While We Were Burning

by Sara Koffi

Genres: Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

Parasite meets Such a Fun Age in a scorching debut that is as heartbreaking as it is thrilling, examining the intersection of race, class, and female friendship, and the devastating consequences of everyday actions.

After her best friend's mysterious death, Elizabeth Smith’s picture-perfect life in the Memphis suburbs has spiraled out of control—so much so that she hires a personal assistant to keep her on track. Composed and elegant, Brianna is exactly who she needs and slides so neatly into Elizabeth’s life, almost like she belonged there from the start. Soon, the assistant Elizabeth hired to distract her from her obsession with her friend's death is the same person working with her to uncover the truth behind it.

Because Brianna has questions too.

She wants to know why the police killed her young Black son. Why someone in Elizabeth’s neighborhood called the cops on him that day. Who took that first step that stole her child away from her. And the only way she’s ever going to be able to find out is to entwine herself deep into Elizabeth’s life, where the answers to her questions lie. As the two women hurtle towards an electrifying final showdown, and the lines between employer and friend blur, it becomes clear that neither of them is what they first appear.

Release date: April 16, 2024

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

Print pages: 304

Sample

1

Elizabeth

Beale Street after five? I'd rather kill myself."

Patricia was leaning against the main lobby's printer, her nurse costume clinging tight to her skin. It was inappropriate for an office setting, in every sense of the word, the blouse cut too low and the skirt too short. Her only real saving grace was that she waited until I'd finished with my shift at the Learning Center to change into it, making sure no one saw her but me.

That seemed to be the rhythm of our entire relationship. Patricia always coming just as I was going. Patricia wanting to tag along on errands that I desperately wanted to get done by myself. Ever since I'd opened the door to her welcoming me to the neighborhood with homemade brownies and a megawatt smile, she'd been around, a little offbeat, a fly in the ointment that was my attempt to not have a fly in my ointment.

"Yeah, well, that's what David told me they were up to," I replied, my fingers gliding along the printer's control screen. "Getting a drink at the Absinthe Room."

"So, they're pregaming before the Halloween party tonight." Patricia rolled her eyes, punctuating the end of her sentence. "What is it with men and trying to relive their college glory days?"

I bit my tongue, hard, as a fresh copy landed in the printer tray. I knew for a fact that Patricia had wanted to be a nurse when she was in college and that she'd flunked out of the program. It was one of those stories she'd always come back to, when there were any lulls in our conversations, whenever it seemed like there might be a single moment of silence between us.

I never asked her why. Why she was so hell-bent on reliving something from her past that'd clearly hurt. Why she always felt the need to bring it up again like she was stuck in some modern-day version of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Maybe it was the failure.

Maybe Patricia wasn't used to it. Maybe that was the first time it'd ever happened, the first time she'd ever been scarred by anything like it. Like a little kid who can't stop telling people about the first time they ever got a sunburn at the beach.

Failing was a novelty.

"What are you supposed to be, Liz?" Patricia nodded over at my outfit. "You look . . . interesting, at least."

"Stevie Nicks," I answered with a slight shrug. "But maybe without the innate talent and grace, I'm coming off more like a burnt-out hippie?"

Patricia smirked, but she didn't laugh. Like she was amused but didn't want to fully admit it. "Did David buy you that?"

"Nope. I thrifted most of it."

"Thrifted? Why?" Her eyes widened with abject horror. "You and David aren't having money problems, are you?"

"No, that's not-"

"Because you could tell me, if you were," she interrupted. "Jack and I would be happy to help-"

"We're not having money problems." It was my turn to do the interrupting. "David and I are fine. I just think thrifting is better for the environment. That's all."

"Better for the environment?"

"You know, fast fashion and all that." I shrugged again as I pulled a stack of freshly printed copies close to my chest. "I read an article about it online. Recycling clothes is all the rage."

"Okay . . ." Patricia murmured, like she didn't believe a word of what I was saying.

And it took everything in me not to drop the stack of copies back onto the landing tray, pull up the article I'd seen on my phone, and make Patricia digest every word. There was just something about suburbanites and lying. They lied so much that they assumed everyone else was always lying, too. Lying about how much they're pulling in a year. Lying about how wonderful it is to be a mother, a father. Lying about how much they love the holidays, their spouses, their car, their job, their life.

