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“A tense, irresistible story.
Get settled in for a long night of reading,
because you won’t put this one down.”

SAMANTHA DOWNING

“Doering has done it again! Raw, dark, and explosive,
Confess to Me is an alluring and engrossing tale
of revenge and redemption.”

JENEVA ROSE

“Every word is woven with sinister foreboding.
Genius twists and winding paths lead to a shocking
ending you won’t see coming. A chilling read!”

SAMANTHA M. BAILEY

“Doering writes with exceptional authenticity
and imagination, delivering spellbinding plot twists.
I loved every moment spent with this story!”

WENDY WALKER

“Brilliant, vicious, and wildly compulsive.
A masterpiece of a thriller. Doering delivers a truly
menacing tale one elegant twist at a time.
You don't devour this book—it devours you.”

P.J. VERNON

“A thriller with the sharp and
smart voice you expect from Doering…
I am still reeling from the incredible twists
and shocking turns—do not miss Confess to Me.”

VANESSA LILLIE

Praise for She Lies Close

“An explosive, darkly comedic thriller
that belongs on every to-read list.
Scrupulously plotted… a live wire of a debut.”

MARY KUBICA

“I am gasping for breath–
what a terrific book. A masterclass
in voice, a psychological tour de force,
and one of the most original
stories I’ve ever read.”

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN

“Grabbed me from the first page and
wouldn’t let go. A fast-paced, taut,
psychological mind-bender that
hits all the right notes.”

D.J. PALMER

“The perfect blend of dark writing,
gripping characters and gasping twists
that will keep you reading late into the night.
Doering has knocked it out of the park.”

SHERRI SMITH

“A psychological thriller unlike any
you’ve read before. A perfect mixture of
chilling suspense and twisting family secrets.”

JAMIE FREVELETTI

“Doering’s wordsmithing is the
absolute gold standard
and leads readers to a stunner
of an ending.”

New York Journal of Books

Also by Sharon Doering

Also by Sharon Doering

She Lies Close

Title Page

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Dedication

For my mom and mother-in-law,

Both kind and generous and
nothing like the characters in my novels

Prologue

PROLOGUE

Rage spills like gasoline inside my head. I am volatile and combustible, igniting from the inside out. My breath comes fast.

What have I done?

I wipe my eyes with my palms, but that only makes my vision oilier.

I blink tears and blood away and hold out my hands, studying them as if they don’t belong to me. My knuckles are raw and shiny with blood. Some of it mine.

Overhead lights are bright electric white. A faucet is leaking, and the drips plunk into a rust-stained basin. Each drip scratches at my brain. Air smells of iron and flesh.

The bathroom stall door is swinging, and the lock, hanging broken, clicks against the door. On the filthy linoleum floor, a body lies curled in a fetal position. A tangle of hair, blood-smeared skin and clothes, the faint rise and fall of a shoulder. A soft moan.

Rage lingers, clinging to my hot skin like beads of moisture after a shower.

My love. I did it for you.

“The people who say these cases aren’t real, they’re naïve. Oh, if they could be a fly on the wall in my office.”

Doctor Clifford Paulson, PhD Psychology
Transcripts from the Sixth Annual Conference on
Adult Manifestations of Childhood Trauma

THE RADISSON PLAZA HOTEL, CINCINNATI, OHIO

1

1

HEATHER

I came back from the dead once in Hunther, Wisconsin.

Don’t prime your mind for rotting zombies or cottony, lavender-scented serenity. I didn’t watch the scene play out as I hovered, ghostly, above my dead body. And, strangely, there was no pain. Not that I remember anyway.

Because I died once, and it didn’t seem to be all that big of a deal, most of my life I’ve felt comfortable with death, maybe a little too comfortable.

If death were a woman, I’d welcome her into my house, tell her she could keep her shoes on, and share cheap Moscato over ice in plastic cups on my back porch. The best of friends.

