These Things Hidden

Praise for Heather Gudenkauf’s debut novel THE WEIGHT OF SILENCE A TV Bookclub Pick A Top Five New York Times bestseller

“Brilliantly constructed, this will have you

gripped until the last page …”

—Closer

“Deeply moving and lyrical … it will haunt you all summer.”

—Company

5 stars “Gripping and moving.”

—Heat

“The Weight of Silence is a cleverly crafted exercise in sustaining tension. Her technique is faultless, sparse and simple and is a masterclass in how to construct a thriller … A memorable read … A technical triumph and a brave first novel.” —Sunday Express

“It’s totally gripping …”

—Marie Claire

“Tension builds as family secrets tumble from the closet.”

—Woman & Home

“This has all the ingredients of a Jodi Picoult novel.”

—Waterstone’s Books Quarterly

“Set to become a book group staple.”

—The Guardian

“Jodi Picoult has some serious competition in Heather Gudenkauf.”

—Bookreporter

“Deeply moving and exquisitely lyrical, this is a powerhouse of a debut novel.

—Tess Gerritsen, No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author

“Gudenkauf moves the story forward at a fast clip and is adept at building tension. There’s a particular darkness to her heartland, rife as it is with predators and the walking wounded, and her unsentimental take on the milieu manages to find some hope without being maudlin.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Heart-pounding suspense and a compelling family drama come together to create a story you won’t be able to put down. You’ll stay up all night long reading. I did!”

—Diane Chamberlain, author of Before the Storm

“A great thriller, probably the kind of book a lot of people would chose to read on their sun loungers. It will appeal to fans of Jodi Picoult.”

—Radio Times

“Gripping and powerful, right to the end.”

—Northern Echo

“An enchantingly lyrical novel mixed with shockingly menacing overtones.”

—newbooks

THESE THINGS HIDDEN

HEATHER GUDENKAUF

For Scott

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing, while often a solitary act, never can be done without the world seeping and sometimes crashing in. I am grateful to so many people who have been there for me and my family. Much gratitude goes to my parents, Milton and Patricia Schmida, who have been my strength and anchor in life. My brothers and sisters and their families, my life preservers—thank you to Greg, Mady and Hunter Schmida and Kimbra Valenti, Jane, Kip, Tommy and Meredith Augspurger, Morgan and Kyle Hawthorne, Milt, Jackie, Lizzie and Joey Schmida, Molly, Steve, Hannah, Olivia, and Myah Lugar, and Patrick and Sam Schmida. Thanks also to my Gudenkauf family, there for us every step of the way: Lloyd, Lois, Steve, Tami, Emily, Jenni, Aiden, Mark, Carie, Connor, Lauren, Dan, Robyn, Molly, and Cheryl, Hailey and Hannah Zacek.

I am deeply grateful to the following people who generously supported all things Gudenkauf: Jennifer and Kent Peterson, Jean and Charlie Daoud, Ann and John Schober, Rose and Steve Schulz, Cathie and Paul Kloft, Sandy and Rick Hoerner, Laura and Jerry Trimble, Mike and Brenda Reinert and their families. Thank you to Danette Putchio, Lenora Vinckier, Tammy Lattner, Mary Fink, Mark Burns, Cindy Steffens, Susan Meehan, Bev and Mel Graves, Barbara and Calvin Gatch, Ann O’Brien, Father Rich Adam and the parishioners of St. Joseph’s in Wellman, Iowa, Kae and Jerry Pugh, Sarah Reiss and the many families near and far who were always there for us. Huge thanks go to the instructional coaches, principals, teachers, staff and students from the DCSD, especially George Washington Middle School, Carver, Kennedy, Bryant and Marshall Elementary Schools, as well as Jones Hand in Hand Preschool.

