The House on Primrose Pond

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

Genres: Family Life; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

A compelling novel about one woman’s search for the truth from the author of You Were Meant For Me.
 
After suffering a sudden, traumatic loss, historical novelist Susannah Gilmore decides to uproot her life—and the lives of her two children—and leave their beloved Brooklyn for the little town of Eastwood, New Hampshire.
 
While the trio adjusts to their new surroundings, Susannah is captivated by an unexpected find in her late parents’ home: an unsigned love note addressed to her mother, in handwriting that is most definitely not her father’s.
 
Reeling from the thought that she never really knew her mother, Susannah finds mysteries everywhere she looks: in her daughter’s friendship with an older neighbor, in a charismatic local man to whom she’s powerfully drawn, and in an eighteenth century crime she’s researching for her next book. Compelled to dig into her mother’s past, Susannah discovers even more secrets, ones that surpass any fiction she could ever put to paper...

Release date: February 2, 2016

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 400

Sample

Written by today’s freshest new talents and selected by New American Library, NAL Accent novels touch on subjects close to a woman’s heart, from friendship to family to finding our place in the world. The Conversation Guides included in each book are intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.

Visit us online at penguin.com.

Praise

Also by Yona Zeldis McDonough

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PROLOGUE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

THIRTY-FOUR

THIRTY-FIVE

THIRTY-SIX

THIRTY-SEVEN

THIRTY-EIGHT

THIRTY-NINE

FORTY

FORTY-ONE

EPILOGUE

Acknowledgments

Conversation Guide

About the Author

PROLOGUE

It’s two p.m. on a freakishly warm afternoon in January. Susannah Gilmore reluctantly looks up from her laptop. Standing in the doorway of her home office is her husband, Charlie. “Have you seen what it’s doing outside?” he asks. She nods, attention drifting back to the screen. “It’s sixty-nine degrees.”

“The January thaw, right?” She’s read about this someplace, though she can’t recall where.

“Whatever. We should take advantage of it, though. Let’s go for a bike ride before the kids get home.”

“I wish I could.” She turns to him. At six foot three, he’s lanky and lean. Ginger hair, great smile, and, under his shirt, a constellation of freckles dotting his shoulders and upper back. Forty-three, yet still so boyish. “But I’ve got a deadline.”

“One afternoon is not going to make or break you. Not even an afternoon. An hour and a half, max. Carpe diem and all that.”

She smiles at him. “I really can’t. But you go.”

“It’ll be more fun with you.”

“Next time,” she says. “I promise.”

He sighs and Susannah turns back to her work. But Charlie remains standing in the doorway.

“What?” she says, trying to conceal her impatience.

“Are you sure?”

She hesitates. But the chapter, the deadline, the meal she’ll need to prepare in a few hours—the perpetually revolving domestic wheel keeps her rooted to her chair.

“All right.” He sounds a bit deflated but finally heads toward the stairs. Susannah barely registers his leaving. She wants to get back to the novel she’s writing, a novel in which a minor English noblewoman has become ensnared in a dangerous court intrigue. Tapping on her keypad, Susannah follows Lady Whitmore along vast, tapestry-lined corridors and up curving flights of steep stone steps. Now Lady Whitmore enters the bedchamber of the young and essentially powerless queen and closes the heavy oak door behind her. Will she be able to help the sovereign outsmart the cunning noblemen who want her out of the way, making room for an even more pliant pawn?

Sometime after three o’clock, Susannah registers her son Jack’s arrival home, and a short time later, her daughter Cally’s. Leaving Lady Whitmore, Susannah switches off the computer and goes downstairs. Time to start dinner.

As the sky darkens—despite the warmth, it is still winter, and dusk comes early—she moves around the narrow but cozy kitchen of her Park Slope brownstone, getting the meal together.

Charlie built this room almost single-handedly when they moved in nearly twenty years ago. The wood for the countertops was reclaimed from the bar of an old Irish pub that was going out of business; the floor tile was a manufacturer’s overstock that he’d bought for next to nothing. That was so like Charlie—he could see possibilities in the most unlikely of places, and he was a consummate craftsman, able to turn his vision into a reality.

