Good Girls Don't Die E-Book

Christina Henry

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 467

Beschreibung

From the bestselling author of Alice, three women find themselves trapped inside fictional worlds and must fight to survive in this groundbreaking locked-room thriller. Celia wakes up in a house that isn't hers. She doesn't recognize her husband or the little girl who claims to be her daughter. She tries to remember who she was before, because she is certain that this life—the little family-run restaurant she owns, the gossipy small town she lives in—is not her own. Allie is supposed to be on a fun weekend trip—but then her friend's boyfriend unexpectedly invites the group to a remote cabin in the woods. The cabin looks recently assembled and there are no animals or other life anywhere in the forest. Nothing about the place seems right. Then, in the middle of the night, someone bangs on the cabin door… Maggie, along with twelve other women, wakes up in a shipping container with the number three stamped on the back of her T-shirt. If she wants to see her daughter Paige again, Maggie must complete The Maze—a deadly high-stakes obstacle course. Three women. Three stories. Only one way out...

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Also by Christina Henry and available from Titan Books

Title Page

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Copyright

Dedication

Part I Celia

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Part II Allison

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Part III Maggie

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Part IV All Together Now

Chapter

Readers Guide

Discussion Questions

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

Also by Christina Henry and available from Titan Books

ALICE

RED QUEEN

LOST BOY

THE MERMAID

THE GIRL IN RED

LOOKING GLASS

THE GHOST TREE

NEAR THE BONE

HORSEMAN

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Good Girls Don’t Die

Print edition ISBN: 9781803364018

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803364025

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: November 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Christina Henry 2023.

Published by arrangement with Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

Christina Henry asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For my beloved aunt Berni.

Better than a pop-up card, right?

PART I

CELIA

CHAPTER ONE

mysterybkluv: who else here loves cozy mysteries best?

poirotsgirl: cozies are my fave, esp if they have recipes in the back

mysterybkluv: ngl it would be great to live in a small town where there are lots of low-stakes murders and I could solve them while working in my family restaurant

tyz7412: lol living the dream

“MOM.”

“Earth to Mom. Come in, Mom.”

“Mom, I’m going to be late for the bus!”

Celia shook her head. The small person beside her was blurry, out of focus. Did she need glasses now?

And why was this person calling her “Mom”?

Celia blinked hard, once, twice, and the little person came into focus. A girl—maybeten, eleven yearsold?—staring at her expectantly, holding an open backpack.

“What?” Celia asked.

“My lunch,” the girl said. “I need my lunch. Did you drink enough coffee this morning?”

Celia looked down. In front of her, on a white countertop, was an open cloth lunch bag. Inside it there was already a plastic bag of sliced apples, a bag of all-natural puffed corn snacks (cheese flavored), and a chocolate soy milk.

A piece of waxed paper lay unfolded on the counter. What is all this disposable packaging? I would never buy things like this.

“Mom!” The little person was getting really insistent now. “Sandwich!”

Celia couldn’t think. She needed this small girl to leave so she could organize her thoughts.

Why does she keep calling me “Mom”? I don’t have any children.

“Two minutes!” the girl screeched.

There was a loaf of wheat bread and a package of cheese from the deli next to the waxed paper. Celia took out two pieces of bread.

“One piece in half! Mom, what’s wrong with you today?”

“Sorry,” Celia said, cutting the single slice of bread in half. “How much cheese?”

“Two pieces! Come on, come on!”

You’re old enough to do this yourself, Celia thought as she folded the bread around the cheese, wrapped the sandwich in waxed paper and shoved everything in the lunch bag. The girl grabbed it, stuffed it in her pack and sprinted toward the door.

“Bye, love you!” she said as she threw the door open, then slammed it shut behind her.

Celia walked like a sleepwalker to the window next to the door and peered out. The little girl was running down a long inclined driveway toward what appeared to be a country road. Across the street there was nothing to see except trees, tall trees that looked like older-growth maple, oak and ash.

The little girl reached the end of the drive just as a yellow school bus pulled up in front of the mailbox. She clambered onto the bus and it pulled away.

She’s gone. Now I can think.

Footsteps sounded overhead and Celia glanced up at the ceiling in alarm. The steps moved across the floor, and a moment later Celia heard someone large coming down the stairs. She couldn’t see the stairs from where she stood. The kitchen was attached to a dining room on one side and a hallway on the other. Celia peered into the hall. The bottom of the stairs was at the far end.

A strange man rounded the banister and headed toward her, frowning at his cell phone as he walked. Celia backed away from him, her heart pounding. Her butt bumped into the edge of the counter. She scrambled around it and positioned herself close to the door so she could run if she needed to do so. She looked down at her feet. Socks. Not even slippers. There was a pair of low shelves positioned next to the door with shoes neatly arranged on them. One of those pairs should be hers. But would she have time enough to figure out which pair, put them on and get out the door?

“Hey, babe, I’ve got a ton of meetings this morning,” the man said. “I’ll stop by the restaurant at lunchtime.”

Who is he?

The man was very tall, at least six inches taller than herself, and she wasn’t a small woman. He had dark hair cut in what she thought of as “millennial fund manager” style and wore a well-tailored gray suit. He had a gym-toned look about him and altogether gave the impression of someone who belonged in a city. This impression was reinforced when he pulled on an expensive-looking wool overcoat. His shoes, Celia noted, were very shiny.

He leaned close to her and kissed her cheek absently, still looking at the phone so he didn’t notice the way she inched backward. She caught a whiff of his aftershave, something musky and heavy. Her nose twitched.

“See you later,” he said, and disappeared out the same door as the little girl.

