Hindsight: A Novel of the Class of 1972 - Softcover

Rogan, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1439101302 ISBN 13: 9781439101308

Verlag: Simon & Schuster, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

The New York Times calls Barbara Rogan "a passionate writer whose prose is as vivid as lightning bolts." Now she delivers a mesmerizing tale of a long-hidden betrayal -- and its deadly repercussions.

In the summer of 1972, on the night of their high school graduation, nine friends make a solemn vow to meet in twenty years' time. For Willa Scott, flanked by her best friend, Angel, and her boyfriend, Caleb, the future is a canvas to be painted in bold strokes and bright colors. But the ensuing decades bring change and separation. Willa becomes a biographer, and she drifts away from Caleb and Angel.

Almost twenty years later, Willa, now mother of a teenage girl herself and recently widowed, looks up during a book signing and sees Patrick Mulhaven, the bad boy of Beacon High. He reminds her of their long-ago vow and persuades her to help track down their old group. It isn't long before Willa discovers that Angel's trail after high school is ice cold. It's as if she dropped off the face of the earth. Convinced that something has happened to her friend, Willa begins a search that takes her back through the looking glass. What she thought were the idyllic friendships of her youth are revealed as a tangled web of deception, betrayal, and life-shattering secrets. As the reunion weekend approaches, Willa is convinced that someone has killed -- and will kill again -- to keep Angel's whereabouts hidden forever. But when the people you know best are the people you know least, who can you trust?

Barbara Rogan has proven herself a master of subtly evolving fear, and Hindsight delivers a spellbinding story about the powerful -- and sometimes murderous -- yearnings of the human heart.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Barbara Rogan is the author of six previous novels, including Suspicion and Rowing in Eden. She teaches creative writing at Hofstra University and the State University of New York at Farmingdale. She lives with her family on Long Island, New York. Visit her web site www.barbararogan.com.

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Chapter 1

January 1992

They offered to send a car. Willa refused; she hated being driven. The people sent to fetch her inevitably took upon themselves her entertainment through chatter, which in turn obliged her to hold up her end just when she felt least sociable. Far better to make her own way in peace. That afternoon, she drove to the station and took the Metro-North from Chappaqua into Grand Central station. Mid-December, and already it was snowing; all the more reason to be glad she wasn't driving. There were delays, and the ride took fifty minutes, which she spent working on her speech. Despairing over it, really, reading it again and again with growing horror. It was the same talk she'd given last year when her book had come out in hardcover, but now every line reeked of irony.

Willa knew she shouldn't be doing this. She wasn't ready; it was too soon. But Judy Trumpledore had gotten on her case -- Do you good; about time you got off your butt -- and it was pointless arguing with Judy. It wasn't that she didn't know the meaning of the word "no" -- she was an editor, after all -- it was that she tended not to hear it.

In Ardsley, a man entered the train and sat beside her, though there were plenty of empty seats available. Wall Street type, presently morphing from lean and hungry to fat and smug; married, without a doubt. Willa looked him square in the face. "I wouldn't sit there if I were you."

This remark seemed to encourage rather than deter him. "Why not?" he asked, flashing dimples that, amortized over a lifetime, must have been worth a thousand lays.

"They say it's not contagious, but who the hell knows?"

She got her seat back. Returned to her speech, slashing and cutting. Too bad she couldn't cut it all. Be calm, she ordered herself, and obediently took a few deep breaths. Leaning her head against the cold glass, she repeated Judy's words like a mantra: "Never underestimate the human capacity for self-absorption." Willa's story was four months old, longer than the memory span of the average New Yorker.

At Grand Central she took the number 4 downtown express to Union Square. It was Willa's conviction that no one could say he knew a city who did not know its underground. She saw the subway as the city's circulatory system, its veins and arteries; the passengers as platelets. She took pride in her ability (the product of a good memory and a misspent youth) to navigate the subways, which she continued to do long after the need was gone. Simon had hated it. "My clients ride the subway," he would say, as if that in itself were sufficient reason for his wife to avoid it. Willa had spared his feelings by not telling him.

She emerged from the subway into a blast of cold air and a dazzle of white. A thin blanket of snow covered Union Square, and more was falling: thick, slow flakes that landed on her eyelashes and the hair that streamed out from under her brimmed hat. No one's going to come out in this, she thought, and her spirits lifted.

