Lydia Cooper - My Second Death

I force my eyelids open.

Moonlight grays the walls. Flashes of blue static electricity flare when he turns over to face me, the sheets rushing together, separating, crackling, decrepitating.

Pale light glazes his bare skin.

“I don’t know what you’re doing,” he whispers.

“Me either.”

“Okay.” He puts his hand out. I see the darkness of it.

“No.”

“Hold still. I won’t touch you.”

He tugs a strand of hair clinging to my sticky lip. Smoothes it across the pillow.

“Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

There is a long silence.

“So tomorrow’s your late day, right?” He coughs a little. Swallows. “So since you don’t have to go in early do you — maybe you want to go get coffee in the morning? Like at Starbucks or something?”

“Maybe.”

He lets out his breath and turns onto his back.

“Okay,” he says. “Well. Good night.”

“Good night.”

I lie in the quiet listening to his breath as it evens and deepens, the nasal roughness of a snore creeping into the lower notes.

In the dark I strain to stay awake and think about falling asleep. If I fall asleep I don’t know if I will wake up again. And I drift into the waking dream, the ritual fantasy that is my private religion.

I lie in the dark and imagine that I sink into a well of drugged sleep, that my heartbeat slows, perhaps falters and ceases altogether. In the morning as pale sunlight creeps through the dusty windowpanes I will wake up. Some new breath will fill my lungs with a suspicion of joy and I will go get coffee with Aidan, where, grabbing for the sugar, I will spill some. And reaching across the table to brush the grains from my palm, his skin will touch mine and crackle like static electricity, like pollen in the air. Sunlight and air and skin, nothing more. And I will know that the sickness is gone.

I will laugh and get up and run out of Starbucks and I will drive home where I will come into the kitchen, flinging open the door, and my mother will startle, turning away from a pot of simmering oatmeal, her eyes flaring wide.

I stretch my eyelids and stare sightlessly into the dark in order to picture this scene, every detail of it immaculate and rehearsed. This is what happens: I stride into the kitchen and go to her and put my hands on her arms, feel the soft flesh give under my strong fingers. The warm squash of her breasts pressed against my chest. As I hug her, I put my mouth to her cheek that feels like velveteen and I whisper, “I love you. Mom, I love you.” I whisper until the words infect her wrinkled skin, sink through blood and muscle and fuse to her marrow. She leans away from me to stare, her eyes dazzling in the morning sun. And the pale light touches our skin and turns it to fractured crystals and our sweat, our sweat smells of burnt sugar, beautiful in the ambered light as if every pore every cell is perfected and maybe it is.

“Literature professor Cooper’s debut novel is a fast-paced psychological thriller with an unforgettable heroine. This damaged yet fiercely independent protagonist will appeal to fans of Stieg Larsson and Gillian Flynn.”

“Recommended for readers who enjoy mysteries and stories set in academia.”

“‘Mickey’ Brandis… finds a…corpse…. At first, Mickey’s suspicions fall on a friend of her older brother… but both she and the reader come to realize that the truth is much more disturbing. Cooper’s prose is full of dark beauty… those willing to stare into the recesses of the human psyche will be most rewarded.”

“Cooper is a nimble architect, deftly combining various raw materials to form a whole all her own. She’s fastened a cerebral and gritty text from mystery, noir, comedy, and family tragedy elements. I was amazed at how all these things coexisted and thrived, forming a mesmerizing mosaic.”

“The ingenuity of the novel lies not in plot twists but in the way the binocular vision of the narrative goes in and out of focus whenever Mickey’s emotional blind spots come into play. Cooper indulges in the sort of meticulous, highly metaphorical observations typical of much literary fiction…. This is the rare case where that sort of writing seems merited…. Mickey will never be endearing, but her struggle to understand herself and her world becomes more compelling than the solution to any crime.”

“Mickey is a fascinating character. The author’s skill lies in making us see past the horrors Mickey conjures for us to catch a glimpse of the vulnerable, damaged soul beneath. I should mention there’s some really good humour in there too…and some wonderful use of language…. A debut that makes me both eager and terrified to see where this author takes me in the future.”

“After… gradually entering Mickey’s life and her attempts to behave normally, I found myself invested in Mickey’s everyday difficulties…. It is definitely an intriguing glimpse into a disturbed personality trying to overcome her own deficiencies.”

“I found myself smiling at how carefully it was constructed, how lyrically it was written. It really is a skillfully written book…. This is definitely one I’d recommend to lovers of thrillers as well as literary fiction, and it’s not every day I can recommend one book for both of those genres!”

Copyright © 2013 by Lydia Cooper.

All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

Published by

TYRUS BOOKS, an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

10151 Carver Road, Suite 200, Blue Ash, Ohio 45242

www.tyrusbooks.com

Hardcover ISBN 10: 1-4405-6126-5

Hardcover ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-6126-9

Trade Paperback ISBN 10: 1-4405-6129-X

Trade Paperback ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-6129-0

eISBN 10: 1-4405-6127-3

eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-6127-6

Cover art © istockphoto.com/MikulasJaros