Little Voices Read online

  PRAISE FOR LITTLE VOICES

  “An unsettling mystery with an unreliable narrator who will keep you guessing the whole way through. Little Voices is as haunting as it is gripping.”

  —Liv Constantine, bestselling author of The Last Mrs. Parrish

  “Intricate, unpredictable, and deliciously addictive.”

  —Minka Kent, bestselling author of The Memory Watcher and The Thinnest Air

  “Little Voices grabs you from the first chapter and doesn’t let go until one shocking final twist. Vanessa Lillie is an author to watch, taking us deep into the world—and mind—of former prosecutor turned struggling new mom Devon Burges as she battles old politics, new money, big fish, and, worst of all, that little voice in her head to help solve the murder of her close friend. Psychological suspense at its best.”

  —Kellye Garrett, Anthony, Agatha, and Lefty award–winning author of Hollywood Homicide

  “From the opening chapter to the last line of the book, Vanessa Lillie takes you on a ride you won’t be prepared for, but at the same time, won’t want to end. Twists, turns, suspects, and small-town motives are around every corner with an ending that will blow you away. One of the best books I’ve read this year.”

  —Matthew Farrell, bestselling author of What Have You Done

  “Vanessa Lillie’s Little Voices is my favorite kind of mystery: densely plotted, character rich, and full of sharp and perceptive writing. This is a stunning debut with a gut punch of a twist. You’ll be reading all night long.”

  —Jennifer Hillier, author of Jar of Hearts

  “Little Voices is an utterly original debut novel with a twist so unexpected I jumped from the last page right back to the first to start reading again.”

  —Victoria Helen Stone, bestselling author of Jane Doe

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Vanessa Lillie

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542092265

  ISBN-10: 1542092264

  Quote from “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mom” by Kim Brooks, New York Magazine, reprinted by permission.

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  First edition

  For my beautiful son, August, whose sleeplessness led me to this story, and for Zach, who supported us both along the way

  Contents

  Start Reading

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  There are moments when I feel like I’m dying a little more every day. I feel like a fish that’s been caught and then abandoned on a dock, lying there, flopping and gasping, each gasp weaker than the last.

  —Kim Brooks, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mom,” New York Magazine

  Chapter 1

  September 30

  My contractions have begun, but everything is wrong: the wrong day, wrong month, wrong person clutching my hand.

  The pain in my lower abdomen eases to a dull shredding. I open my eyes and flinch at the yellow leaves flashing across the ambulance’s back glass in the fading evening light. Those citrine hues are the first colors to appear in the New England fall and the last thing I should see on the day I go into labor.

  The driver speeds down Blackstone Boulevard, where I collapsed after a rush of blood coated my thighs. Blinking back tears, I concentrate on the thin blur of telephone wires cutting through the trees along the road. Each tree is trimmed into a deep V to keep the power lines safe. No longer full and round, they’ve grown into broken hearts. I count four split hearts before I’m seized by another contraction.

  A minute, maybe more, passes before the cramp disappears like a twig snapping, and I fully exhale. The pain is so much worse than the Braxton-Hicks practice contractions I’ve had the past few weeks. I grasp for some guidance from the books and classes and articles, but my mind cannot get beyond the terrible truth of what being on this gurney means.

  More wetness spreads beneath my thighs, dampening the backs of my knees. The EMT loses all color in his face as he lets go of my hand. His jittery stare creeps along my navy-and-white nautical dress until it reaches below my pregnant stomach. The stripes are now maroon to the point of shiny black. Our terrified gazes lock, and then he yells to the driver. The wail of sirens begins.

  We’re in trouble, baby girl.

  Both my hands grab the metal handles, squeezing until I regain control of my breath. Finally, my mind shifts, but it’s not an act. There is fight and there is flight, and I’ve done them both plenty. But there’s a third choice for those of us who have experienced enough terror: focus.

  The pain is on the left side of my abdomen. If the blood loss is from there, I have to do something. With a moan, I pull myself over, applying as much pressure as I can stand.

  Panic returns, and my nostrils burn as tears descend my cheeks, pooling along the tight oxygen mask. This child, small and beautiful and mine, is almost in my arms. I picture her from last week’s ultrasound and cry harder.

  The EMT’s chin wobbles as another contraction begins. He grabs my hand again.

  “I’m okay.” I repeat the words until I’m coughing, which doesn’t make them believable.

  This cramp pulls me to a primitive place. The EMT’s murmured assurances barely register. My senses narrow onto the sharp pain. My muscles tighten as if in revolt, desperate to escape my body.

  I feel the road change from the bumpy potholes and uneven city streets to smooth highway. I take a long, exhausted exhale in relief. Almost there, almost there, almost there. Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, baby girl. We’re almost there.

