Mary Kubica - Every Last Lie

New York Times bestselling author of THE GOOD GIRL Mary Kubica is back with another exhilarating thriller as a widow’s pursuit of the truth leads her to the darkest corners of the psyche.

Clara Solberg’s world shatters when her husband and their four-year-old daughter are in a car crash, killing Nick while Maisie is remarkably unharmed. The crash is ruled an accident...until the coming days, when Maisie starts having night terrors that make Clara question what really happened on that fateful afternoon.

Tormented by grief and her obsession that Nick’s death was far more than just an accident, Clara is plunged into a desperate hunt for the truth. Who would have wanted Nick dead? And, more important, why? Clara will stop at nothing to find out—and the truth is only the beginning of this twisted tale of secrets and deceit.

Told in the alternating perspectives of Clara’s investigation and Nick’s last months leading up to the crash, master of suspense Mary Kubica weaves her most chilling thriller to date—one that explores the dark recesses of a mind plagued by grief and shows that some secrets might be better left buried.

Praise for Mary Kubica:

‘Brilliant, intense, and utterly addictive. Be prepared to run a gauntlet of emotions!’

B A Paris, author of Behind Closed Doors

‘With Every Last Lie , Mary Kubica spins an utterly mesmerizing tale of marriage and secrets.’ Megan Abbott, author of You Will Know Me

‘Perfect suspense.’

Buzzfeed

‘Grabs you from the moment it starts.’

Daily Mail

‘Gets right under your skin and leaves its mark. A tremendous read.’

The Sun

‘Sensational.’

Metro

‘Fans of Gone Girl will embrace this.’ Lisa Gardner

‘Memorable and riveting.’

Lovereading.co.uk

‘Stunning – Kubica is an author to watch.’

We Love This Book

‘ Single White Female on steroids.’ Lisa Scottoline

Also by Mary Kubica

The Good Girl

Pretty Baby

Don’t You Cry

To Mom & DadMy biggest fans

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Title Page

Praise

Booklist

Dedication

CHAPTER 1: CLARA

CHAPTER 2: NICK

CHAPTER 3: CLARA

CHAPTER 4: NICK

CHAPTER 5: CLARA

CHAPTER 6: NICK

CHAPTER 7: CLARA

CHAPTER 8: NICK

CHAPTER 9: CLARA

CHAPTER 10: NICK

CHAPTER 11: CLARA

CHAPTER 12: NICK

CHAPTER 13: CLARA

CHAPTER 14: NICK

CHAPTER 15: CLARA

CHAPTER 16: NICK

CHAPTER 17: CLARA

CHAPTER 18: NICK

CHAPTER 19: CLARA

CHAPTER 20: NICK

CHAPTER 21: CLARA

CHAPTER 22: NICK

CHAPTER 23: CLARA

CHAPTER 24: NICK

CHAPTER 25: CLARA

CHAPTER 26: NICK

CHAPTER 27: CLARA

CHAPTER 28: NICK

CHAPTER 29: CLARA

CHAPTER 30: NICK

CHAPTER 31: CLARA

CHAPTER 32: NICK

CHAPTER 33: CLARA

CHAPTER 34: NICK

CHAPTER 35: CLARA

CHAPTER 36: NICK

CHAPTER 37: CLARA

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Extract

Copyright

CLARA

They say that death comes in threes. First it was the man who lives across the street from my father and mother. Mr. Baumgartner, dead from prostate cancer at the age of seventy-four. And then it was a former high school classmate of mine, only twenty-eight years old, a wife and mother, dead from a pulmonary embolism—a blood clot that shot straight to her lungs.

And then it was Nick.

I’m sitting on the sofa as the phone beside me starts to ring. Nick’s name appears on the display screen, his familiar voice on the other end of the line like any of the other thousands of times he’s called. But this time it’s different because this is the last time he will ever call.

“Hey,” says Nick.

“Hey yourself.”

“How’s everything going?” he asks.

“Just fine,” I tell him.

“Is Felix asleep?”

“Yup,” I say. The way new babies have a tendency to do, up all night, sleep all day. He lies in my arms, rendering me immobile. I can’t do a single thing but watch him sleep. Felix is four days and three hours old. In seventeen more minutes he will be four days and four hours old. The labor was long and intense, as they nearly all are. There was pain despite the epidural, three hours of pushing despite the fact that delivery was supposed to get easier with each subsequent birth. With Maisie it was quick and easy by comparison; with Felix it was hard.

“Maybe you should wake him,” Nick suggests.

“And how should I do that?”

My words aren’t cross. They’re tired. Nick knows this. He knows that I am tired.

“I don’t know,” he says, and I all but hear the shrug through the telephone, see Nick’s own tired but boyish smile on the other end of the line, the usually clean-shaven face that begins to accrue with traces of brown bristle at this time of day, along the mustache line and chin. His words are muffled. The phone has slipped from his mouth, as I hear him whisper to Maisie in an aside, Let’s go potty before we leave, and I imagine his capable hands swapping a pair of pale pink ballet slippers with the hot-pink Crocs. I see Maisie’s feet squirm in his hands, drawing away. Maisie wants to join the troop of other four-year-olds practicing their clumsy leg extensions and toe touches.

But, Daddy, her tiny voice whines. I don’t have to go potty.

And Nick’s firm but gentle command: You need to try.

Nick is the better parent. I tend to give in, to say okay, only to regret it when, three miles into our commute home, Maisie suddenly gropes for her lap and screams that she has to go with a shame in her eyes that tells me she’s already gone.

Maisie’s voice disappears into the little girls’ room, and Nick returns to the phone. “Should I pick something up for dinner?” he asks, and I stare down at Felix, sound asleep on my still-distended stomach. My chest leaks through a white cotton blouse. I sit on an ice pack to soothe the pain of childbirth. An episiotomy was needed, and so there are stitches; there is blood. I haven’t bathed today and the amount of sleep I’ve reaped in the last four days can be counted on a single hand. My eyelids grow heavy, threatening to close.

Nick’s voice comes at me again through the phone. “Clara,” he says, this time deciding for me, “I’ll pick up something for dinner. Maisie and I will be home soon. And then you can rest,” he says, and our evening routine will go a little something like this: I will sleep, and Nick will wake me when it’s time for Felix to eat. And then come midnight, Nick will sleep and I will spend the rest of the night awake with a roused Felix again in my arms.

“Chinese or Mexican?” he asks, and I say Chinese.

These are the last words I ever exchange with my husband.

* * *

I wait with Felix for what feels like forever, staring at the filmy black of the lifeless TV, the remote on the other side of the room hiding beneath a paisley pillow on the leather settee. I can’t risk waking Felix to retrieve it. I don’t want to wake Felix. My eyes veer from TV to remote and back again, as if able to turn the TV on through mental telepathy, to eschew that all-consuming boredom and repetition that accompanies infant care—eat, sleep, poop, repeat—with a few minutes of Wheel of Fortune or the evening news.

When will Nick be home?

Harriet, our red merle Border collie, lies curled into a ball at my feet, blending well into the jute rug—part of the furnishings, and also our guard. She hears the car before I do. One of her ticked ears stands on end, and she rises to her feet. I wait in vain for the sound of the garage door opening, for Maisie to come stampeding in through the steel door, pivoting like a little ballerina across the wooden floors of our home. My stomach growls at Nick’s arrival and the promise of food. I’m hungry.