Heartfelt thanks go out to my agent Marianne Merola, who always has my best interests in mind and faces me in the right direction. Her guidance and friendship have meant the world. My editors Valerie Gray and Miranda Indrigo have provided friendship, support, insight and suggestions that have helped me to become a better writer. Thank you also to Heather Foy, Pete McMahon, Andi Richman, Nanette Long, Emily Ohanjanians, Kate Pawson, Jayne Hoogenberk, Margaret Marbury, Donna Hayes and everyone at HQ, who have taken me under their wing and have worked tirelessly on my behalf. A special thank-you goes to Natalia Blaskovich, who provided me with valuable information regarding Iowa law and the criminal justice system.

As always, all my love and thanks to Scott, Alex, Anna and Grace—I couldn’t do it without you.

Allison

I stand when I see Devin Kineally walking toward me, dressed as usual in her lawyer-gray suit, her high heels clicking against the tiled floor. I take a big breath and pick up my small bag filled with my few possessions.

Devin’s here to take me to the court-ordered halfway house back in Linden Falls, where I’ll be living for at least the next six months. I have to prove that I can take care of myself, hold down a job, stay out of trouble. After five years, I’m free to leave Cravenville. I look hopefully over Devin’s shoulder, searching for my parents even though I know they won’t be there. “Hello, Allison,” Devin says warmly. “You all set to get out of here?”

“Yes, I’m ready,” I answer with more confidence than I feel. I’m going to live in a place I’ve never been before with people I’ve never met. I have no money, no job, no friends and my family has disowned me, but I’m ready. I have to be.

Devin reaches for my hand, squeezes it gently and looks me directly in the eyes. “It’s going to be okay, you know?” I swallow hard and nod. For the first time, since I was sentenced to ten years in Cravenville, I feel tears burning behind my eyes.

“I’m not saying it will be easy,” Devin says, reaching up and wrapping an arm around my shoulders. I tower over her. She is petite, soft-spoken, but tough as nails, one of the many things I love about Devin. She has always said she was going to do her best for me and she has. She made it clear all along that even though my mom and dad pay the bills, I’m her client. She’s the only person who seems to be able to put my parents in their place. During our second meeting with Devin (the first being when I was in the hospital), the four of us sat around a table in a small conference room at the county jail. My mother tried to take over. She couldn’t accept my arrest, thought it was all some huge mistake, wanted me to go to trial, plead not guilty, fight the charges. Clear the Glenn family name.

“Listen,” Devin told my mother in a quiet, cold voice. “The evidence against Allison is overwhelming. If we go to trial, chances are she will be sent to jail for a very long time, maybe even forever.”

“It couldn’t have happened the way they said it did.” My mother’s coldness matched Devin’s. “We need to make this right. Allison is going to come home, graduate and go to college.” Her perfectly made-up face trembled with anger and her hands shook.

My father, who had taken a rare afternoon away from his job as a financial adviser, stood suddenly, knocking over a glass of water. “We hired you to get Allison out of here,” he shouted. “Do your job!”

I shrank in my seat and expected Devin to do the same.

But she didn’t. She calmly set her hands flat on the table, straightened her back, lifted her chin and spoke. “My job is to examine all the information, look at all the options and help Allison choose the best one.”

“There is only one option.” My father’s thick, long finger shot out, stopping inches from Devin’s nose. “Allison needs to come home!”

“Richard,” my mother said in that unruffled, irritating way she has.

Devin didn’t flinch. “If you don’t remove that finger from my face, you might not get it back.”

My father slowly lowered his hand, his barrel chest rising and falling rapidly.

“My job,” she repeated, looking my father dead in the eye, “is to review the evidence and choose the best defense strategy. The prosecutor is planning to move Allison from juvenile to adult court and charge her with first-degree murder. If we go to trial, she will end up in jail for the rest of her life. Guaranteed.”

My father lowered his face into his hands and started crying. My mother looked down into her lap, frowning with embarrassment.

When I stood in front of the judge—a man who looked exactly like my physics teacher—even though Devin prepared me for the hearing, told me what to expect, the only words I heard were ten years. To me that sounded like a lifetime. I would miss my senior year of high school, miss the volleyball, basketball, swimming and soccer seasons. I would lose my scholarship to the University of Iowa, would never be a lawyer. I remember looking over my shoulder at my parents, tears pouring down my face. My sister hadn’t come to the hearing.

