Chapters (51)
- Cover
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Acknowledgments
- P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
- About the Author
- About the Book
- Also by Alison Gaylin
- About the Publisher
“Mr. Sharkey?” she said again, and it dawned on him like a thick fog clearing. Mrs. Bowen had died a couple of years back, and this wasn’t her talking to him at all, but her daughter, Karen. No, not Karen. Corinne. Corinne Palmer. That was her married name. Reg was fine. His brain was fine. He just wished he didn’t have to talk to nasty Corinne Palmer, with her shitty TV shows blaring out the window all day and all night. Hoarders. My 600-lb Life. 16 and Pregnant. People flaunting their misery for a few bucks and some attention—there was nothing more depressing than that. But Reg supposed that for a nosy person like Corinne, who lived off the misfortune of others, these TV shows were a regular opiate. Her mother, at least, had never blasted the TV.
“I’m fine, Corinne,” Reg said. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, I heard you arguing with that young man a couple of days ago, and I haven’t seen you since. You usually mow your lawn on Mondays, but you weren’t out there yesterday.”
“Lawn didn’t need mowing.”
She just kept talking, as though he’d never spoken. “I was worried for your welfare. That young man sounded so angry . . .”
“I’m fine.”
“If I’d gone another day without seeing you, I was going to call the police.”
“The lawn didn’t need mowing. What the hell more do you want me to say?”
She took a step back, blinking like someone who’d just dodged a punch. Her nose was red and bulbous like her mother’s had been, and something about her expression too, the way she opened and closed her mouth like a dying fish on a dock . . . What had Mrs. Bowen’s first name been again? Had Reg ever learned it?
“Who was that young man?” How old was Corinne when he’d doused her mother with the hose? Twenty maybe. Did she have any idea, back then, how cruel her own DNA would turn out to be? “You can tell me, Mr. Sharkey. Who was that young man?”
“Kate’s son.”
“My God. Really?” She sounded deliriously happy.
He said, “This better than Hoarders?”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Reg opened his mailbox, which was what had brought him out here and into this unpleasant conversation in the first place. Maybe if he threw all his energy into opening his mail, Corinne would feel ignored and go back inside her house.
Reg thumbed through his letters: phone bill, electric, brochure from Home Depot.
Corinne Palmer said, “I don’t think I’ve seen Kate’s son since he was a little boy.”