My memory was screwy, sporadically deviant, but I’d pieced together the details of my brief death from my older siblings’ accounts—like taping together pieces of a letter that had been written and then torn.

We were an unlucky bunch, me and my siblings. Cursed, you might say. Only two out of five of us were alive now. Reaching adulthood for the Hornne kids was worse than a coin toss, a statistic that had fortified my intimacy with death.

Anyway, I was six, and it was an accident.

Six. That’s how old Emily is now.

*  *  *

We were driving there now, to Hunther. The four of us in the old Toyota RAV packed with luggage, boxes, too many snacks, and a fishing pole peeking up from the way back as if it were our strange pet. Trevor was driving. Emily in the back, bouncing her feet and talking to Trevor. He handed a Starburst back behind his seat, and she took it, neither of them mentioning the transaction. Across from Emily, Sawyer slouched against the window, earbuds in, hoodie pulled up, face hidden.

Hunther was going to be our new, temporary home.

Trevor’s mom was dying. Her oncologist had said, three months. Such a strange thing, a prognosis. An expiration date stamped on your forehead, everyone talking about you as if you were a tub of cottage cheese.

But that’s not exactly why we were all in the car. Trevor had wanted to care for his mother on his own, make trips back and forth between his mother’s house in Hunther, Wisconsin and our condo in Chicago. He hadn’t wanted to disrupt the kids’ school or my job at the clinic.

The reason we were all in the car was because I had insisted. “Let’s just rent a house near your mom. You’ll be close to her without all that driving back and forth.” It was true enough, but I had my own reasons I needed to be here.

We passed a green rectangular sign. Hunther, pop. 8,553.

No welcome sign, only the facts: where you were, and how many were there with you.

Trevor and I were both born in this outworn town, clunky with its scattering of uninspiring shops, wide open with allergen-spewing prairies and failing dairy farms, and stunning with its clear rock-bed river, edged by old forest, meandering through the town proper.

Trevor stayed in town until high school graduation. I was only six years old when my family moved to a neighboring state. And now, at thirty-seven, I was back.

“We’re getting close, guys,” Trevor said, excitement in his voice, as if this were a vacation.

“Take Me To The River” played at low volume on the radio—Al Green’s remastered version by Talking Heads, eerie and captivating. Trevor had magic radio fingers. Only good tunes when he drove.

We passed a strip of businesses. An auto shop called Doc Jerry’s, a stretch of pastel-painted, stand-alone motels in a gravel lot, a monster truck tire leaning against a wire fence, a resale furniture shop called Auntie’s Antiques, and a diner named Marjory’s Greasy Spoon and Donuts. All those personal names gave off a conspiratorial, fraternity feel. They were in the club, and you weren’t.

“I already put our sheets on the beds,” Trevor said. “There’s milk, coffee, and sandwich stuff in the fridge. Dishes in the cabinets. Your favorite mug too.”

He was looking for props. No harm in giving them. “Aw, that was nice of you,” I said, half sincere, half teasing. Which mug was he talking about? I didn’t have a favorite.

He glanced at me and smiled.

First thing anyone notices about Trevor: his wavy blond hair. The man had damn good hair. He kept it short enough, but his hair gave off a vibe—artsy musician or tough-guy hockey player, depending on the clothes he wore. His eye color was hard to pin down. They could look green, gray, or brown depending on the lighting. His eye color said, Hey, whatever you want, I can work with you, baby. His eye color matched his personality.

Emily and Sawyer both resembled their father. Both blond and breezy with chameleon eyes. His children, in every sense of the phrase. I was the oddball.

“I can’t wait to take you guys fishing,” Trevor said. “In the summer, when I was a kid, I’d wake up early to fish and I’d grill bluegill for breakfast.”

“Eww, Dad,” Emily said. “I am not eating a fish.”

“But you do eat fish,” he said, his tone cheerful. “We literally ate fish a few nights ago.”