Celia went to the window and pulled one blind up to peek out. The man who’d called her “babe,” the man who’d kissed her goodbye, had gotten into a black Audi SUV that was parked at the top of the driveway. He backed down the drive and pulled out onto the road, heading in the opposite direction of the bus.

An Audi. City guy, she thought again, and then wondered why she thought this.

Because I live in a city and I see those kinds of guys all the time, she thought, but the thought was like a stabbing pain in her head. She looked around the kitchen, then out the window once more.

Clearly, she did not live in a city. Why did she think she lived in a city?

But now, finally, all the people were gone from the house and she could stop and think.

The kitchen was large and had a white countertop that wrapped around half of the room and then extended out on the third side as a breakfast bar. There were stools lined up along that side, facing the dining room.

Celia pulled one out, sat on it and stared at the rectangular dining room table and chairs, done in some heavy dark wood that she never would have chosen for herself. She didn’t like dark wood, didn’t like the formality of it, and she definitely didn’t like anything that looked like it would need regular polishing. Celia hated to clean, and she particularly hated to dust and polish. That dining room table represented everything she didn’t want in a piece of furniture.

“I didn’t buy that,” she murmured. “I have a round oak table.”

Again, there was a little stabbing feeling between her eyes, and she rubbed the spot with her forefinger. Obviously she didn’t have a round table. The two people who’d rushed out of the house seemed to think she lived there, that she belonged there.

And that guy, that guy who kissed me goodbye—he did look a little familiar.

“He said he would see me at the restaurant. Do I work at a restaurant?”

She had a vague memory of her hands collecting dishes from a table, of tucking a notepad into an apron.

Maybe I drank a lot last night. Or maybe I had a mini stroke or something.

The only thing she knew for sure was that her first name was Celia.

She stood up again and walked into the dining room. At one side of the room there was a large cabinet with glass doors on top and drawers on the bottom. The cabinet matched the dining set, and she crinkled her nose at it.

I hate that matchy-matchy thing. I bet all the dishes are in a matching pattern, too.

When she opened the glass doors, she confirmed that her prediction was accurate. All the tableware and serving plates were in a matching pattern, a kind of country floral that made her think of wedding registries.

On the wall opposite the cabinet there was a large, posed photograph of three people. The background was soft gray, like they’d been in a photo studio. There was Celia, sitting next to the tall dark-haired man. They both wore white-cabled fisherman-style sweaters. The lunch-demanding little girl stood in front of them, positioned so that she was halfway between them. She, too, wore a cabled sweater, this one in pink. All three of them had the slightly glazed eyes and overly toothy smiles that came with posed photography.

This is my family? Celia thought, then told herself, more firmly, This is my family.

There was obviously something wrong with her today. Amnesia seemed unlikely. Early-onset dementia?

It can’t be dementia. I’m only thirty-four.

“Ah!” she said, and clapped her hands together. She’d remembered something else. She was thirty-four.

Okay, okay, you just need to walk around for a bit and then you’ll remember everything. Maybe you just didn’t sleep well or something.

She paced slowly through the dining room and into the living room. Leather furniture—moreyuck—a huge entertainment system, several more photographs of herself and her family caught in various activities: eating drippy ice cream cones, building sandcastles, taking a picture with a certain mouse at an amusement park. Regular family things.

There was something about the pictures that bothered her, but she looked at them for a few minutes and couldn’t put her finger on it, so she moved on.

She climbed the stairs and found four rooms upstairs—two bedrooms, one office and a bathroom. The little girl’s bedroom had posters of Korean pop stars and a pile of soccer gear in the corner. The carpet was pink and so were the walls. It wasn’t to Celia’s taste, but then it wasn’t her room, so it didn’t matter.

The second bedroom wasn’t to her taste, either, but apparently this was her bedroom.

The bedroom I share with that strange man, she thought, with a trickle of unease.

Like the furniture downstairs, everything in the bedroom was made of heavy, dark wood, with a thick blue carpet underfoot. She didn’t like wall-to-wall carpeting, and yet it was everywhere in this house. On an end table on one side of the bed there was a wedding photograph of a younger Celia smiling next to the strange man. Beside the photograph was a brown leather purse.

Brand name, high-end. I wouldn’t have bought this for myself. It’s a waste of money. The Audi guy must have bought it. He seems like the type to care about stuff like this.

Celia sat on the edge of the bed and emptied the purse onto the dark blue comforter. A large wallet fell out, along with a pack of Trident spearmint gum, a package of tissues, a bottle of hand sanitizer, a powder compact, a hairbrush, a cherry-flavored ChapStick and some business cards.

Standard purse contents, but like the photos she’d seen downstairs, something seemed to be missing. She just couldn’t think of what that something might be.

She opened the wallet and found a New York State driver’s license with her photo on it. The name listed was “Celia Zinone.” She said the name to herself. It seemed right, unlike everything else she’d experienced so far. There was a debit card and two credit cards in the same name, and a few more family photos—mostly the posed kind—in the photo flap. All the photos were of her immediate family. Did she have no parents? No brothers or sisters or nieces or nephews?

Celia picked up the stack of business cards. They advertised Zinone’s Italian Family Restaurant next to a cartoon of a plate of spaghetti and meatballs. Her own name was listed underneath as the owner, and beneath that was the address and phone number.

I run a restaurant. Okay.

She again had a flash of memory—of stirring a giant pot of sauce, of folding ingredients into layers of lasagna.

“He said he would see me at the restaurant at lunch,” Celia said.