Always lying, lying, lying.

But not me. I long suspected it was one of the reasons I never felt like I really fit in to the rest of Harbor Town, no matter how much they wanted me to. I wasn't interested in crafting some version of myself that I could never live up to. And I wasn't interested in spending my precious time on this planet surrounding myself with people who wanted their lives to resemble SUV commercials: saccharine, sweet, fake.

On a road headed to fucking nowhere.

"Speaking of thrifting . . ." Patricia paused for a moment as she shot me a pleading look. "Have you talked to David about the Neighborhood Watch program?"

Are you really so removed from reality that thrifting and stealing are the same thing to you, Patricia? I asked her, solely in my head. Have you gone so far down the upper-middle-class rabbit hole that you can only conceptualize something as having been bought if there's a designer's name stitched across its label?

"Uh, no, I haven't."

"Not yet? Or not ever?"

". . . Not ever," I admitted with an apologetic glance in her direction. "Sorry, Patricia. But it doesn't really gel with what we believe in. Besides, the last big Harbor Town mystery was solved in less than twenty-four hours."

"The last big mystery?"

"When that kid down the street thought someone stole his bike," I reminded her. "Remember? It was just in his friend's garage? His dad had brought it over to have the tires fixed."

"That doesn't even count for anything!" Patricia laughed through her argument. "And for all we know, that could've been the first score of a very ambitious thief."

"But it wasn't." I laughed now, too, as I started locking up for the night. It was something Patricia would usually help me with if she was scheduled to stay until end-of-day. She'd been a volunteer at the Learning Center long before I'd ever had a job here, although her knack for volunteering only seemed to kick into high gear whenever her in-laws were in town or there was some #GivingBack social media challenge.

But I knew she wouldn't be helping me lock up tonight, even if she wanted to. Not with how high her heels were, anyway.

"Please? Just float it by David and tell me what he thinks about it?" she begged. "That's all I'm asking you to do, Liz."

"Why does it matter if David and I are involved with something like that?" I asked. "We're still pretty new to the neighborhood. Do people really care what we do?"

"Are you serious right now?" Patricia folded her arms across her chest. "Everyone's obsessed with you two. You're basically the coolest people in the neighborhood, like Barbie and Ken if they weren't trying so hard."

"I don't know what that means, Patricia."

"It means that yes, people care what you two do. They care a lot. Why else do you think everyone's tripping over themselves to be at your party tonight?" Patricia scoffed. "Seriously. I've thrown Halloween parties where maybe half the neighborhood came, but your RSVP list was insane."

"It was David's idea. He said it'd be a good way to establish ourselves." I chuckled at the thought. "As if we were royalty or something. As if people really needed to know who we were."

"You're right about that. Everyone already knows who David is," Patricia replied. "Which is why having him involved with Neighborhood Watch would be perfect. If the other guys see him doing something, they'll join in, no matter what it is. Everyone wants to be in his . . . orbit."

Right.

Of course. Everything comes back to David. Always.

Because David was David.

And I was just David's wife.

It wasn't like that when we first got married. I distinctly remember being my own person and having my own name. It was David and Elizabeth everywhere we went.

Until it wasn't. Until David started to work on million-dollar projects. Until David's success was an eclipsing force, the sort of thing that hid other accomplishments in the shadows, no matter how bright they seemed in my hands. And then I was nothing. Still here, still in place by his side, but only seen as an extension, as a ring around his planet, as the woman whose finger he'd deigned to place a ring around.

"So? You'll talk to him about it, right?" Patricia pleaded as she followed me outside the building and toward the parking lot. "Pretty, pretty please?"

". . . I'll think about it." It was the last thing I said before offering her a temporary wave goodbye, knowing that I'd be seeing her again in less than thirty minutes at my house for the party.

And knowing that I was never going to speak a word of this conversation to David.

Ever.

***



“How many more of these do you have left in you?” Jack, Patricia’s husband, was slurring his words as he suddenly appeared at my side.

The Halloween party was in full swing now, the foyer of our home transformed into a sea of bodies writhing in time to music, champagne flutes clutched with perfectly manicured nails and candy wrappers littering the marble floor.

And there I was, bored out of my mind, in the middle of it all.