“Mom, please,” I whimpered as the bailiff began to lead me away. She stared straight ahead, no emotion on her face. My father’s eyes were closed tightly. He was taking big breaths, struggling for composure. They couldn’t even look at me. I would be twenty-seven years old before I was free again. At the time, I wondered if they would miss me or miss the girl they wanted me to be. Because my case initially began in juvenile court, my name couldn’t be released to the press. The same day it was waived into adult court, there was massive flash flooding just to the south of Linden Falls. Hundreds of homes and businesses lost. Four dead. Due to my father’s connections and a busy news day, my name never hit the papers. Needless to say, my parents were ecstatic that the good Glenn name wasn’t completely tarnished.

I follow Devin as she leads me to her car, and for the first time in five years I feel the full weight of a sun that isn’t blocked by a barbwire-topped fence. It is the end of August, and the air is heavy and hot. I breathe in deeply and realize jail air doesn’t really smell any different than free air. “What do you want to do first?” Devin asks me. I think carefully before I answer. I don’t know what to feel about leaving Cravenville. I’ve missed being able to drive—I’d had my license for less than a year when I was arrested. Finally, I’ll have some privacy. I’ll be able to go to the bathroom, take a shower, eat without dozens of people looking at me. And even though I have to stay at a halfway house, for all purposes I’ll be free.

It’s funny. I’ve been at Cravenville five years and you’d think I’d be clawing at the door, desperate to get out. But it’s not quite like that. I’ve made no friends here, I have no happy memories, but I do have something that I have never, ever had in my life: peace, which is a rare, precious thing. How I can be at peace for what I’ve done? I don’t know, but I am.

When I was younger, before I was in prison, my mind never stopped racing. It was constantly go, go, go. My grades were perfect. I was a five-sport athlete: volleyball, basketball, track, swimming and soccer. My friends thought I was pretty, I was popular and I never got in any trouble. But under the surface, beneath my skin, it was like my blood was boiling. I couldn’t sit still, I could never rest. I’d wake up at six every morning to go for a run or lift weights in the school’s weight room, then I’d take a quick shower, eat the granola bar and banana I’d shove into my backpack and go to class all day. After school there’d be practice or a game, then home to eat supper with my parents and Brynn, then three or four hours of homework and studying. Finally, finally, at around midnight, I would try to go to sleep. But nighttime was the worst. I would lie in bed and my mind couldn’t slow down. I couldn’t stop myself from worrying about what my parents thought of me, what others thought of me, about the next test, the next game, college, my future.

I had this thing I did to help calm myself at night. I’d lie on my back, tuck the covers around me just so and imagine that I was in a small boat. I would conjure a lake so big that I couldn’t see the shore and the sky would be an overturned bowl above me, black, moonless and full of winking fairy lights for stars. There would be no wind, but my boat would carry me across the smooth, dark waters. The only sound would be the lazy slap of water against the side of the boat. This calmed me somehow and I could close my eyes and rest. Because I was only sixteen when I got to prison, I was separated from the general population until I turned eighteen. After surviving the first terrible weeks, I suddenly realized that I didn’t needed my boat anymore and I slept just fine.

Devin is looking up at me expectantly, waiting for me to tell her the first thing I want to do now that I’m free. “I want to see my mom and dad and my sister,” I tell her, biting back a sob. “I want to go home.”

I feel badly for much of what has happened, especially for what my actions have done to my sister. I’ve tried to apologize, tried to make things right, but it hasn’t been enough. Brynn still won’t have anything to do with me.

Brynn was fifteen at the time I was arrested and, well, uncomplicated. Or so I thought. Brynn never got mad, ever. It was like she could store her anger in a little box until it got so full it had nowhere to go and it morphed into sadness.

When we were kids, playing with our dolls, I would grab the one with the creamy, unblemished face and the smooth, untangled hair, leaving Brynn with the doll that had a mustache drawn on with a permanent marker, the one with ratty hair that had been cut with dull scissors.