She looked at the business card again. So she should probably get dressed and take herself to this restaurant. Maybe going to work would help her remember more.

Terror clutched at her for a moment. It was as though she stood beside a dizzying abyss, with no real sense of self, no memories, no knowledge of what she’d done the previous day or even that morning before the little girl started shouting about her lunch.

Black spots danced in front of her eyes and her heart seemed like it was trying to escape her chest. Her breath came in hard pants and she heard the wheezy quality of it, an inability to get the oxygen all the way to the bottom of her lungs.

She dug her fingers into the comforter on either side of her legs, feeling the material scrunch beneath her hands.

Calm, calm, calm. Breathe, breathe, breathe. You’re okay. You’re not in danger.

Hard on the heels of that thought came another one. Why would I be in danger?

Celia forced herself to take deep, calming breaths, and after a few moments, her heart rate slowed, though its beating still seemed unnaturally loud to her.

I just need to go to the restaurant and then things will click into place. But how will I get there? I’m not sure where I am in relation to it.

She glanced over the items on the bed and realized what was missing. A cell phone. Surely she had one. Where had she left it, though?

She checked all the surfaces in the bedroom and found two charging stations on top of the dresser. Assuming the strange man (your husband) didn’t carry two cell phones, then one of the chargers was for her phone.

Why wasn’t it in her purse? She always kept her phone in her purse when it wasn’t on the charger. She didn’t like to use it in the house.

Celia grabbed on to that thought the same way she’d done with the memory of her age. It was something concrete, something solid that she knew about herself for certain. She avoided using her phone in the house because she didn’t want to be one of these people who mindlessly scrolled all day.

But she couldn’t find it in the bedroom, no matter how many drawers she opened or pockets she checked. She did note the type of clothes in the closet—conservative-looking sweaters and button-down blouses in low-key colors, lots of beige and gray and black and soft pastels. The sight of them made her feel, again, that these weren’t things she would have chosen for herself. She was more of a happy-print skirt and quirky T-shirt girl.

For a third time her forehead stabbed with pain, and she wondered if she needed to hydrate more, or perhaps a migraine was coming on.

A loud ringing echoed through the house, the sound of an old-fashioned rotary dial phone. The noise pulled Celia out of the bedroom and down the stairs in search of the source, and she ended up back in the kitchen, where she’d begun.

The ringing stopped before she entered the room. She stood in the doorway, irresolute, looking around for a wall unit before spotting the cell phone on the counter. The ringing must have come from the cell.

She picked up the phone—a couple of iterations out-of-date iPhone, which surprised her since the strange man seemed like the type to demand everything be top-of-the-line in his house—and tapped her finger on the bottom button to start it. A moment later, the home screen popped up, a picture of her own face mashed beside the strange man and the little girl, all of them smiling.

This is my family, Celia thought. This is my family, and I don’t even remember their names. I don’t even recognize them. At all.

CHAPTER TWO

poirotsgirl: Ever notice how the person who dies in cozies is always some jerk nobody likes?

mysterybkluv: I know it’s like the town is slowly killing off all the bad elements until they are perfectly serene

poirotsgirl: lol wish that was my town

THE DISCOVERY OF THE phone was a revelation. In the contacts she’d found a picture of the strange man with the name “Pete” beside it, and another of the little girl with the name “Stephanie.” So she knew the names of her husband and child, at least.

She also found photos in the camera roll of herself at the restaurant—sometimes dressed in a white blouse and black pants and standing at the hostess station, sometimes in the kitchen in a T-shirt and blue jeans wearing an apron. There were also photos of her with other people—clearly staff members, who conveniently wore name tags. Celia spent several minutes carefully memorizing names and faces.

The person who’d called her was named Jennifer, and a photo of a smiling blonde was next to that name in Celia’s contacts. Celia listened to the voice message.

“Hey, Ceil, I just wanted to know if you had time for a run this morning before you went into the restaurant. I’m assuming since you didn’t pick up, you’re either out on the road already or on your way to work. If you’re at home and want to join me, I’m going to do the Cedar Creek loop. Maybe I’ll see you out there.”

Celia disconnected from the voice mail and stared at the phone. Run? She didn’t like to run. At least, she didn’t think she liked to run, but then everything she remembered about herself seemed to be wrong, and everything she didn’t remember was all around her. Maybe she was a runner. Maybe she was the type of person who loved to train for marathons.

She looked down at her body. Slender, but was it runner-thin? She had a flash of seeing herself in a studio mirror, wearing yoga tights and a loose top, extended out into triangle pose. That seemed more her style, but it was possible that all these memories were just a dream she’d had, a dream that was causing this temporary amnesia, or whatever it was.

Celia sank to the floor in the kitchen, her arms wrapped around her knees, and stared at the phone. Whatever she thought her life was obviously wasn’t true. The truth was all around her. She just needed to take a deep breath and play along with everyone until her memories came back.

Fake it ’til you make it, she thought, watching her hands tremble. She took deep breaths until the trembling stopped. I am strong. I am capable. I will get through this.

Then she went upstairs, showered, dressed, placed all the loose items on the bed back in her purse, and went downstairs again to seek out her keys, shoes and car.

The keys were hanging on a hook in the kitchen; the Nike sneakers with light blue swoops on the side fit her the best. Celia carefully locked the door and went outside to find a small Toyota Camry. She climbed into the car and turned the ignition on, setting the phone to give her directions to the restaurant.

She turned right out of the driveway and drove slowly toward town, taking in everything around her as she went. To the left, as far as she could see, was a wooded area. The tree cover was thick, and she couldn’t tell if there were hiking paths inside. On the right was the occasional residence, every few hundred feet or so. Most of them looked like two-story middle-class homes, with white or blue or gray siding and reasonably priced cars in the driveways.

