Never Tell
A nail biting thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat.When prep school junior Julia Whitmire is found dead in the bathtub of her family’s Upper East Side apartment, her left wrist slashed and suicide note resting on her dresser, Ellie Hatcher and her partner, J.J. Rogan initially write the case off as a suicide.Julia’s parents insist that their daughter would never take her own life, but Ellie knows all too well that family members can be the last to accept the truth.But when Julia’s mother appeals to her with the evidence – including a hand-written suicide note she believes her internet-obsessed daughter would never have composed – Hatcher is confronted with the possibility of a troubled young girl's murder.
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ALAFAIR BURKE
Never Tell
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Published by AVON
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in the U.S.A. by
HarperCollinsPublishers, New York, NY, 2012
Copyright © Alafair Burke 2012
Alafair Burke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Version 1
FIRST EDITION
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9781847562562
Ebook Edition © August 2012 ISBN: 9780007488612
Version: 2018-06-29
For my mother-in-law,
Ellie Hatcher Simpson.
Thank you for your name and
your son (not in that order).
Table of Contents
Second Acts: Confessions of a Former Victim and Current Survivor
“3:14 IN THE MORNING”
It has been twenty years, but at three-fourteen this morning I screamed in my sleep. I probably would not have known I had screamed were it not for the nudge from my husband—my patient, sleep-starved husband, who suspects but can never really know the reasons for his wife’s night terrors, because his wife has never truly explained them.
I could see the uncertainty coloring his face this morning as he sipped his coffee, already going cold, while I poured a fresh cup for myself at the counter, carrying the carafe to the breakfast table to top off his cup. Not uncertainty about my reasons for screaming—that was ever-present—but uncertainty about whether even to raise the subject. Should I ask her? Are some subjects better left in the subconscious?
I loved him so much in that moment—for loving me enough to care, for caring enough about me to let the unspoken remain so. And so, even though I would have preferred we peruse the newspaper together, sharing headlines with each other before he had to dash to work, I told him.
I screamed at three-fourteen in my sleep this morning because twenty years ago—more than half my lifetime ago—a man walked into my bedroom and changed my childhood forever. I did not hear him open the door but somehow I knew he was there. Maybe it was the sliver of light that penetrated the room from the hallway along with his footsteps. Or maybe it was simply because I had known for months that this moment—at some point, on some night—would eventually come to pass. When I opened my eyes, he was there, closing the door behind him. Unwelcome, but not unanticipated.
I remember expecting him to say something, to offer some flimsy excuse for entering my room, or maybe even to try floating some corny, flirtatious line, pretending like we were some kind of illicit couple. But he didn’t say anything. He took the four steps from the door to the foot of my bed in silence. I apparently wasn’t worth the expenditure of words.
I remember wanting to scream. Wanting to beat the shit out of him until he was dead. But it was as if some other part of my brain had already made the decision for me—no, at the time, it felt more like the decision had been made for us: the me in that room and the real me watching from afar. Neither of us would be screaming. We would not be defending ourselves. We would simply watch the bedside clock and wait for this night to be over.
