The New Year’s Party

Prologue

Olivia stumbles through the sliding glass doors back into the warm kitchen, mud smearing the linoleum as she kicks off her

wet shoes. Her eyes are stinging from the cold, tears blurring everything. She blinks rapidly toward the fuzzy green numbers

now half torn down and trampled on. Magical at the beginning of the night, sad and stupid now. Just like Olivia, who allowed

herself to believe in the first flush of that early martini buzz that tonight she could finally bury the awful thing that

happened five years ago when for God’s sake, she should have known, she should have known.

Outside just now, lost and cold and bedraggled after her reckless flight into the dark, she’d managed to scrape together a

certain kind of resolve. Alone under the stars, she had actually felt sane for the first time in a long time.

If things were over with Bennett, so be it.

She would not bend the story of what happened to protect or please anyone, not even her husband; she would do right by herself, consequences be damned.

But now, back in reality, back in this goddamn house, her inner peace is crumbling faster than she can catch the pieces.

Her chest tightens and releases in a frantic rhythm and she feels that nasty old sensation of not being able to draw in a

full breath. Work, lungs, work.

Shit, shit, shit.

She gasps, crooks a finger at the bridge of her nose and stumbles forward, grabbing the edge of the nearest counter. Her body

feels so strange, icy-hot, tingling with adrenaline and dread. Her stomach is a wreck too, and it’s not just from the martini,

or the wine with dinner, or the champagne at midnight, or even the joint Ted handed her on the back deck . . .

She never should have touched that joint. She never should have done a lot of things. But when Ted put his arm around her

shoulder after the midnight toast and so compassionately said, “Hey, you look like you need a breather,” and she let him guide

her outside because she did need a break, and then he lit a joint and said, “C’mere, this will help, I promise,” Olivia had been so freaking desperate.

“That’s it,” Ted encouraged, and then silly Olivia-who-never-learns took a second drag . . .

There’s a sound from the front of the house, drawing her attention to how eerily silent the place is. She lifts her head,

half expecting Bennett to come walking in, but the streamers dividing her from the rest of the house hang motionless.

“Hello?” Olivia calls. Her voice sounds feeble and about as cracked as her heart. “Bennett?” A whooshing sound followed by

a thud tells her that whoever she just heard has left out the front door. The streamers lift limply with the air current,

as if an invisible presence is just on the other side. She grips the counter hard and calls out again, louder. “Hello? Anyone?”

The only response is a sick gurgle from her own stomach.

Where is everyone? They can’t all have left, can they?

Maybe she should check, see if her car is still out front or if Bennett was mad enough to drive away and leave her stranded in this sorry place, this place they never should have come back to, right into the maw of the waiting monster disguised as a friend—

Nothing happened. Those were Bennett’s exact words when they faced each other on the deck after midnight, the scent of Ted’s joint still hanging

in the air around her. Nothing happened, like Bennett could by act of simple declaration erase what had transpired five years ago. All the careful puzzle pieces

she had put together, that she had finally arranged into a picture that made sense, nearly costing Olivia her hard-won mental health—he’d knocked them apart. With a smile on his face. Like he was doing her

a favor.

It had been an out-of-body moment when Bennett stood before her in the moonlight, six feet tall, his curly hair disordered

and his face sharp with happiness. She looked at him, and he was saying something to her that he clearly felt so good about,

but the words were dull, as if he was speaking from far away, or to someone else . . . It’s all been a misunderstanding . . . And in the disconnect between Bennett’s joy and Olivia’s despair, in the disconnect between the two different versions of

the story that could never fit into the same universe of reality, Olivia let her focus slide gently away from his face to

the vague space between them where the pale mushrooms of her breath grew and dissolved in the cold of the night. To the only

safe place she’d known in her thirty-five years of life: removal.

Then, with no warning, the volume in her head turned up and his words were splitting into her like an axe, demolishing her

safe house, cutting right into all the soft parts of her heart she’d tried so hard to protect.

She ran. Down the deck stairs, away from the house, coat flying open over her yellow silk dress, plunging into the snowy stalks

of wintering corn, like a spooked child instead of the grown woman she was supposed to be.

Coward.