After a couple of miles, the houses started appearing closer together. Then the road curved away from the trees and she passed a sign that read WELCOME TO JACKSVILLE.

Her lip curled at the name. Jacksville? Why didn’t they just call it Smalltown, USA?

Then she shook her head again. She had to stop doing that. This was her home, whether she remembered it or not. This was the place where she’d chosen to live with the strange man

(my husband is not a strange man and his name is Pete)

and the little girl

(my daughter we called her Stephanie imagine how hurt she would be if she thought her own mother didn’t remember her name)

She drove onto Main Street, which had a variety of small businesses on either side of the road. All the businesses had slightly-too-cute folksy names, like Sweet Tooth Candy Shop and Melissa’s Marvelous Books and Best Bread.

Kind of like the name of my restaurant, she thought.

There were very few cars on the street. About a dozen or so pedestrians went in and out of the shops. Some of them waved to her as she drove by and she waved back, hoping her face didn’t look as frozen with fear as she felt. Nothing looked familiar to her. It was like a scene from a movie, a set designer’s idea of a friendly small town where everyone knew everyone else.

Celia’s restaurant was a single-story brick building on the corner of Main Street and Cherry Lane. There was a green-and-white-striped awning that extended over a large picture window in front. The shades on the window were drawn. Above the awning, the words “Zinone’s Italian Family Restaurant” were written in fancy script.

She just stopped herself from rolling her eyes at the name of the cross street (Cherry Lane? Really?) and drove around the corner to the small parking lot attached to the back of the restaurant. There were three spots near the back door marked “Employees Only,” and she pulled the Camry into the spot closest to the door.

The key fob she used had two parts that could disconnect from each other. One side had a ring with her car key and house keys, and the other side had a bunch of keys that she assumed were for the restaurant.

A few minutes later (after trying several keys), she was inside. Her armpits were damp and she was deeply grateful that no one had been nearby to see her struggling to find the correct key. It was so important that she pretend nothing was wrong, at least until she could determine what had happened to her.

Why don’t you just tell someone—like, say, your husband—that you have amnesia? she thought as she clicked on the light switch.

She shook her head no at her own thought. In movies, women who said that they couldn’t remember things or were seeing things or having weird memories were never believed and were always locked up in psychiatric clinics.

For as long as Celia could remember, that had been her worst fear—that she would be swept somewhere behind closed and locked doors, that she would speak words that no one would believe, that she would have no control over the life she’d made for herself.

That’s another memory. That’s something else you know about yourself. She hugged these scraps of memory to her, hoping they would spark something larger.

No, she wouldn’t say anything to anybody about what was going on in her head. She’d just keep pretending everything was fine and if she slipped up, she could pass it off as a bad night’s sleep.

She could pretend until her memory came back. Surely nobody would notice that she didn’t know who she was or what she was doing or why she was there in the first place.

She stood in a storage room full of metal shelves, the shelves full of cans of San Marzano tomatoes and bottles of extra virgin olive oil and plastic buckets marked “flour” and “sugar.” There were bins full of garlic and onions.

There was a door at the opposite wall and Celia crossed to that wall and turned on another light, this one illuminating a gleaming, whistle-clean kitchen. She nodded in approval at the sight. She always had difficulty eating out in restaurants because she was certain no one’s kitchen cleanliness standards were as high as her own. The kitchen was the only place Celia cared about cleaning.

That’s another memory. See? You’ll know yourself in no time.

A door that swung in both directions led from the kitchen into the dining room. The dining room was pretty typical Italian restaurant—red leather seats, dark wood paneling, white-and-red-checked tablecloths. It didn’t look too fancy, which jibed with the “family restaurant” thing. On closer inspection, the red leather seats were revealed to be imitation leather, which meant that they’d be easy to clean when little hands knocked over their milk cups.

Celia wandered toward the front of the dining room. There was a wooden hostess stand with a flat computer monitor on top next to a telephone. There was a pull-out tray underneath for a keyboard.

A portrait of an older couple hung on the wall beside the hostess stand. Celia gasped, then leaned in close to the picture. She knew these people. She knew them, deep down in her bones, no need to dig and scrape for their identities inside the weeds in her head. They were her parents, Sonny and Mary Zinone.

Sonny was balding in the photo, his remaining hair gray and wispy. He had thick glasses with black plastic frames over lively dark eyes. He wore a white apron over a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up and black pants. His arm was around Mary, who was several inches shorter than he was.

Mary had dark brown hair that had been “done”—that is, set by a hairdresser once a week and preserved with curlers and a hairnet every night before bed. She, too, wore an apron over a white blouse and dark pants.

They stood together under the striped awning at the front of the restaurant, smiling like they couldn’t stop.

Celia ran her fingers over their faces, feeling tears prick at the back of her eyes. These were her parents. She knew them. And if she knew them, then the rest of her life would come back to her, too.

But where are they? Did they retire? Did they pass away? Why aren’t their names in my list of cell phone contacts? Why are there no text messages from my mom, or photos of them on vacation or out having drinks together?

A little spasm of grief caught her in the stomach. What if they were gone forever?

You don’t know that. You don’t know anything for sure, so don’t borrow trouble.

She walked back through the dining room and the kitchen. This time she noticed a second door off the kitchen that she hadn’t caught the first time through. It was marked “Office.”

