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Back Safe in My Arms
Chapters (51)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise for Sara Shepard
  3. Also by Sara Shepard
  4. Dedication
  5. PART ONE
  6. —
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. PART TWO
  21. Piper
  22. Fourteen
  23. Fifteen
  24. Sixteen
  25. Seventeen
  26. Piper
  27. Eighteen
  28. Piper
  29. Nineteen
  30. Twenty
  31. Twenty-One
  32. Twenty-Two
  33. Twenty-Three
  34. Piper
  35. Twenty-Four
  36. Twenty-Five
  37. Piper
  38. Twenty-Six
  39. Twenty-Seven
  40. Twenty-Eight
  41. Twenty-Nine
  42. Thirty
  43. Thirty-One
  44. Thirty-Two
  45. Thirty-Three
  46. Piper
  47. Thirty-Four
  48. Epilogue
  49. Acknowledgments
  50. About the Author
  51. What’s next onyour reading list?

“He just started to get . . . strange. We would be in meetings together, and he would bring up things I said, promises I’d made to him. I swore I hadn’t said any such thing, but he had a way of making you doubt your reality. He did it with the writers, too. He’d take credit for ideas that were for sure someone else’s, twisting things so the other writers wouldn’t know which end was up. I was starting to see a pattern in it. Starting to see it was toxic. It’s why we canceled his episode. He wasn’t happy about that.”

“You canceled his episode?” Lauren repeated. She thought of how mopey Graham had been when he’d had to come collect her from the police station when he was supposed to be shooting his episode. Meanwhile, it had been canceled.

“I think he’s just one of those people who wants what he wants, and when things get out of hand, he . . . snaps,” Gracie said. “I should have seen through it, Lauren. I should have talked to you more. I feel terrible I believed what he said about you.”

“It’s okay,” Lauren said softly. She’d seen Gracie and Graham on one side, her on the other, and hell, even herself on one side, and the rest of the family on the other. But it wasn’t that way at all. Incredible that Graham could dupe so many strong, successful women into questioning their sanity. Or maybe, in Piper’s case, losing their sanity altogether.

She thought a lot about Piper pretending North was still alive for thirteen years. Neighbors were baffled when they found out North had passed away as a baby, as there was always evidence of kid things strewn around the property—bicycles, Rollerblades, balls. They swore they heard high-pitched kid squeals coming from the backyard pool.

As for an actual child, though? Collectively, no one could say for sure say they’d ever seen North, but they were the sorts of neighbors that didn’t meddle in others’ business. Piper kept to herself; her son kept to himself. Back when Piper first moved to Raisin Beach, she’d lived in a dumpy apartment on the outskirts of town—and must have perpetuated the North lie at least to herself back then. But the press, who was hungry for more of this story, couldn’t find anyone from that time in Piper’s life to verify that.