“That’s different,” she said. “Wait, did you eat the eyeballs?”

With the sun warming the car, making me sleepy, I tuned out Emily’s questions and Trevor’s delightful answers.

Trevor was the high-voltage electric core of our family, the plasma ball with its brilliant neon light filaments, enchanting the kids, drawing them near, and rewarding their proximity with a pulsating, dancing light display.

He turned off Route 34 onto a hilly side road. I put my hand against my door and glanced back. Emily was wide-eyed and smiling out her window, still chatting about fish.

Sawyer didn’t look up. Probably sleeping. Poor Sawyer. He was not looking forward to high school here. He was supposed to be staying in Chicago with his birth mom, but plans had changed abruptly three days ago. He loved time with his dad and didn’t mind Emily and me, but still, as Sawyer had put it, “This was going to suck balls.”

This was also going to be an interesting experiment. The four of us had never lived together full-time. We usually got Sawyer on Wednesdays and every other weekend. The three of us were used to Sawyer moving in and out of our space like a ghost. Sometimes he was rattling chains and putting us on edge and sometimes he slipped our minds because he mostly wasn’t there and, when he was, he never left a mess. The kid was a minimalist. He didn’t have enough clothes to fill a dresser. Didn’t want them. All he needed was a toothbrush, deodorant, a pair of shoes, his phone, earbuds, and a charger.

“It’s hilly,” Emily said. “That’s so cool, Dad.” I hadn’t remembered hills. Maybe this pocket of Hunther was anomalous. Were we anywhere near my childhood home? I couldn’t recall the street name. It didn’t matter. I had no plans to visit that house.

“Yeah, Em,” Trevor said, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “We’re not far from Chicago, but it feels far away.”

“Like a different planet,” I said, my sarcasm thick.

Trevor laughed. He liked my grumpy humor.

“Here we are, guys. This is our street,” he said.

I read the street sign aloud. “Winding Way.”

“Now, remember guys, this is temporary,” he said, his voice rich and warm. “I didn’t rent this place for the house. I rented it for the yard.” He reached over and squeezed my knee. I laid my hand on his. “It backs up to the forest. We’re gonna see deer back there,” he said with the enthusiasm of a man who had “deer in the yard” on his bucket list. “There’s a path back there too, just beyond the trees.”

“Oh, no!” Emily’s high-pitched shriek broke the calm. “No. No. We have to go back,” she said, tears already swelling.

“What is it, Em?” I said.

“Quit it!” Sawyer screamed, yanking down his hood. “Don’t be such a baby.”

She cried harder, tears spilling fast.

“Sawyer, please,” I snapped, reaching back and touching her leg. “What is it, Emily?”

“I-I-I—” she cried.

Christ, spit it out, Em.

“I forgot Lucky!”

Her bear.

Oh, good God, what a relief. This was a problem I could solve. “No, Em. I packed her. We’ve got her.” I exhaled, my heart still hammering.

She calmed, still gulping air, her chest trembling and her cheeks shiny and wet.

“We are only a couple hours away from our condo,” I said. “If we forgot anything, Daddy can grab it on the way home from work.” Trevor worked an hour north of our condo in Chicago and an hour south of Hunther, Wisconsin.

“You can’t let her just scream like that.” Sawyer’s words ratcheted up the stress. His knee bounced frantically. Sometimes he barely talked, barely moved; other times he was like a coiled spring.

I cranked my head and tried to give Sawyer a pleading half-smile. “We’re all tired from the trip. Everyone needs to stretch their legs,” I said. “Please.”

He pulled his hood across his face, not interested in my bullshit. It was bullshit. We’d been in the car for two hours, not two days. Emily should be able to hold it together.

“There she blows, mateys. We’re here,” Trevor said, completely unfrazzled. He slowed and turned into the driveway, which was a long, asphalt incline up toward the house.

I gasped.

“You OK?” Trev said.