Another key was required to open this door, and again Celia was glad there was no witness to her struggle as she went through every key on the ring to find the correct one. Inside she found a tiny wooden desk and a shiny, new-looking file cabinet. On the desk was a yellow legal pad with a neatly written to-do list and a large calendar that had various things written in on each day—“bread delivery” was marked three days a week, for example. She didn’t know why she would need to mark that down when it happened every other day, but she had.

Okay, I’m conscientious and detail oriented. That’s good, right?

She hung up her coat and purse on the rack in the corner and sat down to go over the to-do list and the papers on her desk. Maybe it would spark a memory like the portrait.

She came across an invoice for an exterminator. At the bottom of the bill there was a handwritten note: Sorry there was nothing to actually remove, but I have to charge you for the visit. Maybe Mrs. C would pay forit?—Nick

Celia was puzzling over this as she heard the sound of a key turning in the back door, and then a female voice called, “Hello!”

Panic tripped through Celia again. Then she took a deep breath. (I’m turning into a professional deep breather.) Whoever had come through the door had a key. If they had a key, then they belonged at the restaurant.

I just hope I remember to match the name and face. She resisted the urge to open the photos on her phone and double-check identities.

A tall, thin redhead poked her head around the doorway. “You’re here early!”

“I had a few things to go over, but I’m finished now,” Celia said vaguely, trying to mentally shuffle through the photos she’d looked at that morning. Katherine. I’m pretty sure her name is Katherine.

“Okay,” Katherine said cheerfully. “Are we still doing truffled mushroom lasagna for the special today?”

“Yes,” Celia said. She had no idea if that was supposed to be the special, but if this woman was going to guide her, then Celia would take it. “I’ll help you.”

“Thanks, boss,” Katherine said. “Everything always tastes better when you cook it. That Zinone touch.”

Celia smiled, but she felt uncomfortable. The compliment had been delivered in a completely sincere tone, but it seemed like dialogue from a book, not real life. She felt again the disorienting sense that everything she’d passed on the street, everything she’d seen, wasn’t real.

Get it together, Celia. This is your life.

She pulled an apron over her clothes and joined Katherine in the kitchen. As soon as she started preparing the lasagna, she felt calmer. This was something she knew how to do—instinctively, without grasping for a memory. She wasn’t completely certain where all of the ingredients were in the storeroom, but it didn’t matter, as Katherine seemed to think it was her job to carry everything out to the worktable. Celia soon fell into the rhythm of making a béchamel sauce with Marsala wine, sautéing the mushrooms, making the long sheets of lasagna noodles by hand. Katherine chopped the thyme and grated the Fontina and Romano cheeses, then the two of them worked side by side to assemble several trays of lasagna that were covered and placed in the refrigerator until it was time to bake them.

“What next? Bolognese sauce?” Katherine asked. “Or should we make the gnocchi?”

“I’ll start the sauce, you start the gnocchi,” Celia said.

“Aww, I hate making gnocchi,” Katherine said.

Celia felt a twinge of annoyance, but kept it out of her voice as she said, “Just get going.”

Katherine grinned. “Still keeping that Bolognese recipe to yourself, huh? I’m always so busy I can’t watch you properly to see exactly what you put in the pot and in what quantities.”

Celia was saved from replying by a knock on the back door. The knock sounded aggressive, like the person on the other side was angry about something.

“Oh, no. It’s going to be Mrs. Corrigan,” Katherine moaned as Celia went to the door. “Can’t you just pretend she’s not out there?”

Celia turned the knob with some degree of trepidation, especially since Katherine seemed to know who was out there and she definitely did not.

A sour-faced woman wearing a pink sweatshirt, neatly ironed khakis and white athletic shoes stood outside. Her hair was gray, cropped close to her head, and her hand was raised in a fist, as if she were preparing to bang on the door again.

“Good morning,” Celia said.

The woman, who Celia assumed was Mrs. Corrigan, puckered her mouth like she was sucking on a lemon.

“It might be a good morning for you, but it is certainly not for me. I was up all night listening to the sound of vermin scurrying under my window. Vermin that, I might add, are only present in this neighborhood because of your disgusting restaurant.”

Mrs. Corrigan turned and pointed in the direction of the dumpster in the far corner of the restaurant parking lot. There were large shrubs all around the perimeter of the lot. A two-story house as pink as Mrs. Corrigan’s sweatshirt stood on the other side of the shrubs.

The strange note and invoice for pest removal that Celia had found earlier finally made sense.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Corrigan. I had Nick from Gianni’s Pest Removal come out and take a look, but he didn’t find any evidence of vermin,” Celia said. She wondered what “vermin” Mrs. Corrigan thought were running underneath her window. Mice? Cockroaches?

“Like I’d trust a report from them. They’re wops like you—they’d say anything for one of their own.”

Katherine sucked in her breath. Celia was shocked herself. Did Mrs. Corrigan always throw around these kinds of slurs? Celia contemplated slamming the door in the woman’s face, but instead decided to take the high road.

“I’m sorry that you think that, Mrs. Corrigan. But they did investigate your claims and there’s no evidence that my restaurant has anything to do with your problem.”

Mrs. Corrigan stepped forward, jabbing her finger toward Celia’s face.

“You never should have been allowed to keep that dumpster in a residential area. All food waste should be brought directly to the town refuse site. It’s your fault that there are rats living in my basement, and I’m going to get your restaurant shut down for violating health codes. You wait and see.”

Celia was willing to take the high road, but she wasn’t willing to let anyone, even an old woman, threaten her. She batted Mrs. Corrigan’s hand away from her face.

“You assaulted me!” Mrs. Corrigan screeched. “I’m going to report you to the police! Assault! Assault!”