  We stop at last, but it’s seventy-eight breaths before the driver with a gut who loaded me into this ambulance can be bothered to help the panicked EMT get me out. They finally lower the gurney onto the ground as another contraction begins. I let out a deep guttural holler, then take short breaths from fear as much as pain. The gurney wheels squeak, and my noises continue as I see stars starting to appear above me in the evening sky.

  They hurry me through the ER’s sliding doors. In my own area, I’m sur
rounded by beige curtains and beige cabinets and blinking beige machines. A man in blue scrubs enters, though his face is beige, and he’s got a scruffy dark beard.

  “Devony Burges, I’m Dr. Keller. You have to slow your breathing.”

  No one outside southeastern Kansas calls me anything other than Devon. I hate the name my mother gave me, but correcting him isn’t possible.

  “Can you hear me, Devony?”

  I slow my gasping to a shuddering trot under the oxygen mask. A burst of light passes across my left eye, then right, then left again.

  “Are you with me?” he asks, pulling the penlight back for my response.

  I grab his hand and gather up all I’ve got. “I’m twenty-eight weeks and a day. I don’t . . . have any allergies. I’m O negative.” I grit my teeth through another contraction, but it’s gone soon. “I’ve been walking all day . . . the contractions got worse . . . I thought my water broke, but all I saw was blood.” I pause as my voice catches. “There’s terrible pain . . . my lower back.”

  He nods tightly once and joins the activity around me. The nurses cut away my dress and underwear, slipping my arms into a thin gown. The blood bag cart clinks against the gurney, and the pinch of the IV is a tickle compared to the pain within my body.

  The nurse drops my purse in a plastic bag. The edge of a yellow day planner slides out as she ties it shut. I start to say the planner isn’t mine, but there’s another contraction, and all I can focus on is the overhead light behind the doctor’s head.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” he asks.

  He’s asking the wrong question. I count down from one hundred, and finally the contraction’s grip dulls, and I have a few glorious moments of only burning back pain. I relax my closed eyes and think. When I was in my first trimester, I made a list of probable complications that could occur during labor. Seventeen of them seemed worth categorizing and diagramming and obsessing over. They’re tucked away in a tidy spreadsheet on my computer. In the ambulance, I was too scared to mentally cull through the symptoms to determine what’s happening. That’s the problem with logic. It doesn’t stand a chance against terror.

  I must be brave for my daughter. I visualize my spreadsheet, and every line item spins around like a slot machine. The variables of my day align with different columns until number seven stops: detached placenta. The system my body grew in my uterus to feed my baby and give her oxygen has stopped working.

  “All day my back hurt,” I begin. “I was . . . walking and then bleeding. It’s my placenta.”

  Dr. Keller sticks out his stubble-covered jaw as he presses on my stomach. “Have you noticed increased urination prior to today?”

  I shake my head no because I pee all the time lately. “First trimester, I bled some. Not . . . for a while.”

  He pauses his hands along my stomach. “Have you felt the baby move?”

  Everyone stills. Even my breath goes somewhere else.

  “No,” I manage to gasp as another contraction begins. I groan and press my trembling hands along my stomach. I picture the cord, amniotic fluid, and my baby fighting to stay with me, mere centimeters below my touch.

  The ultrasound machine appears, and familiar goo is plopped onto my bare stomach. The seconds are minutes.

  “Please, please, please,” I moan to no one and everyone.

  The liquid silence of my womb continues. My head rears back, mouth falls open with a silent scream lodged deep in my chest. This is the real pain.

  There’s a murmur, distant like a record scratch in another room over and over and over.

  Her heart is beating.

  My body shakes as I cry hard. This is the only sound in the world that matters. That will ever matter.

  Dr. Keller prints the ultrasound images. “You’re correct. The placenta has pulled away. We have to stop the bleeding and deliver your baby. The heartbeat is weaker than I’d like, so a C-section is our only option.”

  I try to temper my sobbing, holding my breath to make childlike gasps.

  “This blood loss will not slow down until we operate,” he says to a nurse before getting closer to me. “Devony, we must operate immediately. We have to put you under.”

  I can nod while I sob, so I do while picturing my birth plan lying in a color-coded folder on my desk at home. There is no “completely alone, put under with anesthesia as I’m bleeding out” tab.

  The sturdy nurse who’s swabbing the blood off my thighs grips my knee. “We’ll contact your husband,” she says.

  “He’s in Boston.” Even though it’s after rush hour, there will be traffic. It will be an hour at best. My breathing speeds up, and I pull at the oxygen mask. “He’ll never make it.”

  “You can do this,” she says. “You’ve got to fight.”

  If it’s just me, I can handle it. But my baby is an unknown variable. Does she have my tenacity that borders on myopia or Jack’s quick compliance with circumstances? “I’m going to throw up,” I say before heaving into a metal bowl she quickly provides.

