Chapters (73)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Prologue
- Part IAnnie
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Part IIHarry
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Part IIIAnnie
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Part IVHarry
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Part VAnnie
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Fifty-Four
- Fifty-Five
- Fifty-Six
- Fifty-Seven
- Fifty-Eight
- Fifty-Nine
- Sixty
- Sixty-One
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Also by Linwood Barclay
- About the Publisher
They weren’t the kind of couple to get all corny about it, but they truly believed they’d been destined to find one another. They’d met in the art school’s animation class, Annie doodling oddball creations more than she took notes, John leaning in, whispering how much he liked them. Not the most gorgeous guy Annie had ever dated. Already, in his twenties, starting to lose his hair. Had a little roll of fat over his belt, looked at the world through thick glasses, but, hey, this was art school, with a heavy nerd enrollment and light on jocks, and if she were honest with herself, she was no pinup model. Big frizzy hair, heavy through the hips, bought most of her clothes at “vintage” shops, which was a nice way of saying someone else had had the pleasure of wearing them before she did, and she didn’t spend a lot of time, or money, at the makeup counter.
Fuck all that. She wasn’t put on this planet to have others gawk at her. She wanted to create. She wanted to make art. Even as she sat at her workstation picking out fonts and background colors and creating links, there was always a fine-point Sharpie and a sketch pad on the desk next to the mouse pad.
She filled one entire notebook with sketches of an adorable polar bear she christened Barry. Barry traveled the world to warn people about the melting polar ice caps. She moved on from sketches to put together a prototype book. Twenty pages, words and illustrations on every one of them. Annie also, as was her custom, created a six-inch-tall, three-dimensional model of Barry so that she could picture what he looked like from any angle. She started with a wire armature, bulked up the body with crumpled tinfoil, then used plasticine to make his body, limbs, and head.
Annie sent the book off to multiple publishers. Few responded, and those that did took a pass. Too preachy, they said. Nothing wrong with a message, but you don’t have to hit the kids over the head with it.
Annie put aside her dream for a time and continued to design websites. John went into the animation factory every day. Life had settled into a routine that bordered on the mundane. They made a living that would have been decent had they lived someplace other than New York, but rent was a killer. They had no car. They rarely took cabs and relied on public transportation, or they hoofed it.