“All I did was get your hand out of my personal space,” Celia said, her own temper building. “And you’re not welcome on my property any longer.”

She slammed the door in Mrs. Corrigan’s face. The other woman continued to shriek and shout and slam her fist on the door for a few more minutes. Celia turned her back on the noise and leaned against the door. Katherine’s eyes were wide.

“I know she was being more obnoxious than usual, but you shouldn’t have done that, boss,” Katherine said, shaking her head. “You know her nephew Lyle is on the police force. If she says you assaulted her, he’ll harass you for the rest of your life.”

“I didn’t assault her,” Celia said, annoyed. “Not even close. She had her hand in my face and I batted it away—gently, I might add.”

“Sure, but it’s her word against yours.”

“You saw what happened. You’re a witness,” Celia said.

“Yeah, like Lyle would trust anything I say. I work for you, and besides—he’s never gotten over the fact that I kissed Steve Miller at the prom when Lyle was supposed to be my date.”

Celia rubbed her temples. Really? Mrs. Corrigan has free rein to harass me because her nephew is a police officer and my cook offended him in high school? This is like something out of one of those small-town mystery stories.

(just like the kind you like to read wasn’t someone askingabout …)

Someone knocked on the front door.

“What now?” Celia said. “That better not be Mrs. Corrigan again.”

“She never comes to the front door. Of course, you never ‘assaulted’ her before.” Katherine made air quotes with her fingers around “assaulted.”

“If it is her, I’m going to punch her in the mouth,” Celia muttered.

“That would definitely, unequivocally be assault,” Katherine said.

“A girl can dream,” Celia said as she stalked through the dining room.

She unlatched the front door without shifting the blinds to see who stood outside and then yanked the door open. A young woman with springy brown curls and green eyes gave Celia a surprised glance.

“Whoa, what’s with the aggression, C?” The young woman wore a white blouse and black pants under an open blue windbreaker. The name tag pinned on her blouse read “Tia.”

Thank god, I don’t think I could remember her name right now, Celia thought.

“Mrs. Corrigan,” Celia said as she let Tia into the restaurant.

Tia held up her hand. “Say no more. That lady seriously needs an attitude adjustment.”

“That’s the understatement of the century,” Katherine said. She’d clearly followed Celia out of the kitchen to see who was at the front door.

Tia cocked an eyebrow. “I’d ask what happened now, except I suspect it had something to do with the mythical rats around her house.”

“Bingo,” Celia said. “She basically called me a liar and said Nick’s conspiring with me to keep the rats a secret.”

“Any idiot can see there are no rat droppings,” Tia said. “I used to live in the city, and believe me, if you have rats, then you have droppings. You don’t need Gianni’s to verify that.”

“But I did have Gianni’s verify that, and she’s still on a rampage,” Celia said.

Tia glanced at the clock. “Lunch starts in a half hour. You’re going to have to put Mrs. Corrigan and her issues on the back burner for a while.”

“Right,” Celia said, glancing at Katherine.

“I know, I know, I gotta make the gnocchi,” Katherine said, heading back into the kitchen.

Celia rubbed her temples again. Her head had been pounding most of the day, and her disorienting loss of memory made everything seem worse than it was. Mrs. Corrigan was just a noisy old sourpuss. She couldn’t really cause Celia that much trouble in the long run, could she?

CHAPTER THREE

mysterybkluv: seriously sometimes murder is super convenient

poirotsgirl: ever notice how there are always like fifteen people with a motive but the cops only pay attention to one person?

tyz7412: cops have no imagination

CELIA FORGOT, OR MOSTLY forgot, about Mrs. Corrigan in the rush to prepare and serve lunch. Pete did stop by to pick up some lasagna to go, but she didn’t really have a chance to talk to him because she was busy in the kitchen. He poked his head in the door long enough to say hello and that he’d pick up Stephanie after soccer practice, then disappeared again—a good thing, since she had no idea what to say to him. She didn’t remember anything about their life together, and that wasn’t the kind of thing you casually mentioned over a take-out container.

She was relieved to discover that even if she didn’t remember much about her identity, she did seem to have a kind of muscle memory for running a restaurant. Recipes appeared in her brain the moment she needed them; her hands moved without conscious thought, rolling out pasta dough and assembling vinaigrettes. Another server, a curvy middle-aged woman named Nancy, had joined Tia just before the lunch hour started, and the two of them moved through the dining room seamlessly, needing no direction from Celia.

At four o’clock, Tia headed out to her night classes at the local community college. Nancy stayed for an extra hour, serving early-bird senior citizen diners, then handed off the evening shift to three new people. Celia didn’t have time to examine their faces or memorize their names. Around 5:00 p.m., families with small children started showing up, and the restaurant stayed busy until almost 7:00, when the hordes finally slowed to just a few twentysomething couples staring into each other’s eyes. Katherine’s shift was over and Celia assured her that she could manage the last hour on her own.

Celia stuffed a piece of bread into her mouth. She was ravenously hungry and hadn’t taken a moment to eat all day, instead making sure that Katherine had ample breaks. Now that things had slowed down, she grabbed a piece of truffle lasagna and stood at the work counter to eat it.

One of the servers, a young man with long brown hair in a ponytail, peeked his head inside the door just as she put the first bite in her mouth. “Uh, boss?”

“Yes?” She couldn’t remember his name and she couldn’t see his name tag, which was annoying.

“There’s, um, a police officer here to see you. Lyle Corrigan.”

“Oh, for the love of—” she said, then shook her head. There was no point in getting worked up before she even talked to him, even if she knew there was only one possible reason he could be there. “It’s fine. Just send him back here.”

