The Elizas: A Novel by Sara Shepard

Author:Sara Shepard [Shepard, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2018-04-16T18:30:00+00:00

ELIZA

MONDAY MORNING, I start awake, disoriented. Where am I? A hazy scene around me: green-and-white-striped curtains, a luxurious California King bed. But then the furniture turns to mist. I open my eyes, and I am in my canopy bed in my bedroom. Where else would I be?

Someone pounds at the door. Judging by the lack of noises to right the situation, I am guessing Kiki and Steadman aren’t home. I sit up slowly, a sticky, rotting taste in my mouth. There is one message on my phone from Laura: Uh, I got this weird voice mail from this woman who said she’s your mother? She wants us not to publish your book? Nothing from my mother, though—I don’t know why I’m even checking. Nothing from Bill, apologizing for her. Nothing from Lance the forensic psychologist. Nothing from Richie the bartender.

More pounds. I glance in the mirror at myself and try to tamp down my wild, witchlike hair. Mascara is caked around my eyes, and I must have reapplied lipstick in between drinks number seven and eight, because it makes a wobbly circle around my general mouth region, hitting a good bit of my teeth, too. The knot on my head where I fell on Friday has morphed over the weekend from a garish blackish-purple to an even uglier greenish-yellow. It still hurts when I touch it.

I dart into the bathroom and scrub my face raw. With the makeup gone, my eyes are tiny, my lips puffy, my cheeks the color of raw cauliflower. I smooth my hair down my forehead and arrange it so it’s kind of covering up the bruise. I down twenty varieties of vitamins in hopes that their wonder-powers will counteract all the alcohol. Then I take a deep breath and listen, hoping the knocking has ceased. If anything, whoever it is has begun to pound harder.

What if it’s Leonidas down there? What if he knows I’m alone and has come to hurt me for looking through his phone?

I part the curtain at the top of the stairs and peer out the window. The Batmobile is in the driveway. I’m so astonished that I laugh. I would have thought that after Friday Desmond would want to be rid of me.

I hurry down the stairs and open the door. I find him in a disarmingly normal black T-shirt, old black jeans, and lace-up boots that are suede and pointed and perhaps like something a minstrel might wear. He cocks his head at me. “Were you slumbering?”

“No, but I was sleeping,” I mutter. “I tossed and turned all night.”

“Up solving your mystery? You should have called me.”

I cross my arms over my chest. “I thought you were out of the detective game.”

“Oh, now, I never said I was out for good.”

I remember my hope that he was coming to spin me around to kiss me. I think I’d dreamed about it last night; I have vague flashes of his pointy little face above mine, that thick, glossy hair brushing against my cheek, those little hands deft.

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