Cover

Allison Larkin

The People We Keep

A Novel

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Title Page

Dedication

For me, because I needed to write this.

For you, if any part of this book helps you feel a little more understood.

For my family of friends, who have jump-started my heart and kept it running.

I love you.

Epigraph

But I know that someday,

someday, I’ll offer up

a song I was made to play…

—Chris Pureka, Compass Rose

— Part One —

— Chapter 1 —

November 1994

Little River, NY

I’m standing at the end of my driveway in the dark, watching Mrs. Varnick’s trailer, waiting for her lights to go out, getting really pissed off. I’ve been watching for at least a week and her lights went out at eight thirty every other night. She must have picked up a clear signal on reruns of Lawrence Welk or Hee Haw with her rabbit ears, because it’s a quarter to nine and she’s still plopped in her BarcaLounger in the living room with the TV flickering and every light in the house blazing like she owns the damn electric company.

I decide I’ll wait until nine and then go for it, because she’s deafer than Mozart or Beethoven or whoever the deaf one is, and she probably has the TV cranked up anyway. But it’s freezing, my legs are bare under my skirt, and doing my little so fucking cold jig isn’t getting my blood pumping anymore. So I tell myself Mrs. Varnick must have fallen asleep in her chair. The woman eats dinner at four in the afternoon. She’s got to be snoring away, dreaming about Lawrence and his powder blue tuxedo shirts by now.

Grabbing my guitar, I move in, walking soft, keeping low. The car isn’t locked, but she wasn’t kind enough to leave the keys.