Introduction

Mara Foster is a brilliant painter, but for the past few years she’s been producing work that is anything but brilliant. Her personal life is lacking, too. She lives by herself, doesn’t date, and avoids her parents, and her social life consists mainly of eating takeout with her best friend, Bernadette. But Mara likes her life this way. It’s predictable, and it’s safe. Until one night she meets Hugo, a friendly, handsome man who makes Mara begin to reconsider the direction of her life. Scarred by her parents’ divorce, her father’s alcoholism and depression, her mother’s insatiable ambition and negligible nurturing, and two cursed and turbulent romances in her early youth, everything in Mara wants to run away from Hugo and his open, disarming nature. For years, Mara has striven to be the opposite of open and disarmed. She is an expert in defensiveness and self-protection. And yet, she is drawn to Hugo and cannot dispute that he makes her want to see and live in the world differently. Mara’s painful past, guarded present and uncertain future begin to overlap in the weeks that follow her first meeting with Hugo, affecting every corner of her life: her painting, her relationship with her mysterious patron, Sal, her friendship with Bernadette, and even her volatile regard for her relationship with her mother and father. Ultimately, Mara knows that with or without Hugo, she must finally face the truth surrounding the darkest parts of her youth, and see what, if anything, she can salvage and repair as she faces a drastically different future.

Editorial Review

No editorial review at this time.

Excerpt

Chapter One

Ask Santa for a new bike, and you might get it.

But Daddy might leave on Christmas Day.

When you reach out to touch your shiny new bike, Mommy might start yelling at Daddy about how dare he spend their money on a new bike and how you're only five and what do you need a new bike for anyway?

You play your invisible trick-the one where you pretend you are a small rock-and hope that no one will notice your heart thumping so loud and your ears burning and your eyes blinking again and again.

Daddy yells back at Mommy and soon they are yelling in each other's faces.

You take your hand off the bike.

You wish, instead of asking for a bike, you'd asked Santa for no more yelling and no more breaking things and slamming of doors.

You wish you'd asked for Daddy not to walk out the door and say he's never coming back and stay away until Mommy calls and begs him to come home like she has four times already.

The yelling gets louder and the words get meaner and then it all stops. A blast of freezing air gets in when Daddy opens the front door. You shiver and the door slams shut with Daddy on the other side.

In the long silence before Mommy starts her crying and her kicking at the door, you think about what she said about the bike.

How come Dad and Mom had to pay Santa?

Oh.

It doesn't matter what you asked Santa, you realize, because there is no Santa. There's no Santa, and Daddy's not coming back this time. Somehow you know it.

Chapter Two

When all else fails I go to Erik. Tonight, all else has failed.

He answers the door, eyes bloodshot, unsurprised. And then the hitch in my breathing that comes, that always comes with Erik.

"Can't sleep?" he says.

"No."

He steps aside to let me in, shuts the door behind me, slides the bolts, and chains the locks.

"Drink?" he says.

I refuse, as always.

There is no bar, just a huddle of bottles on top of a giant, long-broken stereo speaker. He pours himself a Lagavulin, neat, as always.

"You painting?" he says.

"All day."

"Good."

"You breaking the law?"

"Not at the moment," he says with the ghost of a smirk.

The couch is clear of its usual technological detritus. I follow him there, and sit.

I shouldn't be here.

I should never have been here. But it was too late years ago, and now it doesn't matter so much.

We try small talk but soon run out of easy things to say. Our ill beginnings surface quickly, so it's really better not to converse.

"So," he says.

"So."

I feel his eyes on me. He knows if I'm here, I've done everything I can to still the storm inside, to put all the demons back into their boxes and seal the lids. But sometimes they won't go. Sometimes my ears are full of screaming, and sometimes, like tonight, the voices are mine.

Erik has them too-demons, voices, nightmares seared on the soul-I knew it the first time I saw him. And sometimes, when there are large, dark spaces inside that you cannot escape, sometimes someone can meet you there, keep you company. Sometimes they can break you out.

I turn my head and let his eyes in. We search, and accept.

There can be no love here; we don't want it and we don't have it to give, especially not to one another. No love, but there is something else.

"Mara," he says. A question, a command.

"Yes."

We both stand.

I know the way to the bedroom, I know his mouth will taste like Scotch. I walk ahead and listen for his footsteps behind me. Just inside the door his arms wrap around my waist. He swivels me around and pulls me closer. I let him.

I come here because I know Erik will drag me to the edge. He will drag me there, push me over, and then leap after me, to a place beyond pain, beyond loss, beyond the things that haunt us in the empty spaces of the night.

When all else fails, I have this. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

Mara Foster is a brilliant painter, but for the past few years she’s been producing work that is anything but brilliant. Her personal life is lacking, too. She lives by herself, doesn’t date, and avoids her parents, and her social life consists mainly of eating takeout with her best friend, Bernadette. But Mara likes her life this way. It’s predictable, and it’s safe.
Until one night she meets Hugo, a friendly, handsome man who makes Mara begin to reconsider the direction of her life. Scarred by her parents’ divorce, her father’s alcoholism and depression, her mother’s insatiable ambition and negligible nurturing, and two cursed and turbulent romances in her early youth, everything in Mara wants to run away from Hugo and his open, disarming nature. For years, Mara has striven to be the opposite of open and disarmed. She is an expert in defensiveness and self-protection. And yet, she is drawn to Hugo and cannot dispute that he makes her want to see and live in the world differently.
Mara’s painful past, guarded present and uncertain future begin to overlap in the weeks that follow her first meeting with Hugo, affecting every corner of her life: her painting, her relationship with her mysterious patron, Sal, her friendship with Bernadette, and even her volatile regard for her relationship with her mother and father. Ultimately, Mara knows that with or without Hugo, she must finally face the truth surrounding the darkest parts of her youth, and see what, if anything, she can salvage and repair as she faces a drastically different future.

Weblinks

»	Publisher's book information Page
»	Author's web site

Book Club Recommendations

Recommended to book clubs by 0 of 0 members.

Member Reviews

Rate this book