Susannah checks the clock on the stove. Charlie said an hour and a half and it’s been more than three hours. He must have gotten sidetracked. She pictures him peddling up the hill on his green bicycle, exertion making his cheeks glow pink. He’ll be all excited about his outing, and eager to tell her where he’s been, what he’s seen. He really is a big kid. Four days a week, he teaches illustration at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan; on Fridays, he works at home. His current project is a picture book about intergalactic travel, and the preliminary drawings of the spacecraft—sleek and silvery blue—are pinned up around his studio.

She likes having him home on a day when the children are not here; sometimes she fixes them a special lunch or sometimes they go upstairs for what Charlie loves best: daytime sex. “I’m an artist,” he always said. “And for an artist, there’s no light like daylight.”

As Susannah bastes the chicken, she feels a small tug of guilt. Maybe she should have gone with him today. She’ll make it up to him, she decides. She’ll work extra hard this week and next Friday she’ll take the whole day off. She’ll bring him breakfast in bed and then climb back in with him. He’ll like that. So will she.

“Where’s Dad?” Cally walks into the kitchen and begins setting the table.

“He went for a bike ride; he should be home soon.” It’s almost six o’clock, the time they usually eat dinner. The roast chicken is ready and Susannah debates whether to keep it in the oven or take it out; does she want it dry or does she want it cold?

“He’s on Dad time,” Cally says. But she’s smiling. They all know Charlie is dreamy and easily distracted: by the sight of a splashy sunset that tinges the clouds with gold, by an old buddy who wants him to stop by for a beer, by a picture he just has to take with his iPhone. Jack, who has just walked in, goes over to the cutlery drawer and is now handing silverware to his sister; they are a good team. “Well, I hope he gets here soon. I’m starved.”

“Me too.” Cally straightens a place mat.

“He will,” says Susannah, though she is pricked by annoyance. She takes the chicken out of the oven. Cold is fixable. Dry is not. Both Cally and Jack have washed their hands and are sitting down, waiting. Everything is ready; everyone is here. Except her husband. She picks up her phone, and as she could have predicted, the call goes straight to voice mail; Charlie routinely turns off the ringer on his phone. But it is now four hours since he left. Couldn’t he have at least called to say he was going to be late? “Where the hell is he?” She does not actually mean to say this aloud.

“Don’t curse at Daddy!” Cally scolds.

“I’m not cursing at him.” Susannah is instantly contrite. “I’m just . . . cursing.”

“Well, you shouldn’t!”

“You’re right, sweet pea. He probably stopped to get something.” Charlie is apt to do that—tulips for the table, or an extravagant dessert. “Remember last week when he brought home that salted-caramel pie?”

“Don’t even talk about pie!” says Jack.

Then the bell rings. Oh, good—Charlie’s home. Obviously he forgot his keys—he does that a lot—and she hurries to let him in. But instead of Charlie, apologizing profusely, leaning down to kiss her, pressing his offering into her arms, she finds two police officers standing at the door. One has a blond crew cut showing from under his blue hat; the other is a dark-skinned woman. “Mrs. Miller?” She flashes her badge. “May we come in?” Susannah tenses but steps aside. “Your husband, Charles—”

“My husband isn’t Charles. He’s Charlie.” Susannah seizes on their mistake; whatever they think their mission here is, they have gotten it all wrong. And she isn’t Mrs. Miller anyway. She kept Gilmore, her maiden name, the one her grandfather Isaac Goldblatt decided would help him move more easily through the world.

“There’s been an accident. It was in Queens and—”

“What kind of accident?” Susannah is aware that Cally and Jack are standing close behind her.

“Bicycle.” The word is delivered by the young blond officer. “Your husband was thrown off. He sustained a serious head injury.”