That’s what she is. Under her cultivated exterior, Olivia Estelle Rhodes is a coward. She has been since she first started

dating Bennett at age twenty and didn’t tell him the truth. At least that lie was forgivable, when looked at a certain way—the

others were not. She should have known this party would undo her, she who wasn’t good at truth or risks. Truths that were

risks.

“Oh,” she groans, leaning down and bracing her forearms on the counter, because suddenly she might throw up.

She needs a bathroom. Now. She pushes off the counter, lurching through the streamers into the dining room. The blue crepe

paper whispers around her.

It’s an eerie feeling, passing into the empty dining room where the party was so alive just hours ago, the memory of the food

and the laughter sitting like an uneasy film over the remains of the abandoned dinner party. The platter of salmon with only

the gray skin remaining, curled up at the edges, remnants of eviscerated flesh clinging in a few spots, the serving tongs

laid across the whole mess like an instrument of torture. Scattered crumbs on the white tablecloth from the dinner rolls,

a long streak of purple from where Hellie’s wineglass nearly took a tumble. Knives and forks that clinked with such energy

now quiet, glinting with sharpness and grease.

The living room, just beyond the dining room and a little offset through the wide arch, is equally eerie, littered with party hats from their craft, a fallen brigade of champagne glasses, the stash of sex toys Bunny was trying to sell them earlier, the bevy of dildos lying slain on the coffee table.

There’s a new hole in the drywall, about the size of a fist. Olivia’s eyes catch a diamond glint on the rug—broken glass.

Dark spots freckle the carpet in front of the couch.

Wine? Blood? She looks away quickly, but her heart is really going now, knocking against her chest. What the hell happened in here?

It can’t have anything to do with her . .

. with what she discovered . . . can it?

She steps carefully over the carpet with her bare feet, avoiding the glass, and arrives in the small side hallway that leads

to the bedrooms, linen closet, and bathroom. There are five doors. Four closed, one open. Light spills out of the open door—a

sign of life.

“Hello? Guys?” She approaches, pauses in the doorframe.

No one. It’s the bedroom Doug and Hellie were staying in, and it’s a wreck. The ceiling fan jerks unsteadily in an off-kilter

circle. The closet door is open, a laundry basket filled with kids’ clothes overturned. The area rug is rolled up on one side.

Hellie’s overnight bag is open too, releasing a trail of clothing and cosmetics. Olivia’s stomach squeezes. This is beyond

the chaos of a messy person. The place looks ransacked. Have they been . . . robbed?

Olivia takes a step into the room. Adrenaline fizzes through her. She can feel her heartbeat behind her eyes. Should she do

something? Call the police? Wait—is there a thief in here, right now, listening to Olivia’s every move from his hiding place?

With a yelp, she kicks the closet door the rest of the way open. Yanks away the clothes on hangers with a breathless grunt,

revealing . . .

Toy bins.

She releases a shuddering breath—she’s thinking crazy—everyone is probably fine—

“Bennett?” she says, returning to the hall. Her sense of foreboding is deepening. She feels like Goldilocks, if Goldilocks

was a slasher movie. She tries the knob of the bedroom that she and Bennett were going to share with Will and Jenn. Locked.

She slams her palm against the door. “Hello? Bennett? Guys? Are you in there?”

Only silence.

Are they hiding in the locked room—all of them? Like an anti-surprise party? Holding their breaths so that Olivia doesn’t know they’re all in there, muffling their laughter, waiting for her to leave?

She knows she’s never fit in. Knows they probably judge her for a hundred things. Her manners—too polite. Her reserve. Her

forced laugh, her forced everything. Of course she’s heard the odious nickname Doug and Hellie coined for her years ago, Miss Prim and Proper, she’s not deaf, and it’s not like she was under any illusions that she was actually close to any of them like Bennett is, but . . . do they hate her that much?

She should leave. She doesn’t belong, but you know what, she doesn’t want to belong anymore. She’s done.

It hits her that, even if her car is still here, she doesn’t even have her car keys—Phelps confiscated everyone’s keys at

the beginning of the night—but who cares. She can call an Uber . . . if they even have Ubers in middle-of-nowhere Indiana . . .

Or just walk until she finds a motel . . . Another spasm rocks through her stomach and she lets out a low groan. Ready or

not, her guts are about to empty themselves.

