The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023 by Lisa Unger

Author:Lisa Unger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-10-17T00:00:00+00:00

A few days later, Mom loaded up Dad’s cream-colored Coupe DeVille and drove us down the unpaved Alcan to British Columbia. Two thousand two hundred miles of potholes and radio static and great lush Canadian trees rushed by, as Jamie and I lay in the back seat—bickering and a little afraid. Mom refused to wear sunglasses and walked right into whatever little roadside store we happened upon with her bashed-in eyes like two burned-out lightbulbs in the center of her face.

Mom is a delicate, overly patient woman who speaks as if she is reading a good-night book while asking you to take out the garbage or go see if a man is hiding in the bushes at the end of the drive, her voice rising up at the end of every sentence the way kindergarten teachers’ do when they’re about to turn the page. Not once has she ever yelled at us. But there was a flinty, fearsome resolve she displayed during those two long weeks that I have never forgotten and never seen since. She had a plan, and the plan was not what we expected from a woman who had never been outside of Alaska, except for a honeymoon to Hawaii and the tiny factory town in Ohio where she had been raised.

The plan, she told us at the steering wheel, was Montreal. They spoke French there, she said. She had always wanted to learn French. It was the language of diplomacy. And art. And culture. Jamie, to my surprise, was all for it. She wanted to see a ballet. A real one with toe shoes. Like in the movies.

We spent six hours in the suburbs of Montreal, before Mom turned the Coupe DeVille around and drove us straight back to Alaska. My sister was the one who walked into our house and found it stripped empty, save for Dad’s blue bear. Everything we had owned was gone and so were most of the walls and appliances. Upstairs, she found our soon-to-be stepmother—Fern—with some tile and wallpaper catalogues.

I was asleep in the car, but I can picture it from what Jamie later described in lavish detail. Fern’s disco shorts. Her bangle bracelets. Her plastic slip-on heels. She had dropped the weight and gotten highlights and now spoke in an airy tone, with which she still addressed me as a bunny. For example: “You poor bunny, sit down and let me get you a glass of Evian.”

Meanwhile, our mother was having a nervous breakdown in the driveway, from which she was never to fully recover. I say all of this only because this is where my memory fizzles out and I feel terrible for Jamie and need to recognize some of the hardships she endured. It was Jamie who drove Mom to the hospital and forced Dad to buy the crappy rancher next door for the three of us to live in after Mom was released. It was Jamie who made Dad sign a homemade contract that somehow held

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