Lie Still
PLAYING DEAD
“Tommie McCloud is the kind of character that every female reader ends up wanting as a sister or best friend—a friend of passionate loyalties, a no-nonsense woman who doesn’t possess the insincerity gene, a not-too-girly Texas spitfire.… Feverishly compelling … Heaberlin tells the story with whip-smart dialogue, an insistent pace and keen wit; it’s irresistible enough that I sped through all 300-plus pages in one sitting.”
—The Dallas Morning News
“I loved
Playing Dead
from cover to cover—it pulled me in and wouldn’t let me go until I finished in the wee morning hours. Best fiction I’ve read in a very, very long time.”
T
AYLOR
S
TEVENS
,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Innocent
“A compelling family mystery that kept me turning the pages. Highly recommended.”
M
ARGARET
M
ARON
,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Three-Day Town
“Tommie is a smart, sassy, loving, and doggedly persistent narrator in this fast-moving mystery that occasionally tugs at the heartstrings. A promising debut.”
—Booklist
“Impressive first novel … Heaberlin constructs her plot like a seasoned writer, and fills it with memorable characters; but her debut’s most striking feature is Tommie’s narrative voice, which is … winning and vivacious.”
—The Sunday Times
(London)
“In a word, this book is fun.… You look up and realize that an hour has flown by when it only feels like minutes.”
—Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“
Playing Dead
is an accomplished thriller, with twists that cut like barbed wire. Sure-footed, suspenseful, and full of heart.”
M
EG
G
ARDINER
, Edgar-Award-winning author of
Ransom River
“Absolutely gripping! Julia Heaberlin’s
Playing Dead
whirls the reader from the open spaces of rural Texas to the crowded Chicago streets as the stakes grow ever higher and the truth ever more elusive. I couldn’t put down this compelling novel of a life turned inside out in a world where no one is what they seem. More, please!”
V
ICKI
L
ANE
, author of
Under the Skin
“Once I began reading
Playing Dead
, I couldn’t put it down. Heaberlin’s voice is pitch perfect, and her story of one woman’s fierce struggle to reconcile her past with her present is gripping and powerful. An outstanding debut.”
C
ARLA
B
UCKLEY
, author of
Invisible
“Julia Heaberlin’s
Playing Dead
is a wonderfully suspenseful debut. Heroine Tommie McCloud is scrappy and sassy, with a heart as big as her home state of Texas.”
H
EATHER
G
UDENKAUF
,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Weight of Silence
“I loved it, and had to put everything aside so that I could finish it. What a great, fast-paced action thriller, and, even better, written from a woman’s point of view. I was transported to Texas and Tommie’s world of cowgirl boots and junk food, and didn’t really want to come back. The uncovering of hidden family secrets and mysteriously disappearing girls is skillfully handled, and kept me guessing and rooting for Tommie all the way through.”
J
ULIA
C
ROUCH
, author of
Cuckoo
“A terrific debut … Like the Chicken Fried Steak that its characters love,
Playing Dead
combines Texas and noir in unexpectedly wonderful ways, with a refreshingly real heroine and a plot that moves and twists with the unpredictability of a rodeo bull.”
S
USANNA
K
EARSLEY
, author of
The Rose Garden
Lie Still
is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events; to real people, living or dead; or to real locales are intended only to give the fiction a setting in historical reality. Other names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
A Bantam Books eBook Edition
Copyright © 2013 by Julia Heaberlin
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
B
ANTAM
B
OOKS
and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Heaberlin, Julia.
Lie Still: a novel / Julia Heaberlin.
pages cm
eISBN: 978-0-345-52705-9
I. Title.
PS3608.E224L54 2013
813’.6—dc23
2012043225
Cover design by Eileen Carey
Cover photograph: © Marie Killen/Flickr Select/Getty Images
v3.1
T
he ring glittered, resting on the dirt of the forest floor, the sun catching it in the fractured afternoon light falling through the leaves.
The ring hadn’t been there the day before. A week of brutal, ceaseless rain finally cleaned it up and washed it from its hiding spot twenty years too late, long after something terrible happened.
A hiker paused when he saw it, nearly turned away, and then recognized it for what it was. Plastic. Made in China. A prize from a gumball machine. He picked it up and briefly examined it. A pink heart-shaped jewel on a small, dulled band. He thought about taking the ring home to his three-year-old daughter, probably strutting around at this very moment in her Barbie princess crown, but he decided his wife would yell at him. Tell him the ring was a choking hazard. His daughter would ask why it was scratched. He dropped it as casually as he had flipped his empty
Ozarka bottle into the brush a few minutes earlier and trudged on up the trail.
He didn’t feel the eyes on his back, watching him disappear.
The crow swooped in.
It was the same crow that had been stealing the change out of a broken car-wash vending machine a mile down the road. Exactly $57.50 to date, all of it deposited daily into the sawed-out window of Joey Tucker’s pine tree house that he built all by himself that summer. Joey told no one about the money. He thought it was a secret gift from God.
Few people—certainly not Joey or the man in the forest—know how smart crows are.
But the crow was done with Joey. Joey was rich enough. The bird flew through the trees, higher and higher, sweeping through clouds still heavy with water, a tiny black dot, taking his prize with him.
The crow recognized the ring for what it was.
For what it
once
was.
A bit of joy.
F
or me, the rape is a permanent fixture on the clock, like midnight.
A point of reference.
I was nineteen years and four days old.
I remember because he treated me beforehand to a belated birthday dinner of scallops, chive mashed potatoes, haricot verts, and a bottle of mediocre wine. I was surprised when my plate arrived and haricot verts turned out to be ordinary green beans.
His name was Pierce Martin, one of those names that could work backward or forward. The sheets were Tommy Hilfiger.
I remember because he pressed my face into the pillow’s red and blue patriotic design to prevent me from screaming.
After my birthday dinner, our third date, he begged me to come back to his fraternity house and spend the night in his bed.
No sex
, he promised.
Just kissing. Just holding
. The wine made my world spin pleasantly, and he smelled sexy, a hint of musk and a
little sweat left from a pickup basketball game. Before I took my first sip of wine, he told me he had scored twenty-five points.
I said yes to his room.
I trusted him.
I’d told him I was still a virgin, one of the girls who signed the celibacy pledge at church camp in eighth grade and meant it. He’d told me with a solemn face that he wanted his wife to be a virgin. He didn’t say anything about himself.
The first time he asked me out, also the first time he said hello, he slid an arm around my shoulders and walked me across campus as if he already owned the right. Sometimes I picture the moment, my face turned up to his, eager, a puppy, a lamb, a foolish girl. I want to slap her.