From the award-winning author of The Bone Maker and The Lake House comes a haunting novel about sisterhood and grief, where difficult truths must contend with the corrosive power of unchecked lies.
After her mother dies, Hannah doesn’t know how to exist without her. Literally. In fact, Hannah’s not even certain that she does exist. No one seems to see or hear her, and she finds herself utterly alone. Grief-stricken and confused, her sense of self slowly slipping away, Hannah sets out to find new purpose in life―and answers about who (and what) she really is.
Hannah’s only remaining family is her older sister, Leah. Yet even Leah doesn’t seem to notice her. And while Hannah can see and hear her sister, she also sees beautiful and terrible things that don’t―or shouldn’t―exist. She learns there’s much more to this world than meets the eye and struggles to make sense of it all.
When Hannah sees Leah taking the same dangerous path that consumed their own mother―where lies supplant reality―she’s desperate to get through to her. But facing difficult truths is harder than it looks…
Excerpt from THE LIES AMONG US by Sarah Beth Durst ©2024
Published by Lake Union Publishing April 1, 2024.
All Rights Reserved
Here is what Leah sees when she looks at Mother’s house:
A drab one-story beige home with peeling paint, cloudy windows, and a porch cluttered with junk: a bike with a warped front wheel, a stack of empty planters, a pair of boots with cobwebs between them, and a moldy phone book still wrapped in its plastic bag that was once tossed on the driveway.
And here is what I see:
A cheerful two-story yellow house with white shutters and a white porch with a swing. Blazing pink azaleas frame the steps leading to the front door, and the flower beds are a riot of colors, sometimes daffodils, sometimes tulips, sometimes roses. Inconstant flowers, but I’ve learned to enjoy the array as a whole. It is the house that Mother wished it was: impeccably maintained and perfectly manicured.
For twenty-three years, I’ve lived within the beauty of Mother’s good intentions. I do not know what will happen now that she is gone and the house is, or will be, Leah’s.
Worry claws at my throat. Surely, Leah won’t—can’t—erase all that Mother made. This is our family’s house. She must feel the same pull to it as I do. Or does she? She must.
But she’s inside now, with her friend Jersey, tossing out everything she touches. I heard her tell Jamie at the cemetery and then Jersey in the kitchen that she wants this “over and done”—as if that’s possible. You don’t get to be over and done with the person who made you who you are, even if you forged yourself in opposition.
As hard as she tried to leave, Leah has found herself back here again. Better if she’d never left. Once, I thought I’d leave. It was a few years after Leah left for college, and I decided it was time for me to strike out on my own as well. That’s what you’re supposed to do, what everyone did. Spread your wings and leave the nest. Back then, I clung to the idea that I could be like everyone else if I tried hard enough to pretend that I was.
I had a plan: follow Leah to college, live on a couch in her dorm room, hang out in the student center, and sit in on any classes that interested me. It wasn’t as if anyone would demand tuition or to see an ID. I’d learn about . . . well, I never settled on what. Anything that struck my interest, I suppose. And then I would see the world. I had visions of traveling and seeing the places that Mother used to talk about, like Europe, where she backpacked with friends or on her own, depending on which anecdote she felt like telling. I’d start in London, cross the Channel to France, and then continue on. Maybe take a train to the Alps. Continue south to Italy. I’d have liked to see Egypt too. Not just the Pyramids of Giza but all the way up the Nile. Or I’d head west across the US. See Yellowstone, the Rocky Mountains. Go all the way to the Pacific Northwest where I’d stand in the rain and look out at the ocean. Or I’d travel south, all the way to Peru to see the Andes.
Maybe I could travel now.
But I know I won’t.
It was a Saturday when I tried to leave. I remember waiting until Mother woke. As she made her coffee, I said a lengthy goodbye, carefully laid out all the reasons why I’d decided to see the world, and then glided out the door, imagining that she was waving from the window. I didn’t look back to see that she wasn’t.
The garden was lush, overflowing with roses. Heavily fragrant blooms coated every bush, their flowers so heavy that the stems drooped.
As far as Leah was concerned, Mother had never successfully grown a rose bush before, though she’d tried once or twice, but to my eyes, she was a prizewinning gardener whose green thumb never failed. I made it to the end of the driveway without losing my nerve, checked the traffic, and strode purposefully across the street. I had never walked outside on my own, and I remember how free I felt, as if I could walk anywhere.
But then the shadows began to creep from the houses. So I walked faster. More poured from the nearest church. Even more from the elementary school. With them came the sound of crying, a thin kind of wailing that wasn’t from any particular throat.
Glass shattered.
And the shadows took shape, svelte as wolves. Blending into one another, they stalked me silently, their numbers swelling the farther from home I walked. I caught a glimpse of a jaw, then the silhouette of lean legs running by. I could almost convince myself they were my imagination, except that my skin chilled and my breath tightened when they came near.
But I wasn’t truly afraid until the road disappeared.
Cars kept driving, but I saw nothing ahead of me. As they reached the edge of the pavement, the cars vanished as if swallowed.
The wolves closed around me.
I told myself, They aren’t real; they can’t hurt you; they don’t exist. Until they attacked. When one bit my arm, it felt like shards of glass shoved into my flesh. I remember screaming so loudly that it hurt my throat, my lungs, my skull. People passed by—a woman with a stroller, a jogger with headphones, a delivery woman. No one heard my screams, and that broke me.
I don’t remember how I wrenched myself free, but I did. As I ran, they followed, flowing around me like the wind. My arm throbbed with a slicing pain. Until that moment, I hadn’t known that anything could hurt me.
Wildly, I threw myself onto Mother’s yard. The smell of roses surrounded me, and it seemed as though that was what stopped the wolves. Thinking back, I don’t know why that would be true, but maybe it was. Regardless, they did not follow me inside. And I did not leave again.
Always, they lurked, waiting for me to stray. I saw them sometimes through the window. For years, they didn’t give up their hunt, but so long as I stayed close to Mother and stayed within the confines of her world, they kept their distance from me. If I were to leave . . .
But maybe after all these years, they wouldn’t find me. I haven’t seen them through the window in a very long time. Maybe enough time has passed that they have forgotten me, and I’d be safe. Or maybe they would finish what they began that day and rip me to pieces while I scream—and no one hears.
The world outside is a strange and scary place. It’s nice to dream of traveling through it, but that won’t happen, at least not for me. Better to stay here. Or it would be if I could stay.
I imagine what it would be like if I did stay:
All Mother’s belongings, all her memories, all her stories would be stripped from each and every room the way Leah was doing to the kitchen, and then the house would be sold. Another family would move in, occupy it, fill it with their hopes and dreams and hurts and dramas.
At best, I would linger. Like a ghost. Haunting the place.
Unless I fade away before that happens.
I lift my hand and study it in the sunlight. For an instant, I think I can see the azalea bushes through my palm. Shuddering, I squeeze my hand into a fist. My fingers feel solid. Real.
What will happen to me after Leah erases everything?
Buy on Amazon | Audible | Bookshop.org