Supporting herself on the wall, she crosses to the bathroom, its closed door covered in Hulk stickers and handprints from

Phelps’s kids.

She jerks the doorknob and growls with frustration. It doesn’t give. She rattles it again because that is what Phelps’s rental

house is like—sticking doors, paper-thin windows, everything crumbling a little, everything a little grimy, a little broken.

Just like Olivia.

“Occupied!” comes an energetic, cheerful voice that sends a jolt through her.

Olivia nearly jumps back from surprise.

She is not alone.

The voice belongs to Alessia “call me Allie,” Phelps’s date, too young for him by the way, annoyingly intimate with everyone, as if she hadn’t just met them all that very night.

“I need the bathroom,” Olivia rasps.

“I’m literally on the toilet!”

“Sorry, it’s kind of urgent. Could you hurry?” Ugh. She hears herself and hates it. Even in desperate circumstances, she still

apologizes. Softens things with kind of when what she really wants to do is scream, It’s really fucking urgent!

“No!” Allie squawks.

A surge of acid fills Olivia’s mouth and stops her from responding. She swallows and stumbles back down the hall. There’s

an en suite bathroom in Phelps’s master bedroom—but he said the plumbing went kaput. Isn’t there a bathroom in the basement?

She only went down there briefly, earlier. Wood paneling and checkerboard linoleum tiles and a light whiff of sewage. A nasty

old plaid couch and a huge gaming set. A bar. Electronic darts. She retraces her steps to the kitchen. The basement is behind

the door tucked to the left of the stove. That door sticks too, but she wrenches it open anyway, to darkness and an unpleasant

smell.

She’s starting to feel angry now.

What a stupid idea, getting back together, like their lives were going to mesh again, like irreparable damage hadn’t been

done years ago. Why did she ever want to fit in with these people anyway? Everything is a joke to them. Sure, fourteen years

ago, that was part of the appeal, the fun, wasn’t it? The excessive cursing, the bullshitting, like words are things to play

with, toys of no consequence. But words matter. The truth matters.

“Stupid,” she mutters to herself, beginning her descent as tears spill down her cheeks. Stupid for trusting. Stupid for coming

tonight. “Stupid, stupid—”

The basement stairs are totally unsafe—a rail on one side, but open on the other—and she gropes for a light switch along the wall as she goes. The rail is slick under her left hand. A leak? This house is a hazard. They’re probably all inhaling mold—

She loses her footing and falls down the remaining few stairs, landing on her ankle with a sharp cry.

“God,” she says, tears rolling faster, thick with self-pity, as she reaches for her ankle and massages it. Why can’t she do

anything right—anything? Seeing the truth—handling the truth—walking down a set of freaking stairs—

As she struggles back to her feet, something tickles her head. A string. Connected to a light bulb. Finally. She pulls it. The light flickers on, and she sees her own left hand. Wet. Red.

Covered in blood.

A dry yelp bursts from her and her eyes fly up.

There are times in life that you see something but it doesn’t connect right away.

This happened to Olivia when she birthed her first child. Delirious with pain, she was handed the small alien creature covered

in a whitish substance and told, “This is your daughter.” She said, “Oh, thank you,” as if someone was passing her an object

of unclear usage, because even though she could see her brand-new daughter, and feel her, and watch her as she slowly maneuvered

up Olivia’s chest, head bobbing, it simply had nothing to do with her.

A similar thing happens to her now, and she takes in the pair of bare feet coming out from behind the couch, and connected

to her by a trail of blood—the trail she followed down the stairs—

Incongruously, her mind starts playing a song, like something in her wants to provide a soundtrack to this life-changing moment.

“Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” Yes, Elton John had the exact right lyrics to describe this, she thinks as she limps forward, her ankle throbbing, through the blood—Don’t look at the blood—toward the figure on its back.

She’s about to clear the couch to see who it is. She hopes with a strange, vague part of her that it isn’t Bennett—they have

their problems, but whether they end up together or apart, the kids—the kids need them both—

No. It can’t be.

She takes in the pale face. The open, unseeing eyes. The blood pooling under the head.

And it hits her.

There’s no more removal and no more Elton John. Just pure, unadulterated horror that has absolutely everything to do with

her. A strangled shriek burns her throat.

“Help! Someone help!”

Then, finally, she throws up.