“Queens? What would he be doing in Queens?” Charlie barely knows where Queens is; they joke about this occasionally. But the words “head injury” send her panicked glance over to the row of hooks by the door. Suspended from one of them is the expensive, glitter-flecked helmet she bought Charlie for his last birthday, the one he swears up and down that he’ll wear—and then almost never does.

The two officers look at each other, and in that look Susannah knows everything. She will not let herself believe it; still, her gaze is pulled almost magnetically back to the helmet. Charlie thinks it is an encumbrance; he wears it only when she reminds him. But today she didn’t remind him. Today she’d been busy and wanted to get back to work.

“I think maybe you should sit down,” says the female cop.

There is a sickening numbness gathering around her, a horrible, this-can’t-be-real feeling that she desperately wants to swat away. But Susannah allows herself to be led to the table. Cally and Jack silently follow. “How bad is he?”

The officer shakes her head. “I’m sorry. The injury was fatal. By the time the ambulance got there, he was already gone.” There is a pause before she adds, in a low voice, “We’ll need you to identify the body.”

Jack starts sobbing. Cally emits a single, strangled sound. But Susannah cannot speak. Identify the body? Charlie’s body? It’s just not possible. He was standing there, in her office, mere hours ago. It’ll be more fun with you, he had said. Why hadn’t she gone with him? Why?

Jack is crying noisily but Cally marches over to the row of hooks, takes down the helmet, and thrusts it in front of her mother. “He wasn’t wearing it.”

“No,” says Susannah. “He wasn’t.” The helmet has a reinforced safety strap and an impervious, mocking gleam. She turns her head away so she doesn’t have to see it anymore.

“You didn’t remind him.” There is recrimination in her words. Also, a cold, adult-sounding fury. “It’s your fault. You let Daddy get killed!” And with that, she bolts from the room. The officers stand with their heads bowed, and Jack continues to sob. Susannah cannot move, and the sounds of Jack’s continued weeping, the blond officer’s abashed cough, recede. All she can hear, in a relentless, repetitive loop, are her husband’s last words: Are you sure?

ONE

One year later

They were driving on I-95 and had just crossed the state line into New Hampshire when the snow started falling. Hitting the windshield like cats’ paws, the fat white flakes seemed to outpace the wipers, which had a wonky, syncopated rhythm—click, click CLACK, click CLICK, clack. The sound was mildly alarming and Susannah knew she had better get them looked at—soon.

The snow was pretty, picturesque even, the kind of snowfall that made her want to curl up under a blanket and get comfy with a cup of cocoa and a Jane Austen novel. Or a shot of bourbon and a rerun of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. But Susannah was not at home, where she could choose her opiates: chocolate or alcohol, nineteenth-century literature or twenty-first-century crime drama. No, it was New Year’s Day and she was on the road with her two fatherless children, heading toward Eastwood, New Hampshire, and a house she had not been to in more than twenty years. They had already been on the road for over four hours and had another hour to go. Which, with this weather, might very well turn out to be more.

“Do you think it will be snowing when we get to Eastwood?” said Jack.

“I’m not sure,” Susannah said. The small town where they were headed was midway between coastal Portsmouth and the state capital in Concord; she had not heard a local weather report.

“I hope it snows, like, ten inches,” he said. “Then we can build a fort. Dad used to build the best forts . . .”

“Well, Dad is dead.” This zinger was delivered by Cally, who at sixteen had cornered the market on snark.

“I know Dad is dead,” Jack said. He turned to look out the window, where the snow kept falling from a numb gray sky. “Lavender is the state flower of New Hampshire,” he said. “The state bird is the purple finch. Of the thirteen original colonies, New Hampshire was the first to declare its independence from England—six months before the Declaration of Independence was signed.”

“What are you talking about?” Cally asked.

He showed her his phone. “I’m on the New Hampshire Fun Facts Web site. Want to hear more?”

“There’s nothing fun about them,” said Cally. “Could you please stop?”

“The first potato planted in the United States was at Londonderry Common Field in 1719. Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr., the first American to travel in space, was from East Derry, New Hampshire. The New Hampshire state motto is Live free or die.”