“Sure thing,” he said, and disappeared.

Celia looked down at the lasagna, which had seemed so appetizing just a moment before. Now she wondered how much power this police officer had over her. Yes, it was a small town, but he wasn’t a health inspector. He couldn’t charge her with nonexistent violations that would threaten the restaurant.

Could he?

The back door swung open and Lyle Corrigan came in. Like his aunt, he had a tight, sour-faced look, one that expected the worst of the world and usually found it. He was about as tall as Celia, maybe five foot nine, and had very broad shoulders and biceps that bulged out of his short-sleeved uniform.

The kind of guy who lifts weights and drinks protein shakes as his personal identity, Celia thought. He probably hasn’t eaten a carbohydrate since he graduated from high school.

“Officer Corrigan,” Celia said, with a smile that felt as fake as it no doubt appeared. “Did you stop in for today’s special? The truffle lasagna is a customer favorite.”

“You know I wouldn’t eat a thing from this place if you paid me,” Corrigan said.

She’d expected some show of authority, but not the same outright hostility she’d received from Corrigan’s aunt. Temper surged, but she swallowed it down. It wouldn’t help her cause if she shouted at a police officer clearly bent on antagonizing her.

“How can I help you, then, if you’re not here for a meal?”

“I’m here to investigate a report that you assaulted my aunt this morning,” he said, taking a notebook and pen from his pocket. “I’d like to hear your version of events.”

Celia really didn’t like the way he said “your version of events,” like anything she stated would automatically be construed as fiction. She decided that the best thing would be to state the unadorned facts as quickly as possible.

“Your aunt knocked on the back door this morning prior to the restaurant’s opening. She angrily accused me—or rather, accused the dumpster in the corner of the parking lot—of causing rats to proliferate in her basement.”

Corrigan paused in his writing and glared at her. She was struck, in that moment, of how strongly he resembled the police-officer-as-Neanderthal trope, right down to his oversized chest and slightly overhanging brow. “Proliferate?”

“Multiply,” Celia said, and bit her lip so she wouldn’t laugh at his obvious irritation. Apparently, Officer Corrigan didn’t like to be confronted with words he didn’t recognize. “I told her that I’d paid to have a pest remover investigate her claims. Gianni’s found no evidence of rats in her basement, but she still insisted otherwise. During the conversation, she put her finger very close to my face and I gently batted it away. Then she began screaming that I assaulted her. I shut the door at that point. My cook witnessed the entire event, and I assure you that nothing close to assault occurred. Katherine will verify that.”

Corrigan’s lip curled. “Katherine. Uh-huh.”

Oh, come on, Celia thought. Surely he’s not holding a grudge about something that happened years ago in high school?

She waited as he scribbled in his notebook, and wondered why he took notes the old-fashioned way. Why not just use his phone to record her statement? Then she wondered if this was something as formal as a “statement.” Should she be worried? Should she be looking for a lawyer?

Corrigan finished writing and very deliberately closed his notebook. “I have to tell you, Ms. Zinone, that my aunt gives a very different account. She stated that you punched her in the face and denied her medical care when she requested it.”

Celia’s mouth didn’t drop open, but it was a near thing. “My hand didn’t go anywhere near her face. If anything, I was the one in danger of having my eye jabbed out by her fingernail.”

“Really,” Corrigan said, and he said it in such a smug, I-know-something-you-don’t-know way, that Celia wanted to throw her plate of lasagna at his head. “Then why does she have a black eye?”

Celia blinked. “A black eye?”

“Yes,” he said, and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

After tapping on the screen for a moment, he held it up for Celia to see. There was a photo of Mrs. Corrigan in the same salmon-pink sweatshirt she’d worn that morning. The left side of her face was turned toward the camera, and her eye was purple and swollen.

Celia realized then just how determined the horrible woman and her clearly equally horrible nephew were to frame her for something, anything at all. What she didn’t understand was why on earth they would want to do such a thing. Had she wronged them in the past?

The empty blank space of her memory suddenly appeared less like a slightly worrisome black hole and more like a sharp-edged box, full of teeth and monsters. I have to remember my life. I have to remember who I am.

“Nothing to say?” Corrigan asked.

Celia realized she’d been staring blankly at the photo. She needed to stay in the present and worry about her amnesia later. “I’m very sorry your aunt has been hurt, but that injury has nothing to do with me.”

“What, she walked into a door?” Corrigan said, and again his tone was so provoking that Celia was seized by a powerful urge to start throwing food at his big, stupid head.

One of the servers came into the kitchen then, carrying a tray full of plates. He clearly hadn’t been aware of Corrigan’s presence in the kitchen and stopped short as he entered, glancing from Celia to the police officer and back again.

“Everything okay?” he asked. He looked a little older than the other two servers, maybe in his late twenties or early thirties, and something in his look made Celia think he didn’t much like Officer Corrigan.

Celia shot a quick peek at the server’s name tag. “Thanks, Will. Everything’s fine. You can leave those dishes.”

Will carried the dishes over to the sink and began unloading them in what appeared to be an exaggeratedly slow manner. Corrigan gave Will a look that implied later retribution, then tucked his phone away.

“I’ll be speaking to you on this matter again, Ms. Zinone,” he said, and exited out the kitchen door and through the dining room.

“He is such an asshole,” Will said, dumping the rest of the dishes into the sink without a care once Corrigan was gone. He came to lean on the counter a few feet away from Celia. “What’s his problem now?”

