Karma Brown - In This Moment

Bestselling author Karma Brown is back with a morally infused and emotionally riveting exploration of one woman’s guilt over an unexpected—yet avoidable—tragedy

Meg Pepper has a fulfilling career and a happy family. Most days she’s able to keep it all together and glide through life. But then, in one unalterable moment, everything changes.

After school pickup one day, she stops her car to wave a teenage boy across the street...just as another car comes hurtling down the road and slams into him.

Meg can’t help but blame herself for her role in this horrific disaster. Full of remorse, she throws herself into helping the boy’s family as he rehabs from his injuries. But the more Meg tries to absolve herself, the more she alienates her own family—and the more she finds herself being drawn to the boy’s father.

Soon Meg’s picture-perfect life is unravelling before her eyes. As the painful secrets she’s been burying bubble dangerously close to the surface, she will have to decide: Can she forgive herself, or will she risk losing everything she holds dear to her heart?

KARMA BROWN is an award-winning journalist and author of the bestsellers Come Away with Me and The Choices We Make. In addition to her novels, Karma’s writing has appeared in publications such as Redbook, SELF and Chatelaine. Karma lives just outside Toronto with her husband, daughter and their labradoodle, Fred. In This Moment is her most recent novel.

www.KarmaKBrown.com

Also By Karma Brown

Come Away with Me

The Choices We Make

In This Moment

Karma Brown

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Karma Brown 2017

Karma Brown asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9781474083591

Praise for the novels of Karma Brown

“We adored Come Away with Me and are ready for more of Brown’s powerful, heartfelt prose. She’s the female Nicholas Sparks.”

—Redbook

“Brown delivers an emotional punch in The Choices We Make. This is a good, old-fashioned tear-jerker of a book.”

—The Toronto Star

“The Choices We Make presents gut-wrenching questions about friendship and loyalty... Should appeal to readers who relish Nicholas Sparks’ sentimental stories combined with the kind of weighty issues often raised by Jodi Picoult.”

—New York Journal of Books

“A warmly compelling love story [and] deeply moving debut.”

—Booklist

“A compelling premise with a plot that intensifies satisfyingly in the second half, this book is a good bet for readers who don’t shy away from difficult moral questions.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“[A] beautifully written story of love and loss... Come Away with Me had me smiling through my tears.”

—Tracey Garvis Graves, New York Times bestselling author of On the Island

“[A] heartbreaking yet hopeful tale... Karma Brown is a talented new voice in women’s fiction.”

—Lori Nelson Spielman, #1 international bestselling author of The Life List

“Laughing one minute, then fiercely blinking back tears the next, we tore through this novel—so gripping that we were both excited and scared out of our minds to turn the page. Multilayered and completely consuming...[a] stunning page turner.”

—Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke, authors of The Status of All Things

“One woman’s journey through grief becomes the journey of a lifetime.”

—Colleen Oakley, author of Before I Go

For Mom & Dad—you told me I could do whatever I put my mind to.

You were right. xo

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Quote

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Acknowledgments

Questions for Discussion

A Conversation with Karma Brown

Extract

Remember upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.

—Alexander the Great

1

I wake with a start thanks to a loud bang against the window on my side of the bed. Without looking I know what’s happened—another bird, tricked by the clear glass of our balcony windows, has soared to its death and snapped me out of my slumber.

Using my fingertips I pull my phone off the nightstand and squint at the clock icon. When I see the time I sit straight up, pulling the covers off Ryan, who groans with annoyance. “Ryan. We have to get up.”

“Five more minutes,” Ryan mumbles, his back to me as he tries to pull the duvet back up over his shoulders.

I nudge him again, tug at the duvet. “Get up. We’re late.”

He rolls toward me, and I hold my phone in front of him. He lets out a quiet string of curse words. “Didn’t you set your alarm?”

“Didn’t you?” I grumble, throwing the duvet off my legs but still not getting out of bed. I feel leaden, like in the night someone replaced my blood with molasses, and my head hurts. Ryan is out of bed and has already started the shower, and my mind drifts again to the bird. Maybe it was only stunned and has already flown away.

I place my feet gingerly on the floor, wiggling some warmth into my toes. Flicking on the balcony light I glance down. Damn. The bird’s neck is torqued at a distressing angle, its feathers ruffling with the breeze, but otherwise there’s no movement in its tiny body.

I contemplate the best way to get rid of it without upsetting Audrey. After the last one broke its neck, a vibrant yellow finch that Audrey buried under our hydrangeas, Ryan refused to let her soap all the windows in the house. So she made glass gel clings, thanks to the internet and twenty dollars of gelatin from the bulk store and a determination to save every last neighborhood bird. I think of the gel clings inside my nightstand drawer, likely sticking to whatever else I’d forgotten about in there, and whisper an apology to the bird.