“I said stop!” Cally punched his arm and Jack fell silent.

“Cally!” Susannah abruptly pulled over to the highway’s shoulder, causing a volley of honks from the cars behind her. “Are you okay?” she asked Jack.

“I’m okay.” He rubbed the place where Cally had hit him.

“I can’t believe you punched him,” Susannah said to her daughter.

Cally was silent, but her expression—blazing, furious, accusatory—said it all. Looking at it, Susannah felt her anger drain away, leaving her utterly defeated.

Cally really thought her mother was partially responsible for her father’s death and that their move to New Hampshire was something she had designed specifically as a way to ruin her life. Susannah understood her daughter’s need to lay blame. The alternative—that the world was an unpredictable place in which random and terrible things could and did happen—was too scary. “There’s no need to attack your brother,” she said more quietly.

“Fine. Whatever.” Cally put in her earbuds and retreated to the cocoon of her iPhone.

Susannah waited for a break in the stream of cars to get back to the road. “Go on—read me more fun facts about New Hampshire,” she said to Jack.

“That’s okay. Maybe they’re not as much fun as I thought.”

“Please?” she wheedled, but Jack didn’t respond. Sometimes that ever present affability of his could be a problem. Sometimes he was too easy, too willing to give in.

Then Cally asked, for what might have been the tenth—or hundredth—time: “Why do we have to move up here in the middle of winter? Why couldn’t we have at least waited until school let out?”

“Because the buyers for the house were offering all cash, Cally.” Susannah tried to keep her tone even; she’d explained this before. “Do you realize what that means? No waiting for a bank to approve a mortgage or not. Just all the money—ours. And in the bank for the future. Your future.”

“My future in the woods,” muttered Cally. “Big whoop.”

They continued along I-95 without speaking for a while, the snow on the car piling up faster and faster and the road getting icier and icier. Susannah had to slow down; at this rate they wouldn’t be there until after dark, a panic-inducing thought since she did not know if she could find the house at night, even with the GPS. Then she noticed that the needle on the fuel gauge was low; she’d have to stop for gas. Another delay. As soon as she saw the Shell sign, she eased the minivan onto the exit ramp, pulled up to the gas pump—maybe someone could have a look at those wipers—and gave the kids each a ten-dollar bill to use at the convenience store.

“Can I buy a Heineken?” Cally said.

“You’d drink beer in the car? With Mom right there?” Jack was incredulous.

“I was making a joke.” Cally’s contempt was obvious.

“Go,” Susannah ordered. “Before I take back my offer.”

The gas station attendant made some minor adjustments to the wipers—“I’d have those checked out when you get home, ma’am”—and filled the tank. Cally and Jack emerged from the store, and they were on the road again in minutes. Jack had bought an outsized bag of licorice and some chips; he was alternating between them. Cally had bought no food, only a couple of fashion magazines. She had already been plotting out a life as a hip, urban-inspired designer. But she was convinced her plan would be thwarted by a move to Eastwood, New Hampshire, a place, she took great care to inform Susannah, where there would be no street fashion, because there were no streets.

The traffic thinned out and, to Susannah’s great relief, the snow began to taper off. As Cally pored over the glossy, bright pages, Jack settled into one of his marathon naps; he might sleep until they got there. Susannah actually shared Cally’s distaste for the Granite State; she had no desire to sell her Park Slope brownstone and move. But without Charlie, she had to concede that selling the house—whose value had increased astronomically in the years they’d lived there—made a lot of financial sense. Charlie’s ninety-year-old father lived in a retirement community in Florida; he could not be of much help. Her own parents had died, within a year of each other, when Jack was a baby, and they had left her the mortgage-free house in Eastwood. Apart from a single summer when she was a teenager, Susannah had never actually lived in it, though; it had always been rented out to a series of tenants.

All that was about to change; the last tenants had moved out two weeks ago and Susannah and her children were about to move in. Living was much cheaper in New Hampshire and state taxes were nonexistent, which meant that Charlie’s modest pension and life insurance policy, along with her even more modest income as a writer of historical fiction for Out of the Past Press would go much further.

