for creating complex, absorbing characters. This is an exciting new writer, capable of creating a well-paced, emotional page-turner of the best kind.”
—Katie Crouch,
New York Times
bestselling
author of
Girls in Trucks
and
The Magnolia League
“I truly enjoyed this…Dianne’s writing flows through the pages, choosing perfect words to tie the emotions together.”
—Annie Philbrick, Bank Square Books,
Mystic, CT
“Dianne Dixon’s characters are secretive and flawed but warm and loving, and have much to teach us. Highly recommended.”
—Karen Briggs, Great Northern Books & Hobbies, Oscoda, MI
“A mesmerizing book that will keep you up all night.”
—Beth Carpenter, The Country Bookshop,
Southern Pines, NC
For Hank & Denise.
With love.
Traveller there is no road,
the way is made by walking.
—Antonio Machado
Prologue…Olivia
Her father. Shouting her name. “Olivia!” His footsteps falling loud and heavy on the wood of the floor.
Olivia. The soles of her feet pressed hard against the same wood floor. Feeling the vibration of his every step. As he’s circling, gaining momentum, coming closer to the place where she’s hiding. Fierce jolts rippling through her. Edged on one side with terror, on the other with hope.
The air in the living room, the air throughout the house, is cold. Stale with the wintry funk of blankets in need of a good washing. Sour with the odor of boiled cabbage. Musty with the papery scent of books. Books piled onto windowsills, sagging on shelves, stacked in cluttered doorways.
It is because Olivia is only nine years old, thin and small for her age, that she is fitting so neatly into this cramped space. Stuffed in like a cork in a bottle. Knees drawn up, arms wrapped tight around them, spine jammed flat against a few inches of living room wall. One elbow pushing into the cracked leather of an old armchair, the other pinned against the side of a wooden cabinet. The cabinet door—open. Pulled flush against the front of the armchair to create the fourth wall of her hiding place. Suffocatingly close. Fogged with her breath.
Again. Her father’s roaring shout: “Olivia!” This time not quite as near. And with a different quality. Something wild, slightly unhinged. And in the tender place at Olivia’s core, where fear is wedged against hope, there is the sensation of fire and snakes. And knives.
The chill from the wall at Olivia’s back is agonizing, shaking her with cold. She lowers her head—letting her hair fall across her arms and shoulders. Her hair, honey-blond, has never been cut. It’s extraordinarily long and thick. As it settles around her, Olivia feels its weight but no warmth. She whispers a single, angry word: “Stupid!” Last night she put a quilted bathrobe, and mittens, and her fleece-lined slippers at the foot of her bed. Then this morning, only minutes ago at first light, when she was running out of her room, she forgot them. She has come away unprotected, wearing only her nightgown.
Olivia’s shivering is making her teeth chatter. She’s worried about the noise. She bites down—trying to quiet it. And for a split second…absolute stillness. Then a flash of light. A thundering BANG. Searing pain. Her father’s fingers twisting deep into her hair. Knotting it into a handle, lifting her off the ground. Olivia is coming away from the floor with her knees to her chest, her arms still tightly wrapped around them.
She is momentarily airborne. Then she’s landing on her back, on the sofa. With the wind knocked out of her. Just for an instant something strange: as if time has stopped. Her father. Making a tiny hushed sound that sounds like, “Sorry.” The look in her father is bordering on terror. Then it’s gone. The look—and the terror. And he’s screaming: “What the hell? What the bloody hell?”
Calista. With her ink-black eyes and soap-white face. Rushing into the room, wailing: “How could you do such a hurtful thing? Knowing we’d be getting out of bed with the house quiet like death, and you nowhere to be found. Your poor father calling for you, and you not answering. Like you’d been taken or something!”
Olivia. Being dragged to her feet. By her father, gasping, gulping. As pale as paste except for the skin right above his cheekbones, which is blotchy red. “What the hell’s wrong with you? What in God’s name did you think you were doing?” The darkness in his eyes obliterating Olivia’s hope, leaving only her fear. She’s trying to make herself hold still but can’t. She’s shaking too hard. With the fear. And the cold. She’s barely able to breathe as she’s telling him: “I wanted to know…would you miss me if I was gone?”
But it’s not her father who’s swooping toward her, it’s Calista. Calista in her rumpled gray nightgown, wafting the smell of sleep-musk and sweat, saying: “Have you lost your mind? What kind of child even thinks of tormenting her parents with such a wicked prank?”
There is the sting of a slap on Olivia’s face as she answers: “You’re not my parent.”
“And for that,” Calista mutters, “I thank the Lord.”
Olivia only half-hears what Calista has said. Olivia’s focus is on her father, even though she’s trembling with the cold. Even though her eyes are watering from it. And she can barely see him. Even though she’s in terrible pain because he lifted her up by her hair and let her full weight dangle from her scalp, she cannot move away.
Olivia, too young to comprehend the concept of impossibility, remains at her father’s side. Trembling in her faded nightgown, gazing up at him. Longing for him to kneel and put his arms around her: to hold her close, the way a father in a storybook would. If the little girl he loved had been lost and now he had found her.
***
When her father turned and walked out—ashen and silent, his anger spent, his expression blank, hands hanging loose at his sides—Olivia came back upstairs. Cold. Sick with sadness.
She went to the end of her bed. Gathered up the quilted bathrobe, the mittens, and her fleece-lined slippers. And with her teeth chattering and her fingers blue, she put them away and wrapped herself in the blanket from her bed. Later, after she heard the thump and whoosh of the heat being turned on, she went into her closet to get dressed.
She is near her bedroom window now. Watching dawn give way to morning. She’s at the little pine table that serves as her school desk. Her books are in tidy stacks at one end and her pencils in orderly rows at the other. She’s wearing a beige sweater, brown corduroy pants, striped socks, and navy-blue sneakers. She is meticulously clean and neat. With the exception of the place at the crown of her head where her father’s fingers were dug in to lift her from the floor. There, her hair is wildly snarled. And she has no way to deal with it. Olivia’s hair hangs from her head to her hips in a massive, weighted curtain. Only the reach and strength of an adult can maneuver a brush from one end to the other.
Olivia is wondering what her punishment will be. Wondering whether or not she is going to be hit—and if she is, with what, and how hard. Her mouth is flooding with the taste of salt. Tears crowding every inch of her. Fat and hot. She’s afraid to let them go. Terrified of all the ways they could hurt her if they were to show themselves on the outside. Where other people could see them.
Olivia shifts her attention to the window—and her telescope. The view it provides is of rolling hills. Dormant vineyards, winter-bare. And a long, dusty road with a modest country house at the far end. A house that used to look exactly like Olivia’s, battered and brown, and has now been transformed. By a picket fence and banks of roses. By walls painted white, and a bright-red front door. By a family named Granger: a pretty mother, an amiable father, and two young children.
Olivia has never spoken to any of the Grangers. Never come close enough to touch their picket fence. Or hear the sound of their voices. Yet she hungers for them—yearns to be inside a house like theirs.