Paula DeBoard - The Drowning Girls

Critically acclaimed author of The Mourning Hours and The Fragile World, Paula Treick DeBoard returns with a tale of dark secrets, shocking lies and a dangerous obsession that will change one neighborhood forever

Liz McGinnis never imagined herself living in a luxurious gated community like The Palms. Ever since she and her family moved in, she’s felt like an outsider amongst the Stepford-like wives and their obnoxiously spoiled children. Still, she’s determined to make it work—if not for herself, then for her husband, Phil, who landed them this lavish home in the first place, and for her daughter, Danielle, who’s about to enter high school.

Yet underneath the glossy veneer of The Palms, life is far from idyllic. In a place where reputation is everything, Liz soon discovers that even the friendliest residents can’t be trusted. So when the gorgeous girl next door befriends Danielle, Liz can’t help but find sophisticated Kelsey’s interest in her shy and slightly nerdy daughter a bit suspicious.

But while Kelsey quickly becomes a fixture in the McGinnis home, Liz’s relationships with both Danielle and Phil grow strained. Now even her own family seems to be hiding things, and it’s not long before their dream of living the high life quickly spirals out of control...

Praise for the novels of Paula Treick DeBoard

“In Paula Treick DeBoard’s latest breathtaking thriller, she paints a stark and chillingly real portrayal of a family torn apart by teenage transgressions. Gritty and inauspicious from the start, The Drowning Girls left me awestruck, revealing DeBoard’s true brilliance as an author. Spellbinding.”

—Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Girl

“The Drowning Girls by Paula Treick DeBoard is cleverly plotted, full of twists and turns and so well-written that it pulls you in from page one. Genuinely suspenseful, Treick DeBoard delivers a disturbing, multilayered, provocative novel that is impossible to put down.”

—Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times bestselling author of The Weight of Silence

“A heart-pounding look at what lies behind the deceptively placid veneer of the well-to-do suburbs. The kaleidoscopic view of innocence, danger, and malice shifts and twists as it races to a shattering conclusion.”

—Sophie Littlefield, bestselling author of The Guilty One on The Drowning Girls

“In The Drowning Girls, DeBoard pulls you right into her world and holds you in her grip until the book’s final twist. Fans of The Good Girl and The Luckiest Girl Alive, and really anyone who enjoys great suspense, have found their next must-read. Sure to be the book everyone is talking about in 2016, I could not put it down.”

—Catherine McKenzie, bestselling author of Hidden and Smoke

“The Drowning Girls casts a spell as brilliant and alluring as the gated community of its setting. Paula Treick DeBoard maps this world of privilege and secrets with a deft hand, and from the novel’s terrifying opening pages reveals a family’s tragic unraveling. These characters long for love and happiness, but the trail of duplicity that ultimately ensnares them creates a suspenseful and compelling page-turner I couldn’t put down.”

—Karen Brown, author of The Longings of Wayward Girls

“A coming-of-age tale about a family in crisis expertly told by Ms. DeBoard. The Fragile World examines how profound loss changes all who are forced to come to terms with it. Touching and compelling, it will move you.”

—Lesley Kagen, New York Times bestselling author of Whistling in the Dark and The Resurrection of Tess Blessing

“Assured storytelling propels DeBoard’s first novel.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Mourning Hours

“Rich and evocative…compelling.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Mourning Hours

“Tautly written and beautifully evocative, The Mourning Hours is a gripping portrayal of a family straining against extraordinary pressure, and a powerful tale of loyalty, betrayal and forgiveness.”

— Bookreporter.com

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Will, for always.

“One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.”

—Jonathan Safran Foer

Everything is Illuminated

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dedication

Quote

JUNE 19, 2015—5:40 P.M.

LIZ

JUNE 2014—LIZ

PHIL

JUNE 19, 2015—5:43 P.M.

LIZ

JULY 2014—LIZ

PHIL

JUNE 19, 2015—5:56 P.M.

LIZ

AUGUST 2014—LIZ

PHIL

JUNE 19, 2015—6:02 P.M.

LIZ

SEPTEMBER 2014—LIZ

PHIL

JUNE 19, 2015—6:14 P.M.

LIZ

OCTOBER 2014—LIZ

PHIL

JUNE 19, 2015—6:21 P.M.

LIZ

NOVEMBER 2014—LIZ

PHIL

JUNE 19, 2015—6:32 P.M.

LIZ

DECEMBER 2014—LIZ

PHIL

JUNE 19, 2015—6:57 P.M.

LIZ

JANUARY 2015—LIZ

PHIL

JUNE 19, 2015—7:09 P.M.

LIZ

FEBRUARY 2015—LIZ

PHIL

JUNE 19, 2015—8:42 P.M.

LIZ

Extract

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

A CONVERSATION WITH PAULA TREICK DEBOARD

Copyright

JUNE 19, 2015 5:40 P.M.

LIZ

Someone was screaming.

For a moment, with the ceiling fan whirring quietly over my head, I allowed myself to believe it was a benign sound—the kids next door on their play structure, maybe, sliding and swinging and climbing, their voices carrying on a breeze.

I propped myself up on my elbows, blinking myself awake. How long had I been sleeping? Twenty minutes, an hour? The tank top I was wearing was streaked with dust and damp with sweat. Dizzy, I focused on my bare feet, where chipped red polish dotted my toes. On the dresser was a nearly empty bottle of Riesling, a slick ring of condensation bubbling on the wood.

I reached a hand onto Phil’s side of the bed, groping and coming up empty. Of course. Phil was gone, and he’d taken everything with him—armfuls of shirts and pants, suit coats and blazers, slippery mounds of ties and belts, even the dry cleaning in its plastic sheeting. Shoes, too: wing tips, loafers, sneakers, the pair of black Converse I’d never once seen him wear. He’d taken the neatly folded stacks of T-shirts and boxers, the lumps of paired socks, the heavy woolen sweater that smelled like a Greek fishing village—or at least, how I’d imagined a Greek fishing village would smell, briny and deep-down damp.

After he left, I’d searched the floor for a button, a collar stay, a lonely sock, as if I could keep that one discarded thing as evidence of our life together. For a long time, I’d wanted to go back, to pin our relationship to a wall and study it, like a specimen, from every angle. I wanted to be able to say: Here. This is where it all went wrong. This was the point at which the inevitable was still evitable.

But that was a long time ago. Months now.

I shook my head, chasing away the thoughts, and heard the screams again, over a relentless pounding of bass. Was the television on downstairs? That was the simple explanation, and for a moment, I allowed myself to be reassured by the thought of actors following a script, raising their voices on cue.

And then I remembered: the girls.

The pool.

The screams were coming from outside, distorted by the triple-paned windows, as if they were being filtered through a kaleidoscope, splitting and fracturing.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and moved toward the door. My head pounded, an angry thing.

Danielle.

My baby.

No—not a baby. Fifteen and so angry we’d barely exchanged more than a sentence in a month.

I stumbled on the stairs, catching myself with a hand on the rail. Steady, Liz. I had to navigate around the stacks of boxes in the foyer marked Towels and Office and, helpfully, Stuff.