Where They Found Her (31 page)

Authors: Kimberly McCreight

I was still watching her giggling in the fading light as my phone vibrated on the steps next to me.
Justin
, it said when I looked down at the screen. Calling again, as he did so often despite my repeated requests for emails only, and only about Ella. We’d told her the basics—Mommy and Daddy would live apart from now on, but that they both still loved her just as much. And no, Daddy wasn’t coming home soon. He wasn’t coming home ever. Civility, I was committed to that. But that was all.

I couldn’t change how slow I’d been to see the truth about Justin or how much longer it had taken me to accept it. But I could do now what needed to be done for Ella and me. And I could do it without turning our lives into a torrent of rage, the way my own mother had. Without looking at the phone again, I silenced it and turned it facedown on the steps next to me.

Because Justin had been right about one thing: Not everything about where you’re going has to be about where you’ve been.

“Mommy, look!” Ella squealed. When I turned, she was sprinting barefoot across the grass, pointing to the glow of fireflies, sparking and then disappearing in the darkness. “Can we catch some, Mommy?”

I looked over at our picture-perfect front yard, at our white picket fence and pretty white house, watching the glow of all those fireflies, so lazy and random and beautiful. Did capturing them require a special jar or a net? What happened if you gathered them in your hands? I had not the faintest clue.

“Yes, sweetheart. Of course we can,” I said when Ella had run, full speed, back to me. I brushed back her curls from her sweet upturned face. “Come, let’s go get a jar,” I said, grasping her hand as we made our way inside. “And then I’ll show you how it’s done.”

Acknowledgments

My deepest gratitude to the brilliant and insightful Claire Wachtel. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Sharing this creative process has been a true gift. Thank you for seeing this book’s potential, then sticking with me in the trenches until it was all the way there.

Many thanks to Michael Morrison and Jonathan Burnham for your generous support and incredible enthusiasm. Thanks also to Hannah Wood, Leslie Cohen, Katie O’Callaghan, Amy Baker, Mary Sasso, Leigh Raynor, Kathryn Ratcliffe-Lee, and everyone else on the HarperCollins team. It’s a pleasure to work with such warm and wonderful people.

To Marly Rusoff, the very best agent and most lovely friend, I am so lucky to be the beneficiary of your wisdom and grace. Thank you, Michael Radulescu, for your foreign rights and associated genius, and Julie Mosow, for always dropping everything to read another draft. Thank you to the fabulous Shari Smiley and the wonderful Lizzy Kremer.

Many thanks to the experts who patiently answered my questions, including Dr. Barbara Deli, Dr. Gerald Feigin, Karen Lundegaard, Dr. Ora Pearlstein, Maureen Rush and Kelly Smith. I am also indebted to the work of Pam Belluck and Dr. Carl P. Malmquist.

My endless gratitude to my fantastic friends and family, a.k.a. the country’s most ferocious grassroots marketing team: John McCreight and Kim Healey, Diane and Stanley Dohm, Rebecca Prentice and Mike Blom, Stephen Prentice, Catherine and David Bohigian, Alanna Cavaricci, Sidney Cavaricci, the Cragan family, the Crane family, Larry and Suzy Daniels, Bob Daniels and Craig Leslie, Kate Eschelbach, David Fischer, Tania Garcia, Jessica and Jason Garmise, Sonya Glazer, Yuko Ikeda, David Kear, Merrie Koehlert, Hallie Levin, Brian and Laura Mayer, Brian McCreight, the Metzger family, Jason Miller, Sarah Moore, Frank Pometti, Jon Reinish, Maria Renz and Tom Barr, Julie Schwetlick, Maxine Solvay, Bronwen Stine, the Thomatos family, Meg Yonts, Denise Young Farrell, and Christine Yu. Beware: if you get too near any of them, they will make you buy another book.

A special thanks to Joe and Naomi Daniels for the help and the many years of friendship.

Thank you, Megan Crane, for promising me it would be worth it. To Victoria Cook, for simultaneously being the world’s best spin doctor and one of the most honest people I know. Thank you to Elena Evangelo for lending your creative genius. And to my ladies: Cindy Buzzeo, Cara Cragan, Heather Frattone, Nicole Kear, Tara Pometti, and Motoko Rich. My life would be so much less without you in it.

To Martin and Clare Prentice, words can’t express how grateful I am to, and for, the both of you.

To my husband, Tony: you are all things, always.

And to my daughters, Harper and Emerson, my heart and my soul. You are, and will always be, the most important story.

About the Author

Photo by Beowulf Sheehan

KIMBERLY McCREIGHT
is the author of
Reconstructing Amelia
. A
New York Times
bestseller,
Reconstructing Amelia
was nominated for the Edgar and Anthony Awards and has been acquired in seventeen countries. She attended Vassar College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, from which she graduated cum laude. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.

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hc.com
.

Also by Kimberly McCreight

Reconstructing Amelia

Credits

COVER DESIGN BY GREGG KULICK

COVER PHOTOGRAPH © CRAIG CAMERON OLSON / GALLERYSTOCK.COM

Copyright

Leaf illustration by Craig Cameron Olsen/Gallery Stock

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

WHERE THEY FOUND HER.
Copyright © 2015 by Kimberly McCreight. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, 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 hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

EPub Edition APRIL 2015 ISBN 9780062225481

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN
: 978-0-06-222546-7 (Hardcover)

15 16 17 18 19
OV/RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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