“Fine. I’m totally fine.”

It was one of those houses that had a face, and this one was mean. Over the garage-mouth were two windows with upside-down “V” awnings painted black and shaped like symmetrical arched eyebrows. Wood siding, painted tan. Not flesh-colored, but, Christ, close enough.

He parked, pulled the keys out of the ignition, and turned to me. “Should I show you the yard first?”

I laughed. “Is the inside that bad?”

He smiled and shrugged.

I stepped out, stretched, and walked across the driveway to the edge of the garage. Lifted my hand as a visor against the late August sun. The house was modest, but the yard was huge. It was probably five hundred feet to each house that planked ours. None of our neighbors were out. The backyard went on for a long walk, ending abruptly at a wall of forest.

Emily ran past me, toward the backyard. “Look at all this grass!” she shouted, delighted.

Trevor came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. “What do you think?”

I smiled and reached back to hold his hand. “I think she’s right. That’s a lot of grass to mow.” It was a good, wifely joke. Trevor gave my shoulders a loving squeeze. He liked it when I acted wifely. I peered over my shoulder. Sawyer leaned against the car, neck dropped, eyes on his phone.

My brow must have knitted because Trevor said, “Sixteen is a tricky age. He’ll be fine. This is only temporary.”

“If I had a quarter for every time you’ve said temporary,” I said, turning to him, smiling. “I already know it’s ugly in there, I don’t care. You know why?”

“Why?” His eyes lit. He liked games.

“Temporary.”

He smiled, but his eyes dimmed, no longer matching his smile. “You and the kids can go home at any time. Remember that. You guys don’t need to be here.”

I put my palm against his jaw and kissed him on the lips. He tasted like strawberry Starbursts. “Let’s go inside,” I said.

If I could go back, I would have gripped the backs of my arms tight enough to leave nail marks and warned myself, This place is poison.

If I could go back, I would have told myself, Get. Out. Leave the bedding and that favorite coffee mug, grab your people, and get out. Hunther is a diseased tree, its rotten seeds riding the wind to sprout plague in the dirt below your doorstep.

2

2

Trevor unlocked the door and we followed him in.

“Pew!” Emily laughed. “It smells funny in here.”

No humor in his voice, all sixteen-year-old irritability, Sawyer said, “Yeah, smells like old lady, wet dog, and a cigarette.” Was that old lady comment a dig about me? Sawyer could be sweet and cruel within the same conversation. He didn’t mean anything by it. Don’t paint yourself as the hated stepmother.

The foyer was tiny so we spilled into the parlor room. It was a vomit of warm colors. Three lemon-yellow walls. One hombre wall that faded from hot pink to orange to red. Ugly, disturbing, and brilliantly avant-garde. The couch was red, and the throw rug was orange and yellow with red bursting flowers. I felt energized and crazy and slightly nauseous. Maybe I would appreciate this room in the winter.

God help me, let us be back in Chicago by Christmas.

It was August, so that was likely.

A large vase sat on an end table. Em’s gonna break that by the week’s end. Where to put it? There were no high shelves or bookcases in here.

“So,” I said, trying to make a good, fun memory of this. “A smoking granny with wet hair?”

“Yep, that’s exactly what I was going for,” Trevor said, winking at me. “I said to myself, what we really need is a dirty, moist grandma.”

I smacked him playfully with the back of my hand.

“Let’s name her Moldy Mildred,” he said, scooping Emily up for a hug and a tickle. She beamed at him. Being swept into Trevor’s creative, energetic mind was like being picked as the audience member who got to join the circus for a show.

“Mildred?” she giggled. “That’s not even a name.”

“Sure, it is,” he said. “That’s what we were gonna name you.”

“Really?” she said, mind blown.

He touched her nose with his. “No.” He laughed, spun her, and plopped her down.

Sawyer said, “You could stab someone in this room, drag the body out, and no one would notice.”

