Guilt
Chapters (64)
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- CHAPTER1
- CHAPTER2
- CHAPTER3
- CHAPTER4
- CHAPTER5
- CHAPTER6
- CHAPTER7
- CHAPTER8
- CHAPTER9
- CHAPTER10
- CHAPTER11
- CHAPTER12
- CHAPTER13
- CHAPTER14
- CHAPTER15
- CHAPTER16
- CHAPTER17
- CHAPTER18
- CHAPTER19
- CHAPTER20
- CHAPTER21
- CHAPTER22
- CHAPTER23
- CHAPTER24
- CHAPTER25
- CHAPTER26
- CHAPTER27
- CHAPTER28
- CHAPTER29
- CHAPTER30
- CHAPTER31
- CHAPTER32
- CHAPTER33
- CHAPTER34
- CHAPTER35
- CHAPTER36
- CHAPTER37
- CHAPTER38
- CHAPTER39
- CHAPTER40
- CHAPTER41
- CHAPTER42
- CHAPTER43
- CHAPTER44
- CHAPTER45
- CHAPTER46
- CHAPTER47
- CHAPTER48
- CHAPTER49
- CHAPTER50
- CHAPTER51
- CHAPTER52
- CHAPTER53
- CHAPTER54
- CHAPTER55
- CHAPTER56
- CHAPTER57
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Books by Jonathan Kellerman
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Title Page
Copyright
Guilt is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Jonathan Kellerman
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-345-53881-9
Jacket art and design: Scott Biel
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
CHAPTER
1
All mine!
The house, the life growing inside her.
The husband.
Holly finished her fifth circuit of the back room that looked out to the yard. She paused for breath. The baby—Aimee—had started pushing against her diaphragm.
Since escrow had closed, Holly had done a hundred circuits, imagining. Loving every inch of the place despite the odors embedded in ninety-year-old plaster: cat pee, mildew, overripe vegetable soup. Old person.
In a few days the painting would begin and the aroma of fresh latex would bury all that, and cheerful colors would mask the discouraging gray-beige of Holly’s ten-room dream. Not counting bathrooms.
The house was a brick-faced Tudor on a quarter-acre lot at the southern edge of Cheviot Hills, built when construction was meant to last and adorned by moldings, wainscoting, arched mahogany doors, quarter-sawn oak floors. Parquet in the cute little study that would be Matt’s home office when he needed to bring work home.
Holly could close the door and not have to hear Matt’s grumbling about moron clients incapable of keeping decent records. Meanwhile she’d be on a comfy couch, snuggling with Aimee.
She’d learned the sex of the baby at the four-month anatomical ultrasound, decided on the name right then and there. Matt didn’t know yet. He was still adjusting to the whole fatherhood thing.
Sometimes she wondered if Matt dreamed in numbers.
Resting her hands on a mahogany sill, Holly squinted to blank out the weeds and dead grass, struggling to conjure a green, flower-laden Eden.
Hard to visualize, with a mountain of tree trunk taking up all that space.
The five-story sycamore had been one of the house’s selling points, with its trunk as thick as an oil drum and dense foliage that created a moody, almost spooky ambience. Holly’s creative powers had immediately kicked into gear, visualizing a swing attached to that swooping lower branch.