The signing was at a small, independent bookstore called Illuminations, a popular spot for Village residents as well as NYU students, among whom, according to Judy, a Compton-Burnett cult had blossomed. Turning a corner onto East Fourteenth Street, Willa was confronted by a plate-glass window full of her books, not just the new one but the two earlier biographies as well, dozens of copies in hardcover and paperback, along with a blowup of the cover of her latest, Family Secrets: The Poison Pen Novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett. Beside it was also a poster-size portrait of the book's author.

Willa cringed at the photo and tugged the brim of her hat down over her face. That god-awful glam shot. Judy had made her do it. The only good thing about it was that it looked nothing like her, so no one ever recognized her from her jacket picture. They'd posed her to look like the heroine of some soppy romance: standing barefoot on a windswept jetty, long dress blowing, hair tousled, nothing but sky and sea behind her. Simon had loved it; so he'd said. Kept a framed copy on his desk, faced outward. Simon had been very supportive of her career. Whenever they went out, he'd introduce her as "my wife, the authoress." Writer, she'd told him, again and again. Author if you must. "Authoress" is patronizing and archaic. And he'd promise to remember, but the next time he introduced her, he'd say it again: my wife, the authoress.

Judy was standing just inside the revolving door, peering out with a worried look. When she spotted Willa, her face lit up and she waved. Willa stepped into the revolving door. As it opened into the store, she heard a babble of voices and glimpsed a dense knot of people milling about with wineglasses in their hands. Panic seized her; she kept turning and emerged back on the sidewalk.

Judy followed her out. "What are you, nuts? It's freezing out here."

"I can't do it, Judy."

Judith Trumpledore, publisher of Trumpledore Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, was a short woman, expensively dressed, with a figure that at their age bespoke considerable effort. She had wavy black hair, sharp features, intelligent gray eyes, and a nannylike certitude. "Sure you can," she said, seizing Willa's arm with a grip of iron. "It's like riding a bike. Where'd you come from, anyway? I didn't see a taxi."

"I took the subway to Union Square. You don't understand: The speech is a disaster."

"The subway? Jesus, Willa, I said we'd send a car."

"What's the big deal? We always used to." Back when they were roommates, she meant, before Willa's marriage and Judy's ascension up the ranks; back when they were both newly minted editorial assistants at Harrow Books.

"And Nathan's was our favorite restaurant. That was then, this is now." Judy was still holding Willa's arm, as if afraid she would bolt.

Willa stared through the plate glass at the crowd inside. There must have been fifty customers in the store, which made no sense at all. Through pure luck, which occasionally runs good as well as bad, the publication of Family Secrets had coincided with a reissuing of several of Compton-Burnett's out-of-print novels; consequently her own book had been widely and generously reviewed. Nevertheless, literary biographies are hardly the sort of books that attract crowds; there couldn't be this many people in New York who'd even read Ivy Compton-Burnett, much less a book about her. "Who are they all?" she asked.

"Friends, fans, a bunch from NYU. I told you, Compton-Burnett's hot."

"Did you publicize this thing?"

Judy laughed at her accusatory tone. "Guilty. We ran an ad in the Times and sent invitations to some friends of yours. This may come as a shock, my dear, but most writers like publicity. They have the odd notion that it sells books."

"It's not that I'm not grateful. It's just -- "

"Enough, Willa. Let's go. Chin up, chest out, march."

Inside, someone took her coat, and someone else produced a glass of wine. Judy hovered by her side, but by now there was no need; Willa had made the switch to full authorial mode. Many faces were familiar: there were colleagues of Simon, as well as people from Harrow Books, where she'd worked, and HarperCollins, where her books had been published. Some of them had been to the funeral; none of them had seen her since. "How are you?" they all asked. There was concern but also, unmistakably, curiosity. Willa hid behind a Plexiglas smile and moved quickly from one to another.

Manny Schultz, her literary agent, emerged from the crowd to envelop her in a massive bear hug. He smelled of wool and snow and pipe tobacco. Willa was amazed to see him. Publicity was the publisher's concern, and Manny made a point of never going to his authors' appearances. "If I crave pontification," he...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Simon & Schuster
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1439101302
• ISBN 13: 9781439101308
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar