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Back Love and Other Lies Save as PDF
Chapters (61)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Imagine a girl
  4. Prologue
  5. The Foreigner
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. The Skeptic
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-One
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. The Spectator
  31. Twenty-Four
  32. Twenty-Five
  33. Twenty-Six
  34. Twenty-Seven
  35. Twenty-Eight
  36. Twenty-Nine
  37. The Assassin
  38. Thirty
  39. Thirty-One
  40. Thirty-Two
  41. Thirty-Three
  42. Thirty-Four
  43. Thirty-Five
  44. Thirty-Six
  45. Thirty-Seven
  46. Thirty-Eight
  47. Thirty-Nine
  48. Forty
  49. Forty-One
  50. The Hunter
  51. Forty-Two
  52. Forty-Three
  53. Forty-Four
  54. Forty-Five
  55. Forty-Six
  56. Forty-Seven
  57. Imagine a girl
  58. Acknowledgments
  59. About the Author
  60. Also by Ben McPherson
  61. About the Publisher

You could hear the sobs of the boy very clearly: it was the only sound beyond Licia Curtis’s easy breathing.

The shock wave from the bomb had passed.

Those men have made this girl a terrorist. And that change happened in our home, while we were looking elsewhere.

New country.

New son.

New life.

And here is Licia on the screen of my telephone, and here is the boat she will give to the men. And soon the men will be heading toward Garden Island on this boat, while the police head toward the town hall. And Licia is calm because the thought of all those people—of all those possible lives soon to be ended—because the thought of this does not trouble her. Because something fundamental in my daughter has changed. And every fiber of me grinds against every other fiber, and it is all that I can do not to scream.

What have you done?

And yet.

And yet.

This girl is my daughter.

This day marked the end of her youth. She was fifteen.

Was a girl.

Is a terrorist.

And so Alicia Curtis travels to meet the men who will murder ninety-one people, the majority of them children, two bullets at a time. She brings to them ammunition and uniforms and shoes, and on their boat she will leave her footprint.

These men will rob my Licia of everything: all that life ahead of her; all those people not yet met; all those choices not yet made. All of that will be gone.

Please, God, tell me there is a way back from this.

Licia started the engine. She reached down for the mooring line at her side, unhooked it from its cleat, drew it free from the rings on the dock, coiling it neatly onboard. She dropped the boat into gear and set out down the fjord.

My daughter did not once look back. The engine was so quiet and the water so flat that you could still hear the boy sobbing uncontrollably. There were sirens too, mingling with the sobs, though all you could see on the screen was perfection: the majestic tranquility of the fjord, the calm beauty of the islands with their pristine rows of waterfront cabins.

Forty

In the kitchen Elsa was sitting, nervy and out of sorts.

I said, “I need to take Licia to the police, Elsa. It needs to be low-key and without fuss, and it needs to be now.”

“Fi’e tlu’!” shouted Franklin.

I looked across at my son, who was sitting, his back to the wall, an iPad propped against his legs.

Elsa said, “Yeah, honey, fire truck. Good job.” She turned to me. “This is all too weird.”

“There’s a connection,” I said. “Between Bror and Licia.”

“There can’t be.”

“He told me he cured her breathing. He told me he’s the reason she’s with us now.”

Elsa’s eyes narrowed.