It felt like I was back in college. Back before I knew any of these people existed. Back when I barely knew I existed, either.

I let myself sink into a glass-clear memory, one where I was stuck at some college party a friend had dragged me to without my consent. The only saving grace about the whole thing would be at the end of the night, where I finally met someone worth talking to and we snuck off together to the other side of the house, far away from the boozy crowd. I'd learn by the morning that my savior's name was David, with bright blue eyes and a smile that'd so often made me lose my train of thought.

My David.

It didn't matter that it'd been years since I'd seen him that way, that age. I was never going to forget the way he looked when I fell in love with him. I wondered if that was how he'd always remember me, too, wearing a hand-me-down T-shirt and dark jeans, trying to make myself invisible in whatever room I stumbled into.

I could never understand why he fell in love with me back then, when all I knew how to do was hate myself.

When I didn't even know what love was supposed to feel like.

"What are you talking about?" I looked up at Jack, overbearingly tall as ever, noticing the beer he held in his right hand. The dark brown wrapped around its label complemented the notes of sandy blond in his hair, almost like he'd planned it. "I don't think I understand the question."

"You understand the question!" He cackled. "Come on. I know how you girls are . . . You tell each other everything. Don't act like you don't know what I mean."

"Jack, I have no idea where you're going with this-"

"When's it going to be baby time?" Jack cackled yet again.

I winced twice.

"David and I don't want kids. I don't know what Patricia told you, but-"

"Patricia didn't tell me anything," Jack cut me off as a drunken grin spread across his features. "Let's just say that David may have let something slip, back at the bar."

Oh.

I managed to suppress my shock, quietly biting back a hmm or a huh.

David Smith didn't want kids. When I used to be the kind of woman who saw herself working on the top floor of some important office building, it was one of the things we'd bonded over. He never wanted a bored housewife, and I never wanted to be bored. Children always seemed like a shortcut to everything we never wanted.

"David and I don't want kids," I repeated, like saying it twice was going to undo Jack's revelation. "Maybe he just had too much to drink."

"Yeah. Maybe." Jack studied my features for a second too long. "Maybe you're right."

Jack took another sip of the beer in his hand before his eyes went wild and wide. "Speak of the devil."

"I thought you said you'd done all your drinking at the bar," David replied as he stepped from around Jack, slipping Jack's beer into his own grip, the bottle glistening underneath the bright kitchen bulbs. David's tone was neutral, completely devoid of judgment, even as he cut his friend off for the night.

It was another reason I loved him so much, his ability to be so impossibly . . .

Kind.

He was always, always so kind.

In a way that most people weren't. In a way that Patricia was always, always trying to be.

"Hi." I offered David a small smile. "Nice costume."

It wasn't a nice costume. It was something he'd clearly bought at the very last second, the kind of thing that just happened to be left on the shelves. He was dressed up as the most generic pirate that I'd ever seen in my life, with cheap fabric covering one of his eyes and an even cheaper faux parrot seated on his shoulder.

But he did happen to look nice in it. Because David looked nice in anything.

"Thanks." He returned my smile, just as Jack ambled off toward another side of our home, his steps shuffling and heavy. "You having a good night so far?"

"It could be better," I said while taking a few steps closer to him, my hands already reaching toward either side of his waist. "I could be hooking up with a pirate."

"Sorry, baby. It was a really long day at work. Plus, going out with Jack afterwards . . ."

"Huh."

"Huh what, baby?"

"Nothing." I smirked. "It's just that Jack said that you wanted-"

Jack said that you wanted to have a child with me. Because Jack is drunk.

Or maybe you're drunk, David, and you don't remember saying it.

Or maybe I'm drunk for even entertaining anything that comes out of Jack's mouth.

"Jack said what?" David smiled down at me, interrupting my thoughts.

"Jack just made it seem like you were really looking forward to going to bed tonight," I lied, rearranging Jack's words into a whole new meaning.

"It's not that I don't want to, Lizzie-"

"You've barely wanted to for three months, David."

"I'm just tired, baby. That's all." He sighed. "You know how hard I've been working on closing this deal for the Hanson building."

". . . I know."

"But when all of this bullshit is over," he started with that blinding smile, the one that always shot me right in the heart, "I'm going to rock your fucking world, Elizabeth Smith."