The way Will stood and spoke implied a familiarity that the other servers didn’t have with her. They seemed like they might be close to the same age, and Celia wondered if perhaps they’d gone to school together.

Why can’t I remember? she thought, and the thought was fast becoming a scream lodged in her throat, a scream struggling for breath. Why can’t I remember?

Will watched her expectantly, and a little line of worry appeared between his brows. “Hey, Ceil, are you all right? What did that jerk say to you?”

Calm, stay calm. Breathe and don’t let anyone know what’s wrong. No one can know. They’ll think you’re crazy.

“He seems to be under the impression that I punched his aunt in the eye this morning,” she said, and she was impressed with how calm her voice sounded. Nobody would know she was on the verge of a full-on anxiety attack.

“Did you?” Will asked.

Celia frowned at him, and he laughed.

“Just kidding, I know you wouldn’t. Although if anyone deserves it, it’s Mrs. Corrigan. Half the town would probably give you an award if you had done it, though.”

“Does anyone like her?” Celia asked.

Will shrugged. “Not that I know of. You know how it is. Most people can’t stand her, and everyone else is tolerant. I don’t think anyone would choose to be in her company.”

“Except Lyle.”

“Yeah, and everyone knows that Lyle only does it because he’s waiting for that sweet, sweet inheritance.”

“She doesn’t seem like she’s that wealthy,” Celia said, and then realized that she might have just given herself away, that perhaps she ought to know just how wealthy Mrs. Corrigan was because it was general knowledge.

“Well, nobody’s really sure how much money she has, you know that,” Will said. “But her husband did sell the cookie factory to that international conglomerate before he died, and that sale can’t have been chump change.”

“And yet her clothes scream ‘sale rack,’ and not Nordstrom Rack, either,” Celia said.

“She’s a penny-pincher, no doubt. Now tell me what happened this morning.”

Celia explained the circumstances, making sure to add that Katherine had witnessed the whole thing.

“He hasn’t got anything resembling a case, and if he tries to pursue it, I’m going to make sure to report him for harassment,” Celia said. “And maybe his aunt, too.”

“Sure, that will go about as well as the last time you reported him for harassment,” Will said, rolling his eyes. “The police chief is halfway to retirement and doesn’t care what Lyle does so long as he does it quietly.”

“This is absurd,” Celia said. “Why should I be held hostage by an old woman and her jerk nephew, just because that nephew happens to be a police officer?”

“This is small-town America, sweetie,” Will said, lightly punching her shoulder. “You ought to be used to it by now.”

He left the kitchen and Celia stood for a moment, contemplating her lasagna. She dumped the contents of the plate into the trash. She was decidedly not hungry anymore.

The last hour passed in a flurry of cleaning and prepping for the next day. The three servers cleared the dining room, washed down the tables, refilled the Parmesan cheese shakers and played “rock, paper, scissors” to determine who was going to wash and who was going to dry the serving dishes. Celia put sauce into jars, wrapped up the remainder of the lasagna and washed down all the kitchen surfaces until they gleamed.

The other three trickled out one by one as they completed their tasks. Will paused in the back door, watching Celia tie up the plastic bag full of kitchen trash.

“Listen, don’t worry too much about Mrs. Corrigan or her nephew, all right? It’s not worth your time and energy.”

Celia just nodded. She didn’t say that she had a low hum of anxiety inside her stomach, or that it was tangled up with her lack of memory and the persistent feeling that she didn’t actually belong here, that this wasn’t her life and these weren’t her people. She didn’t say any of those things because it was very important—and she wasn’t really sure why but nevertheless remained convinced of this truth—to make sure that no one knew what was going on inside her. She must keep it a secret. She must keep herself safe.

Something flitted across the front of her brain, a memory moving with the speed of a darting rabbit. Tight hands around her wrists, a cruel mouth saying that nobody would believe her, nobody would believe her no matter what.

A sharp pain followed in the wake of this, a pain that shot like electricity behind her eyes and made her bend over, gasping.

“Hey!” Will said.

He was at her side, holding on to her waist. He seemed so familiar in that moment, so much more familiar than the man who called himself her husband. She knew Will. She knew his scent and his face and even the way his hand touched very lightly at her hip, in a way that said he would catch her if she fell, but only if she wanted him to do so.

“What’s the matter? Do you want a glass of water?”

“Yes.” She didn’t want a glass of water, but she needed him to move away because that jolt of familiarity had confused her, had made her think that maybe she was wrong and this was her life after all.

He half-filled a glass with water from the tap and brought it over, his brows drawn together.

“I’m okay,” she said, taking the glass from him. “I just forgot to eat today and I have a headache.”

“Are you okay to drive home?”

“Definitely,” she said, waving him away. “Go on, I’m perfectly fine.”

“You don’t look perfectly fine. You look like you’re about to throw up.”

“Well, there’s nothing in my stomach to throw up, so that won’t be a problem. Really, it was just a little pain that took me by surprise. It’s a short drive home and I can manage.”

“If you say so.”

“I say so,” she said, gathering up the trash. “Go on, I have to lock up.”

She followed Will out the door, flipping the kitchen lights off as she went. She locked the door as he climbed into his car. She was glad that she remembered which key to use. The last thing she needed was Will noticing anything else was wrong with her.

His car engine turned over and the headlights clicked on as Celia turned around. She waved cheerily with her free hand as he pulled out.

Nothing to see here. Everything’s just fine.

She lugged the bag of trash across the parking lot toward the dumpster. Most of the houses on Cherry Lane had illuminated windows, their residents tucked in for the evening. There were no lights on at Mrs. Corrigan’s house.

Probably burning a candle to save on electricity.