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Copyright © 2020 by Amy Engel

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Engel, Amy, author.

Title: The familiar dark: a novel / Amy Engel.

Description: [New York] : Dutton, [2020] |

Identifiers: LCCN 2019025265 (print) | LCCN 2019025266 (ebook) | ISBN 9781524745950 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781524746018 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Grief—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3605.N4354 F36 2020 (print) | LCC PS3605.N4354 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019025265

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019025266

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover image by James Kingsland / Gallery Stock

pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r2

For Graham and Quinn, my brightest lights

CONTENTS

Praise for The Familiar Dark

Also by Amy Engel

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

The End

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

The Beginning

Acknowledgments

About the Author

We grow accustomed to the Dark—

When Light is put away—

—Emily Dickinson

THE END

They died during a freak April snowstorm, blood pooling on a patchy bed of white. Afterward, some people said the killer must have kept an eye on the gathering gray clouds. Taken the weather as a cue to strike and picked the moment when everyone else was huddled indoors, shivering in their optimistic shirtsleeves and muttering about global warming. Armchair detectives trying to make sense of something that would never be anything but senseless. They were wrong, of course. It had nothing to do with the weather. The girls could have told them that, if the girls had been capable of speaking.

Izzy died first, dark brown hair tangled over her face and one eye peeking out between the strands. A slow blink, gaze trained on Junie’s face. Another blink, focus fading. Junie waited for a third blink that never came, watched blood unspool in the space between them. She tried to reach for Izzy, meaning to shake her back into the world, but couldn’t make her own hand move. It felt weighted down even though she couldn’t remember being tied up. Couldn’t remember anything, really. Why she was here or what was happening. Only a dim, distant terror that pulsed along with her fading heartbeat. She pushed a sound out of her ruined throat, a name, a plea, a prayer. But it never made it past her lips. A bubble of blood popped and spilled over. The snow pressed cold against her cheek.