“Mommy, did someone get killed in here?” Em asked, slipping her hand into mine.

“No, Emmy. Sawyer’s only joking. Sawyer, please be more careful with your words.”

Sawyer rolled his eyes and left the room.

“I’m going to grab some stuff from the car,” Trevor said. “Sawyer, come help me.” Trevor, bless his heart, was trying to redirect.

I moved through the first-floor rooms, Emily holding my hand. The house was dark. Lots of wood paneling. The family room had no windows. The windows in the living room and dining room were small, like they’d been put in as an afterthought. The kitchen wasn’t bad. The cabinets and décor were fifty years old, oak, but the kitchen lighting was cheery, and a quaint chandelier hung above a cozy table. You’re stretching. To borrow Sawyer’s phrase, this place “sucks balls.”

In Trevor’s defense, there was not an abundance of houses to rent. People didn’t pass through Hunther; they were born here and died here.

During our drive, Trevor had explained Hunther’s layout. There was an apartment building on the south side of town, a screw factory and a trailer park to the east, a brushstroke of old mansions on the northern tip, a handful of dairy farms to the west, and sprinkles of businesses and houses all over town. Hunther had two cemeteries, two churches, and two high schools—Hunther North and South. Trevor went to North and played third base on their varsity baseball team. Go Bobcats.

I remembered so little about this place. When you’re six years old, you have minimal interest in anything beyond the layout of your house and yard.

We’d visited Trevor’s parents over the years, but our visits lasted no more than a few hours and we took the same door-to-door route. We never strayed from our route, never stopped at a grocery store to pick up a forgotten ingredient, never stopped for ice-cream cones at the general store before we drove back to Chicago, never stopped at a park or scenic lookout. Trevor knew I wasn’t a fan of this place.

I opened the back door, and warm air seeped in. A faint low rumble simmered in the distance. Sounded like a train.

Trevor hustled into the room, carrying two boxes and holding the top one steady with his chin. As he set them down in the middle of the kitchen, Emily’s hand slipped from mine, and she wandered away.

“Are there train tracks nearby?” I said.

“I don’t think so,” he said, gazing at the backyard, blissful. “Hey, you want to pick up pizza for dinner?”

“Pizza sounds good.” My phone buzzed with a text. I pulled it out of my pocket, read the message, then deleted it.

“Who’s that?”

“Just a friend from work,” I lied.

“They miss you already?” he said, smiling. Damn handsome.

I smiled back. “I’ll probably—”

Something crashed in the parlor room. I rushed toward the sound of Emily crying, already knowing. The vase.

Broken shards on the floor. Emily stood in the middle of the mess, crying. It hadn’t taken her a week. Only fifteen minutes.

My reflex was to yell, but I squashed it. Trevor moved in and scooped her up. “It’s OK, kiddo. Anything hurt?” She shook her head, no longer crying.

He kissed her on the forehead and looked at me. “Hey, I’ve got an idea. Remember that pool I was telling you about? It’s supposed to be really nice. Why don’t you two go dig up your suits and check it out. Sawyer and I can unpack.”

I gave him a sincere smile. He was good to me. “Great idea. What do you think, Em?” I said, thinking our pool expedition might be an opportunity to hunt for information.

“At the first International meeting in Chicago, I listened to other doctors describe these cases. I remember thinking the cases were idiosyncratic and incredibly rare. It wasn’t too long after that I found my own patient.”

Doctor Clifford Paulson, PhD Psychology
Transcripts from the Sixth Annual Conference on
Adult Manifestations of Childhood Trauma

THE RADISSON PLAZA HOTEL, CINCINNATI, OHIO

3

3

The concrete edge of the pool snagged the ass of my swimsuit. It was two or three wears away from the garbage anyway, thinning to see-through. In the dim dressing room minutes ago, I had aimed my ass at the mirror and strained my neck over my shoulder. Could I see my butt crack? Faintly, yes.

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