More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
She’d filled her loneliness by having a large family. First Lisa and her twin brother entered the world, then three more boys over the course of the next eight years, all of them squeezed together in a matchbox house on Conley Avenue in Thief River Falls.
even in the wake of terrible grief, life would go on. La vie continue. Il doit.
It was strange how Lisa’s life had always changed with phone calls. A phone call from the fire chief in Kern County, California, to break the news about Danny. A phone call from Reese Witherspoon to make her book into a movie. A phone call from the police in Crookston, Minnesota, to let her know that there had been an accident on a slippery, snow-swept road, that a semi had gone through a stop sign on the rural highway, that we are very sorry but your mother, Madeleine Power, was killed in the collision.
Downstairs, she went into her kitchen, turned on the lights, and poured herself a double shot of Absolut Mandarin.
She yanked open the zipper and scooped out what was in the pocket with one finger. When she held it up, a metal cylinder gleamed in the light. Seeing it, Lisa inhaled sharply. It was a spent cartridge from a gun.
She shoved the magazine into the pocket
Denis Farrell,
He was seventy years old,
Denis silenced him with a wave of his hand. He closed his eyes, needing to think clearly. His anger flooded back and gave him a focus. “I don’t want excuses, Deputy Garrett. This is unacceptable. I don’t care what you have to do, but you need to find that boy. Am I clear? Find Harlan and bring him back.”
Laurel was older than Lisa. She’d turned fifty in July,
I’m sorry, Lis. It’s too much for me. Too much death. Too much grief. I can’t deal with the Dark Star anymore. I hate to leave you, but I have to get away from this place. If I don’t, I think I’ll lose myself completely. Don’t hate me, okay? Noah
“My mom . . . my mom was killed in a car accident two years ago. That was hard enough on all of us, but it turned out to be just the beginning. My father was so sad without my mother that he couldn’t handle it. He couldn’t live without her. A month later, he—well, he killed himself. Then my youngest brother died in his sleep. He had what doctors call a stroke, which is like a heart attack in the brain. I’m sure it was caused by the stress of losing both of our parents. And three months after that, my two other brothers were driving home in a thunderstorm, and they tried to make it across a
...more
“Oh, that’s what he and I called that year. The Dark Star.
Purdue sat at the table with a little crinkle in his forehead. He seemed to think about everything she said. “So I guess you’re lost, too, huh?
Children had the gift, the second sight, the sixth sense. Sometimes she wondered if most writers were really just children who’d never grown up.
“Well, this man they were hunting for, apparently he’s involved in human trafficking across the border. Children! Taking children from their parents! Can you imagine anyone doing something like that?”
Purdue scrambled across the seat and hugged her around the neck. It was an unexpected gesture, but she liked how it made her feel. Needed. Wanted. Loved. And more than anything, not alone anymore. The stress of her life somehow evaporated in that moment, as if his heartbeat could somehow slow hers down.
“He works for the FBI in Minneapolis. His name is Will Woolwich.
I had so much to tell him when he was back, and I wanted to make it a big surprise. So I waited. That’s what I have to live with. I waited, and I never got to tell him about anything.”
“A muscular man, not too tall. Very pale skin, short red hair, red beard. Scars on his forearms.”
“By the water,” Purdue replied. “I remember we were all by the water. That’s where they killed the man.”
Then she glanced down at Deputy Garrett’s hand, where something bright white drew her eyes.
He had a tattoo emblazoned on the back of his hand, starting at the bumps of his knuckles and winding onto his wrist. It was an alligator. A snow-white, albino alligator, its mouth open, showing long teeth, its eyes black and beady, full of violence.
Cessna Skylark
“Special Agent Woolwich, this is Matthew Baines. I’m an assistant county attorney in Pennington County.
“I don’t think there’s anything confidential about it at this point. I imagine she’s sort of a celebrity up there. It was the writer, Lisa Power.”
Will Woolwhich told Matthew Baines about Lisa.
Denis Farrell.”
Pennington County attorney
Believe me, Denis Farrell has never been a fan of mine.”
Curtis kept talking. “Look, the plan is to go back to the airport in the morning. Wait until then. This woman Shyla drops us off, and then she’s out of the picture. You can have Garrett and Stoll waiting in the hangar near the plane. At that point, we’re done.”
Laurel and Curtis were down with “officers” Garrett and Stoll the whole time. This is where Lisa knew she was set up.
“It’s me,” he said. “Change of plans.” “What do you mean, change of plans? I just talked to you. What the hell is going on?” County Attorney Denis Farrell had the raspy, impatient voice of someone who hadn’t slept all night and wasn’t in the mood for unpleasant surprises.
Curtis was down with the Pennington County Attorney as well.
“I’m pretty sure Lisa is armed. I told you, this Shyla woman is a walking billboard for the NRA.
I listened to how Lisa talks about that boy. As far as she’s concerned, she’ll die to keep him safe and away from us. She isn’t giving up without a fight.”
You said you could prevent this from happening. You told me the best thing to do was play along and pretend to be on her side. You told me you could get the boy back and make this whole thing with Lisa go away.
This is what Laurel told the County Attorney. They were working together all along.
“Sure, she does. She grew up with guns.”
Big gun people.
He didn’t trust people who weren’t emotionally invested in the outcome of a problem.
Talking about County Attorney Denis Farrell.
You need to listen to me. I know you. We go back a long way. We’ve worked together for years.”
Laurel told Denis.
In fact, if you need a name for a victim and you want to kill off my sister, she’d get a kick out of that. Her name is Millicent. Milly and Missy, that’s us.”
He recited the story with that odd detachment he often had in his voice, as if the events had happened to someone else. Maybe that was the only way he could face it, like a character in a novel.
Purdue experienced something very traumatizing.
Lisa realized that she really was dealing with a lost boy in Purdue. Homeless. The child of a single mother.
“Well, he said they were going to take out her brain.”
Purdue’s mother was suffering from a brain tumor.
I don’t think her parents were very nice to her. She said her dad did some bad things, and after that, she ran away and never went back.
Purdue talking about his mother from Canada.
Judith Reichl. She was the senior librarian, a job she had held for nearly all Lisa’s life.
Writing is a mirror. If someone doesn’t like what you write, maybe it’s because they don’t like what they see in the reflection.”
“They were burying a body in the cemetery. It was just like Thief River Falls, Lisa. They were burying a body.”
Possibly talking about the men who were burying Purdue in the prologue.
Willow was fragile, probably anorexic, and emotionally overwrought; she’d obviously gone to the cemetery with thoughts of suicide on her brain.
Willow had seen what she wanted to see, all in her head, driven by exhaustion and depression. Brief reactive psychosis, that was what the shrinks called it.
In the face of severe trauma, the brain could conjure entire worlds that didn’t exist as a way of blocking out reality. Hallucinations of people and places. Delusions that the mind refused to give up.
People always assume that priests are just fine with death, as if going to a better world means you don’t regret leaving the one you know. How silly.”
He was a ruthless, arrogant son of a bitch who treated the town of Thief River Falls like his personal empire.
Talking about Denis Farrell.
“Alouette, je te plumerai” while she did. When the water was boiling,
What does this French saying translate to and mean?