It was almost five o’clock when they drove into town. Nothing looked familiar at first. She peered out the window, trying her best to make out the row of small brick buildings that made up the main street. A darkened storefront with a big window kindled a memory. That was the ice cream shop where she had gone with Trevor Bailey. Trevor had been her sort-of boyfriend the only summer she’d spent here. They would often drive into town and sit in front of that shop with their cones. He always ordered the same flavor—coffee—which used to irritate her; didn’t he ever want to try anything new?

As she slowed the car, she saw the shop no longer sold ice cream, but frozen yogurt. Sign of the times. She kept driving. The drugstore where she’d bought Tampax and tubes of Bain de Soleil tanning lotion—with a mere SPF 8 back then—was now some kind of exercise studio, and the office of the Eastwood Journal, the local paper where her mother had once worked, was now a store that appeared to sell healing crystals and scented candles. There was a pizza place, open, and she stopped in quickly to get a pie. The kids munched on their slices in the dark, but her own oily, congealed wedge sat untouched beside her.

As Susannah turned off the main street, the road started to look more recognizable; there was a huge old oak tree she remembered, and soon she came to a three-story house, mint green clapboard, with black shutters and a sloping garden off to one side and a meadow with a barn on the other. Another landmark.

The minivan rounded a curve and then there was a turn down a pocked and bumpy dirt road, now covered with packed snow and chunks of ice. The road had been plowed, but badly; she was glad she’d thought to have snow tires put on the minivan before the trip. At the very end of the road was the house on Primrose Pond.

Dark brown, two finished stories with an open attic room under the shingled roof. There was a screened-in porch on the pond side, not visible from the road. God, it looked so small. Dreary too. Why had she ever thought it would be a good idea to come up here in the dead of winter? That all-cash offer had blinded her to every other consideration. But she couldn’t share any of this with her kids; she felt compelled to be a cheerleader for the new life she’d dragged them into. She pulled up, and Cally jumped out of the car even before Susannah had switched off the ignition.

“Where are you going?” Cally ignored her and kept walking. As Susannah and Jack unloaded the minivan, Cally rapidly circled the house once, twice, a third time. Susannah, digging in her purse for the keys, let it go. The lights downstairs were off and she silently upbraided Mabel Dunfee, who’d been hired to clean after the tenants left, for not remembering to leave them on as she’d asked.

The door creaked slightly; it would need to be oiled. Or something. Susannah and Jack went inside with their bags; the movers would be here with the rest of their things tomorrow. Cally, who had reappeared, followed behind. Susannah didn’t even realize how uncomfortable her daughter’s pacing had made her until she’d stopped.

“The kitchen is so big,” Jack said. “Bigger than our kitchen in Brooklyn.”

“But it’s a dump.” Cally looked around with palpable distaste. “No dishwasher. That fridge—it’s ancient. And look at the sink—does it even have running water?”

“Of course there’s running water.” Susannah walked over and turned on the tap. After a gurgle and some spurting sounds, some brownish liquid trickled out. Linnie Ashcroft, the Realtor who had been in charge of renting the place, hadn’t mentioned this. Neither had Mabel Dunfee. Yet another thing Susannah would have to deal with. Jack walked over to the fridge and opened the door. Even though he was just thirteen, that legendary teenage-boy appetite had started to kick in. “Look—there’s food. Where did it come from?”

“Mrs. Dunfee, I suppose.” Susannah walked over to inspect. A dozen eggs, a stick of butter, milk, bacon, orange juice, and a loaf of bread. She closed the refrigerator door, making a mental note to reimburse Mabel when she saw her next.

“Mom, I’m still hungry,” said Jack.

“There’s not a whole lot here, but I can make some toast.” She looked over at Cally. “You too?” Cally shook her head and wandered off, presumably to inspect the rest of the house. Susannah moved around the kitchen. As Jack had pointed out, it was certainly big. But she didn’t like the table, and the chairs were even worse. Well, her own things would be arriving soon and the room would look better then.

