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
John’s one extravagance was his smartphone, which he used to connect to the Internet so he could watch animation clips on YouTube and elsewhere. It was his addiction, he freely admitted, to the point that even as they walked down the street, he’d be looking down at his phone, laughing at some snippet of a Daffy Duck cartoon or a politically incorrect Family Guy moment. Annie repeatedly warned him his obsession would be the death of him. She’d showed him online surveillance videos of people falling into open sidewalk cellar doors, which were all over the place in New York.
He paid no mind.
One day, eyes fixed on his phone’s screen, watching the Looney Tunes classic Bugs Bunny cartoon Rabbit of Seville, he walked right into a streetlight pole, hard enough to raise a bump on his forehead. Annie felt bad about laughing, but, honestly, he had it coming.
Bottom line was, as long as they didn’t have any unexpected expenses, they’d get by. And God forbid one of them got sick, because neither of them had a decent health plan.
And then came a surprise.
“Oh shit,” John said when she came home from the doctor’s office and gave him the news that she was pregnant.
Not exactly the words she was hoping to hear.
But he did some fast backpedaling. “We can do this,” he said, and then, unexpectedly, began to laugh. “I have no fucking idea how, but we can do this.”
And they did. Seven months later, Charlie was born, and despite them now being down a salary, it was joyous. John took a part-time second job in the evenings working in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant around the corner. (At least he got to score the occasional free pizza.) John’s parents—Annie’s had both passed by the time she was twenty-three—sent them checks when they could, but they were working-class folks who had their own financial worries.
There were no websites to design, at least for now, but even when Annie nursed, Charlie in her arms, the pen and sketch pad were not far away.
One night, up for a feeding when the baby was seven weeks old, so tired she could barely keep her eyes open, Annie thought about a penguin who wanted to explore the world beyond Antarctica.