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
Eric said, “After the funeral, let’s talk about this more. We know your mother better than those cops do. And if they’re on a lead like that, I think we might be better off hiring a private eye.”
“Maybe.”
He stroked her face, kissed her forehead. In her entire life, Robin had never felt so entirely alone. “I’d better finish getting ready,” she said.
Robin turned and walked inside, thinking back to the half second when she’d come up behind her husband, how it had appeared to her as though every molecule in his body had been directed into that phone.
Texting as though his whole world depended on it. She didn’t know to whom.
Robin didn’t know anyone in her life. Not a single living soul.
Twelve
June 13, 1976
2:00 P.M.
Dear Aurora Grace,
There is something bad inside Gabriel. It’s like lava in a volcano. If you don’t see it or feel it, it can’t hurt you, so it doesn’t seem real.
But it is real. This bad thing is always there, bubbling closer and closer to the surface, until finally, it explodes out of him, destroying everything it touches. You know you can’t stop it, not any more than you would be able to stop real lava in its tracks. So all you can do is stay as quiet as possible and pray with everything you have that it doesn’t touch you too.
I never saw Gabriel kill Papa Pete. I only heard the shots from outside. By the time I walked in through the front door, he was already dead. “I didn’t mean to,” Gabriel said, and I believed him. I believed him because I hadn’t seen him fire the gun. I hadn’t seen his eyes as he pulled the trigger. I hadn’t seen the veins popped out on his forehead or that smile on his face that isn’t really a smile at all, just skin stretching. I hadn’t seen the lava.
Through all these months of meeting Gabriel the way I did and liking him and loving him and not loving him and disliking him and even hating him a little, I had no reason to truly fear him, even when he was holding a gun to my head. And that was because I had never seen the lava. Not until today.
We showed up at Ed Hart’s house at about 1:00 P.M. It’s a small house. No bigger than mine. I asked Gabriel if he was sure it was the right house because it didn’t look like a place where a rich Hollywood guy would live, especially not someone who was friends with people like David Soul.
Gabriel said, “He is rich. He’s just not showy.”