Laura Lippman - Life Sentences

LAURA LIPPMAN

Life Sentences

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.

AVON

A division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in the USA by HarperCollins Publishers , New York, NY, 2009

Copyright © Laura Lippman 2009

Laura Lippman 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

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 ebook 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 ebooks

Source ISBN: 9781847560933

Ebook Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007328970

Version: 2018-06-13

In loving memory of James Crumley, 1939–2008.

Take my word. It was fun.

I detest the man who hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks for another .

—THE ILIAD

Title Page LAURA LIPPMAN Life Sentences

Copyright Copyright Copyright About the Publisher 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. AVON A division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in the USA by HarperCollins Publishers , New York, NY, 2009 Copyright © Laura Lippman 2009 Laura Lippman 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 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 ebook 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 ebooks Source ISBN: 9781847560933 Ebook Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007328970 Version: 2018-06-13

Dedication In loving memory of James Crumley, 1939–2008. Take my word. It was fun.

Epigraph I detest the man who hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks for another . —THE ILIAD

Chapter One

Part 1-Bridgeville: February 20–23

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Part 2-Banrock Station: February 25–28

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Part 3-Glass Houses: March 1–2

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Part 4-The Brier Patch: March 3–5

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Part 5-Collectors: March 11–12

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Part 6-Low Countries: March 14–21

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Part 7-How To Cook Everything: March 24–27

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Part 8-Natural Selection: March 28–29

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Part 9-And Agamemnon Dead: March 29–31

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Part 10-Happy Wanderers: September 5–6

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Excerpt from The Innocents

Autumn 1977–Spring 1978

Author’s Note

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

‘Well,’ the bookstore manager said, ‘it is Valentine’s Day.’

It’s not that bad , Cassandra wanted to say in her own defense. But she never wanted to sound peevish or disappointed. She must smile, be gracious and self-deprecating. She would emphasize how wonderfully intimate the audience was, providing her with an opportunity to talk, have a real exchange, not merely prate about herself. Besides, it wasn’t tragic , drawing thirty people on a February night in the suburbs of San Francisco. On Valentine’s Day. Most of the writers she knew would kill for thirty people under these circumstances, under any circumstances.

And there was no gain in reminding the bookseller—Beth, Betsy, Bitsy, oh dear, the name had vanished, her memory was increasingly buggy—that Cassandra had drawn almost two hundred people to this same store on this precise date four years earlier. Because that might imply she thought someone was to blame for tonight’s turnout, and Cassandra Fallows didn’t believe in blame. She was famous for it. Or had been.

She also was famous for rallying, and she did just that as she took five minutes to freshen up in the manager’s office, brushing her hair and reapplying lipstick. Her hair, her worst feature as a child, was now her best, sleek and silver, but her lips seemed thinner. She adjusted her earrings, smoothed her skirt, reminding herself of her general good fortune. She had a job she loved; she was healthy. Lucky, I am lucky . She could quit now, never write a word again, and live quite comfortably. Her first two books were annuities, more reliable than any investment.

Her third book—ah, well, that was the unloved, misshapen child she was here to exalt.

At the lectern, she launched into a talk that was already honed and automatic ten days into the tour. There was a pediatric hospital across the road from where I grew up . The audience was mostly female, over forty. She used to get more men, but then her memoirs, especially the second one, had included unsparing detail about her promiscuity, a healthy appetite that had briefly gotten out of control in her early forties. It was a long-term-care facility, where children with extremely challenging diagnoses were treated for months, for years in some cases . Was that true? She hadn’t done that much research about Kernan. The hospital had been skittish, dubious that a writer known for memoir was capable of creating fiction. Cassandra had decided to go whole hog, abandon herself to the libertine ways of a novelist. Forgo the fact-checking, the weeks in libraries, the conversations with family and friends, trying to make her memories gibe with hard, cold certainty. For the first time in her life—despite what her second husband had claimed—she made stuff up out of whole cloth. The book is an homage to The Secret Garden— in case the title doesn’t make that clear enough—and it’s set in the 1980s because that was a time when finding biological parents was still formidably difficult, almost taboo, a notion that began to lose favor in the 1990s and is increasingly out of fashion as biological parents gain more rights . It had never occurred to Cassandra that the world at large, much like the hospital, would be reluctant to accept her in this new role. The story is wholly fictional, although it’s set in a real place .