She took out the bread and butter, then rooted around the cupboards until she found a bottle of cinnamon sugar. Decidedly crusty around the rim, but still serviceable. She’d make the kids a snack and they would feel better. And if they felt better, she would feel better too. What was the line? A Jewish mother was only as happy as her least happy child. And despite the name that obscured her origins, Susannah was a Jewish mother.

The toaster had four slots; she adjusted the dial and filled them all. But just as she pressed the lever down, the kitchen—and all the rest of the rooms on that floor—went suddenly, totally black.

TWO

“Mom?” Jack’s panicked voice cut through the darkness. “What happened?”

“I must have blown a fuse; maybe it was the toaster.” Susannah fumbled around with the cord and managed to unplug the damn thing.

“What’s going on?” Cally had come into the kitchen, her irritation obvious.

“Mom blew a fuse,” Jack reported.

“Oh, great,” said Cally.

“It’s not a big deal.” But Susannah did not know where the circuit breakers were, and finding them was not going to be fun.

“Maybe there’s a flashlight,” Jack said.

“Flashlight! Of course!” Susannah smiled in the dark. That was Jack all over. Don’t bitch about the problem; find a solution. She began opening cupboards and drawers, her eyes gradually adjusting. And under the sink was a high-powered flashlight; to her relief, its batteries were intact. “Now we’re cooking!” she said. Then, looking at the unplugged toaster, she added, “Well, not exactly cooking . . .” Using the beam of the flashlight, she managed to butter several slices of bread and sprinkle them with cinnamon sugar. Standing in the darkened room, she crammed a slice into her mouth; she had not eaten any of the pizza and was now ravenous.

Once she was sated, Susannah could focus on the circuit breakers. Maybe she and Jack could look for them. He was hunkered down in the living room, gobbling a slice of bread in front of the fireplace. The fireplace! Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner? There were logs stacked neatly on the hearth, and another trip to the kitchen yielded a box of matches. Pretty soon she had a decent little blaze going, and the primal warmth exerted by the dancing flames lured even supercilious Cally back into the circle. For the next few minutes, they all sat gazing at the popping logs as they polished off the rest of the bread.

“That was delicious.” Jack burped. “Sorry!”

“I hope we’re not going to have to live in the dark all winter. It’s like the Stone Ages in here.” Cally, who had not eaten any of the bread, was pressing her fingertips to the sugar-dusted plate and licking them.

“Of course not.” Susannah’s tone sounded sharper than she’d intended. But things were difficult enough, and Cally’s unending bad attitude only made them worse. “Why don’t you get your jackets?” she said in a gentler tone. “I want to show you something.” There was still that circuit breaker she had to find, but she needed to do this first.

They tossed their balled-up napkins into the fire, got their jackets, and followed her out onto the screened-in porch. She knew that beyond the winter storm window was the silent, black expanse of Primrose Pond. “What are we looking at?” asked Cally. “I don’t see anything.”

“Primrose Pond,” Susannah said. She had good memories of this pond, but Cally was right: it was barely visible. It would be different in the summer. She had to keep telling herself that. Though, at this moment, the summer seemed a long way off. “Once it gets warm enough, we can swim,” she said. “And boat too—there’s a rowboat and a canoe on the property.”

“Can we water-ski?” Jack asked.

“If we meet someone with a motorboat,” Susannah said. Jack seemed satisfied and Cally didn’t have any other negative comments to make, which in Susannah’s view constituted a small miracle. They went back inside to the glowing embers of the fire. Susannah added another log and watched the flames leap up again. It felt so strange being back here; she hadn’t anticipated that.

“Are there, like, snakes or eels in there? What about leeches? Aidan Shenk went to a camp on a lake and he said it was crawling with leeches.” Jack abhorred all creatures slippery or slithery.

“No snakes, no eels,” Susannah said firmly. “And no leeches.”

“Good. If there are leeches, I’m not