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
She’d been good friends with an artist from The New Yorker, now passed on, whom she often met for lunch at Café Luxembourg up on West 70th Street near 10th Avenue. He was something of a fixture there, sitting in the corner, sipping on a scotch, always at the same table, where he had a view of the various neighborhood celebs who might wander in. He had said something to her once that had always stayed with her. “I never had a drawing that was as good on paper as it had been in my head.”
Boy, did she get that. She could imagine so clearly what she wanted to create, but what traveled down from her brain, through her arms, and out her fingers onto the paper so rarely lived up to expectations. But then, that was the challenge, wasn’t it? If it was easy, what would be the point? If anybody could do it, everybody would do it.
She knew this happened even more with novelists, and was something of a running joke among them, but she was often asked where her ideas came from. Like there was a store someplace, an Ideas R Us, where you could buy them by the dozen. She always just smiled and said she didn’t know, that an idea would just pop into her head and she’d run with it.
The truth was, she did know, but was at pains to explain it. She’d tried more than once with John.
“Imagine an image on a pane of glass that’s flipping slowly through the air,” she’d told him. “Sometimes you can see it straight on, but other times, if you’re looking at the glass from the edge, it’s just a line, the image vanishes.”
John had listened intently, trying to picture it.
“So, I’ll see that line first, like it’s slicing through the air, coming out of nowhere, a sliver almost, and then it starts to turn, and the image comes into focus. That’s where I first saw Pierce. On that pane of glass.”
“Cool,” he’d said.
What she didn’t tell him was that she’d been seeing those panes of glass slice their way into her world since she was a child, and they didn’t always come through the air. Once, she saw one come right out of a person, like that time when she was eight, walking through Penn Station, holding on to her father’s hand.
Annie caught sight of a tall, ordinary-looking man in a tan trench coat coming her way. Suddenly she had a vision of glass emerging from his head, hairline to chin, edgewise. The glass pivoted, becoming a mini-window through which she saw his face.
It had changed.