Every Vow You Break - Peter Swanson Page 0,97

dressed up again, having fun. The pictures that showed Bruce were harder to look at. Not because she grieved for him or missed him in any way, but because she found herself studying his face in the pictures, trying to see if there was any moment when he gave himself away, when he showed his true nature. She couldn’t see it. In the posed pictures he looked stiff at times, his smile a little too wide, but that could mean anything. In the candid shots, he mostly looked relaxed and at ease with himself. There were even shots where he was looking at Abigail, and it looked as if there was love in his eyes. How had she been so fooled?

It was one of the questions she found herself asking a lot these days. How had she not recognized Bruce’s true nature? Had she been blinded by his romantic gestures? Or by his money and his success? Or had he just seemed so different from Ben Perez that she’d fallen for him regardless? She wasn’t sure she’d ever know.

But she did think there was maybe a clue in the wedding pictures. Maybe he looked as though he was in love with her because he really was, in some perverted and strange way? Even though he knew what lay ahead, that he would get his revenge for her infidelity, he still felt love for her, or an approximation of love? And maybe she was reading too much into it? The most logical explanation was that Bruce was a psychopath, a psychopath who had gone to a seminar that told him what he always believed down deep, ever since his mother had abandoned his family: women weren’t to be trusted.

And the reason he’d looked genuinely in love in the photographs was because he was good at faking it.

Abigail was almost done looking at the album when something caught her eye in one of the last pictures. It was a photo of the last dance, she and Bruce looking tired and happy at the center of the dance floor. She remembered it well. Her stinging feet, the jazzy version of “Every Breath You Take,” making jokes with Bruce. In the photograph they are out of focus while the onlookers, the wedding stragglers on the edge of the dance floor, were shown in sharp detail. There were her parents, standing next to each other, her mother looking sleepy, her father beaming, probably a little drunk. Behind the onlookers was the wide-open door of the barn, its white-painted trim strung with garlands of flowers. A man stood just inside the door, edged by light, probably from the headlights from a departing car. Abigail zoomed in on the man. He was heavily pixelated, but she knew without a doubt that it was Eric Newman.

She remembered thinking she’d spotted him on her walk back down the carriageway that night. Not spotting him so much as smelling the French cigarette that he was smoking. It was strange to think he really had been there. She wondered if Bruce had snuck off at some point to talk with him, maybe even chat about the game they were about to play on Heart Pond Island.

She closed her laptop. She’d seen enough of the photographs and didn’t think she’d ever need to look at them again.

A cloud had gone over the sun, and the day had dimmed. The line of woods along the property was dark, and she looked for the sparrow but didn’t see her. She didn’t see the cat, either. A phrase entered her head: The woods are lovely, dark and deep. She’d said those words to Bruce on the island. Remembering that moment, she didn’t feel awful; she didn’t feel anything, actually. Most importantly, her mind didn’t automatically go flipping through that catalogue of terrible images she’d carried with her for six months. Men in masks. Alec Greenly battering his wife to death by the fire. The feel of sliding a knife into Bruce’s throat, and watching an arc of blood leave his body. Instead, she thought about the day ahead, and what she might want to do with it.

Beasts had come for her. And she was still alive.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Margaret Atwood (for a quote I didn’t use, but thought of many times), Danielle Bartlett, Angus Cargill, Caspian Dennis, Bianca Flores, Joel Gotler, John Grindrod, Kaitlin Harri, David Headley, Sara Henry, David Highfill, Tessa James, Emily Langner (for telling me the Margaret Atwood quote), Ira Levin, Kristen Pini, Sophie Portas, Josh Smith, Nat Sobel, Virginia Stanley, Gordon Sumner, Sandy Violette, Judith Weber, Ben Wheatley, Dave Woodhouse, Adia Wright, and Charlene Sawyer.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter Swanson lives with his wife and cat in Somerville, Massachusetts. His novels include The Girl With a Clock for a Heart, nominated for an LA Times book award, The Kind Worth Killing, a Richard and Judy pick and the iBooks store’s thriller of the year in 2015, and, most recently, Rules for Perfect Murders, also a Richard and Judy pick in 2020.

ALSO BY PETER SWANSON

RULES FOR PERFECT MURDERS

BEFORE SHE KNEW HIM

ALL THE BEAUTIFUL LIES

HER EVERY FEAR

THE KIND WORTH KILLING

THE GIRL WITH A CLOCK FOR A HEART

COPYRIGHT

First published in the UK in 2021

by Faber & Faber Limited

Bloomsbury House

74–77 Great Russell Street

London WC1B 3DA

First published in the USA in 2021

by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007

This ebook edition first published in 2021

All rights reserved

© Peter Swanson, 2021

Cover design by Dominic Forbes

The right of Peter Swanson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

ISBN 978–0–571–35853–3