Brynn never seemed to mind. I could have swiped the new doll right out of her hands and the expression on her face wouldn’t change. She’d just pick up the sad, broken-looking doll and cradle it in her arms like it was her first choice. I used to be able to get Brynn to do anything for me—take out the garbage, vacuum when it was my turn.

Looking back, there were signs, little chinks in Brynn’s easygoing personality that were almost impossible to deduce, but when I watched quietly I saw them. And I chose to ignore them.

With her fingers, she would pluck the fine, dark hair from her arms one by one until the skin was red and raw. She would do it absentmindedly, unaware of how odd she looked. Once her arms were hairless, she started in on her eyebrows. Pulling and plucking. To me she seemed to be trying to shed her own skin. Our mother noticed Brynn’s eyebrows getting thinner and thinner and she tried everything to get her to stop. Whenever Brynn’s hand moved toward her face, our mother’s hand would fly out and slap it away. “Do you want to look strange, Brynn?” she would ask. “Is that what you want? For all the other little girls to laugh at you?”

Brynn stopped pulling out her eyebrows, but she found other ways to punish herself. She gnawed her fingernails to the quick, bit the insides of her cheeks, scratched and picked at sores and scabs until they festered.

We are complete opposites. Yin and yang. Where I am tall and solid, Brynn is smaller and delicate. I’m a big sturdy sunflower, always turning my face to the sun, and Brynn is prairie smoke, wispy and indistinct, head down, nodding with the breeze. Though I never told her, I loved her more than anything or anyone else in the world. I took her for granted, assumed she would always be at my beck and call, assumed that she would always look up to me. But I don’t seem to exist to her anymore. I can’t blame her, really.

Letter after letter I wrote to Brynn, but she never wrote back to me. That has been the worst thing about prison. Now that I’m free, I can go to Brynn, I can make her see me, make her listen to me. That’s all I want. Ten minutes with her, then everything will be all right again.

As we get in the car and drive away from Cravenville, my stomach flips with excitement and fear. I see Devin hesitate. “Maybe we should stop somewhere and get something to eat first, then get you settled in at Gertrude House. After that, you can call your parents,” Devin says.

I don’t want to go to the halfway house. I’ll probably be the one convicted of the most heinous crime there—even a heroin-addicted prostitute arrested for armed robbery and murder would get more compassion than I ever will. It makes much more sense for me to stay with my parents, in the home where I grew up, where I have some good memories. Even though a terrible thing happened there, it’s where I should be, at least for now.

But I can see the answer on Devin’s face. My parents don’t want to see me, don’t want anything to do with me, don’t want me to come home.

Brynn

I get Allison’s letters. Sometimes I wish that I could write back to her, go see her, act like a sister to her. But something always stops me. Grandma tells me I should talk to Allison, try to forgive her. But I can’t. It’s like something broke inside me that night five years ago. There was a time I would have given anything to be a real sister to Allison, to be close with her like we were when we were little. In my eyes, she could do anything. I was so proud of her, not jealous like people thought. I never wanted to be Allison; I just wanted to be myself, which no one, especially my parents, could understand.

Allison was the most amazing person I ever knew. She was smart, athletic, popular and beautiful. Everyone loved her, even though she wasn’t all that nice. She was never exactly mean to anyone, but she didn’t have to try to get people to like her. They just did. She moved through life so easily and all I could do was stand by and watch.

Before Allison became Linden Fall’s golden girl, before my parents had set all their hopes on her, before she stopped reaching out for my hand to let me know everything was going to be okay, Allison and I were inseparable. We were practically twins, though we didn’t look anything alike. Allison was—is—fourteen months older than I am. Tall with long, sleek, white-blond hair. She has silvery-blue eyes that could look right through you or make you feel as if you’re the only one who mattered, depending on her mood. I was small and plain, with wild hair the color of a dried-out oak leaf.

But at one time, it was as if we thought with the same mind. When Allison was five and I was four, we begged our parents to let us share a bedroom, even though our house had five bedrooms and we could have taken our pick. But we wanted to be together. When our mother finally said yes, we pushed our matching twin beds together and had our father hang yards of pale pink netting above our beds so we could draw it around us like a tent. Inside, we would spend hours playing cat’s cradle or looking at books together.

