Home Before Dark: A Novel by Riley Sager Read Free Book Online Page A

feel like a weight lifting off my shoulders. It doesn’t. Any relief I might have is tempered by frustration over all that useless secrecy. When I was a child, the Book made me an object of curiosity to some and an outcast to others. Being told the truth might not have changed that, but I sure as hell would have been able to handle it better. Realizing some of those growing pains could have been avoided fills my heart with an angry, gnawing ache.
    “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
    “We wanted to,” my mother says with a sigh. “When the time was right. That’s what we always said. ‘When the time is right, we’ll tell Maggie the truth.’ But the right time never seemed to arrive. Especially when the book became more successful than we ever imagined.”
    “You were worried I’d tell someone?”
    “We were worried you’d be disappointed in us,” she says. “Your father especially.”
    She’s assuming I wasn’t already disappointed by years of lies and all the things left unspoken. But I was. Few things in life are more disappointing than knowing your parents aren’t being honest with you.
    “None of that matters.” My voice cracks, and I realize I’m holding back tears. “You should have told me.”
    “Everything you have is because of that book,” my mother says. “It put food on the table and clothes on your back. House of Horrors paid for your entire education. Not to mention that inheritance you just received. We didn’t know how you’d react if you found out it was all because of a lie.”
    “Is that why you and Dad got divorced?”
    Something else we don’t talk about. When they separated, the only thing my parents told eight-year-old me was that I’d be living in two apartments instead of one. They failed to mention that my mother would be in one of the apartments and my father in the other, never again living under the same roof. It took me weeks to figure it out on my own. And it took me years to stop thinking that the divorce was somehow my fault. Yet another youthful trauma that could have easily been avoided.
    “Mostly,” my mother says. “We had problems before that, of course. We weren’t a perfect couple by any means. But after the book was published, I got tired of constantly lying. And fearing the truth would get out. And feeling guilty about all of it.”
    “That’s why you refused to take money from Dad,” I say.
    “I just wanted to be free of it all. In exchange, I promised your father I’d never tell you the truth.” My mother sighs again. Sadder this time. A soft exhalation of defeat. “I guess some promises need to be broken.”
    The sunglasses go back on, a sign I’ve heard all she’s prepared to say about the matter. Is it everything? Probably not. But it’s enough to finally bring that sense of relief I’d hoped for. The truth at last, which ended up being just what I suspected.
    Lunch progresses normally after that. Our new drinks arrive. My mother judges me from behind her sunglasses when I order a burger with extra bacon. She gets a salad. I tell her about the duplex Allie and I are trying to flip. She tells me how she and Carl are spending the entire month of June in Capri. When lunch is over, my mother surprises me with one last mention of Baneberry Hall. It’s dropped casually as she pays the check. Like an afterthought.
    “By the way, Carl and I talked it over, and we’d like to buy Baneberry Hall from you. At full value, of course.”
    “Seriously?”
    “If we weren’t serious, I wouldn’t have brought it up.”
    “That’s very nice of you.” I pause, appreciative but also suddenly apprehensive. There’s something else going on here. “But I can’t just let you give me money.”
    “We’re not,” my mother insists. “We’re buying a property. That’s what Carl does.”
    “But none of us know what condition it’s in,” I say. “Or how much it’s worth.”
    “Just get the house assessed while we’re away, and we’ll give you