  After wiping my mouth, the nurse takes my hand. “You will be fine. We have the best doctors and nurses ready to help your baby. When you wake up, it will all be over.”

  I flinch at the implication. She leans back, inhaling sharply as if trying to take back the words.

  She doubles down, pressing my hand tighter. “I’ll pray for you both.”

  “I don’t believe in God.”

  “I do,” she says. “That’s why I’m doing the asking.”

  I let her have the last word because I’m one of those lazy atheists who wishes there was a God, precisely for times like these.

  The operating room is cold and sterile, the lights even brighter than those I left in the emergency room. They tie my hands down, Jesus style, and I’m crying, quietly but hysterically.

  Most of my tears are angry ones at this point. Anger at Jack for not being here. Anger at myself for insisting he stay overnight an hour away with the rest of his team for his stupid retreat. Anger at delivering this way, so I don’t have a moment of labor that isn’t sheer terror or a complete blank.

  This is my fault. The gray-and-pink nursery and soft knitted coming-home outfit were taunts to the God my nurse prays to. I should have remembered the voice I thought was God who spoke to me as a girl: Turn your back on your family. Turn your back on me.

  The surgeon enters and begins moving nurses around before addressing me. “We don’t have time for candles, but you can listen to music as we intubate you.”

  He’s referencing a “gentle C-section,” how natural birth plans that go off the rails can still have some nonsurgical significance. Sure, you don’t get your home birth in a pool with your loved ones around you, but here are a few two-for-one Glade candles and Sade.

  One of the surgical nurses, who has mostly been observing, heads over to a CD player. She smacks the top, and it’s not relaxing music but talk radio. I read horror stories online about surgeons cranking up Metallica as a terrified mother is put under, so maybe I shouldn’t care. Instead, I listen to the murmuring voice and will time to move faster, unconsciousness welcome at this point. Any reality but this one.

  As the anesthesiologist does her magic, I feel as if I’m levitating. I tell myself the bright lights I’m heading toward are surgical, not spiritual.

  “The bleeding has started again. I need to make an incision now.” The surgeon yelling in his green mask blurs. I close my eyes, the tube starting down my throat.

  The talk newsy voice on the radio grows louder. The medicine gives me something I haven’t had in hours: calm. I can focus on the voice, the shock of the message numbed by the drugs.

  “Murder rocks the East Side of Providence tonight. A woman, identified by exclusive sources as twenty-seven-year-old Belina Cabrala, has been found at Swan Point Cemetery off Blackstone Boulevard.”

  The announcer said my friend’s name. I saw her today. She isn’t dead.

  With my eyes closed, the memory arrives. Six months a
go, I was wandering through the gravestones at Swan Point when the dogwood trees were in bloom. I came upon a stroller and diaper bag I recognized, my friend’s son dozing inside under a gauzy blanket. Not far away, there was a stunning woman I’d never seen before, thick black hair down her back and olive skin that glowed in the sun. I lifted a hand to introduce myself, but her focus remained on a nearby dogwood tree, as wide as it was tall. She lifted onto her toes to smell a branch heavy with blooms. She guided the branch with her hand until the face of the lowest flower caressed her forehead, then the length of her nose. Once it reached her lips, she opened her mouth and sank her teeth into the white petals.

  She saw me staring, still standing near the stroller, and made her way over. I was unable to move. Embarrassed, intrigued, I wasn’t sure. Just a few feet away, she paused to lick one corner of her red lips.

  “Medicine from the old country,” she said, staring me dead in the eyes. “Purifies the blood.”

  That was the first time I met Belina Cabrala. And now, is it possible we’ll never meet again?

  I hear a faint beep, a flatline. Please be me, not my baby.

  Or maybe you’ll be seeing Belina real soon, girlie.

  Loud voices, a double beep, flatline again.

  You’ll finally get what you deserve.

  Chapter 2

  Monday, December 5

  The new baby cry is gravelly and desperate, like the sound you make when breaking through water after believing you’d drown. The explosive wail is paralyzing at first. I read about it extensively, listened to hours of audio recordings of what different newborn cries could mean (hungry, wet diaper, overtired). Now that we’re home, I realize preparation didn’t help. Ester’s scream is so piercing I can barely put her down for fear of that sound.

  I focus on my movements to keep Ester calm. Up and down on the exercise ball, my thighs burn, but still I softly bounce her in my arms. I try not to get frustrated; it’s her instinct to stay awake and survive.

  At first I blamed all her crying on my inability to nurse. I pumped in the hospital, insisting Ester get my milk and not preemie formula. The difficult recovery meant I couldn’t nurse, both of us hooked to machines in different rooms. Pumping was the only action that signified my new-mother status. I was told she was born two pounds, two ounces, by a nurse, or maybe Jack, but Ester steadily put on weight. I took her home eight weeks after we both almost died.