Our mother’s friends would gush over our relationship. “I don’t know how you do it,” they would say to her. “How did you manage to get your girls to get along so well?”

Our mother would smile proudly. “It’s all about teaching respect,” she explained in the snobby way she had. “We expect them to treat each other well and they do. And we feel it’s important that we spend a lot of time together as a family.”

Allison would just roll her eyes when my mother talked like this and I would hide a smile behind my hand. We did spend a lot of time together as a family—meaning, we were in the same room—but we never really talked to one another.

Allison was twelve when she decided to move out of our room into a bedroom of her own. I was devastated. “Why?” I asked. “Why do you want your own room?”

“I just do,” Allison said, brushing past me with an armload of clothes.

“You’re mad. What did I do?” I asked as I followed her into her new room, which was right next to the one we shared. The one that would be mine alone.

“Nothing, Brynn. You did nothing. I just want some privacy,” Allison said as she arranged her clothing in her new closet. “I’m just next door. It’s not like you’ll never see me again. Jesus, Brynn, you’re not going to cry, are you?”

“I’m not crying,” I answered, blinking back tears.

“Come on, then, help me move my bed,” she said, grabbing me by the arm and leading me back to our room. My room. As we pulled and shoved the mattress through the door and into the hallway, I knew that things would never be the same again. I watched as she arranged her school and athletic medals, trophies and ribbons around her new room and realized we were no longer anything alike. Allison was becoming more and more involved with her friends and extracurricular activities. She had been asked to join a very competitive traveling volleyball team. She spent nearly every free minute exercising, studying or reading. And all I wanted to do was be with Allison.

My parents had no sympathy for me. “Brynn,” my mother said. “Grow up. Of course Allison wants her own room. It would be strange if she didn’t.”

I always knew I was a little different from the other kids, but I never thought I was strange until my mother said this. I started looking at myself in the mirror to see if I could see the oddness that others saw in me. My brown curly hair, if not combed into surrender, would spring wildly around my head. What was left of my eyebrows formed short, thin commas above my brown eyes, giving me a constantly surprised expression. My nose was average—not too large, not too small. I knew that someday I would have very nice teeth, but when I was eleven they were imprisoned in braces, being forced into perfect alignment like straight-backed little soldiers lined up for duty. Except for my eyebrows, I didn’t think I looked very strange. I decided it must be what was inside of me that was so weird. I vowed to keep that part hidden. I stayed in the shadows, watching, never offering an opinion or an idea. Not that anyone ever asked. It was easy to fade into the background with Allison around.

That first night, sleeping by myself in our room, I cried. The room felt much too large for one person. It looked naked with my one small bookshelf and dresser, a few stuffed animals strewn around. I cried because the sister I loved didn’t seem to want me around anymore. She left me behind without a backward glance.

Until she was sixteen and finally needed me again.

I wasn’t even supposed to be at home that night. I was going to the movies with friends—until my mother found out that Nathan Canfield would be there, too. She would have none of that. He had gotten caught drinking or something and he wasn’t the kind of friend I should be associating with, she said. So I was forbidden to go out that night.

I often wonder how different my life would have been—all our lives would have been—if I had been sitting in some movie theater that night, eating popcorn with Nathan Canfield, instead of at home.

I don’t know what Allison looks like now. I imagine that life in prison isn’t helpful to keeping one’s good looks. Her once-high cheekbones could be hidden by mounds of fat, her long shiny hair could have turned frizzy and been cut short. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen Allison since the police came to take her away.

I miss my sister, the one who held my hand as I cried all the way into the classroom on my first day of kindergarten, the one who would help me study my spelling words until I knew them inside and out, the one who used to try to teach me to kick a soccer ball. I miss that Allison. The other one … not at all. I could go the rest of my life not seeing my sister again and I would be just fine with that. I went through hell after she went to jail. Now I finally feel like I have a home at my grandmother’s house. I have my friends, my classes, my grandmother, my animals, and that’s enough for me.