The Night It Ended by Katie Garner
I’ve seen this book a lot and wanted to preview the book. If you are like me, I have the perfect solution with an excerpt! The Night It Ended was released on June 27th by MIRA books and is Katie Garner’s debut novel. Thank you MIRA books for including me on the virtual tour.
About the Book:
Finding the truth seems impossible when her own dark past
has her seeing lies everywhere she looks...
From the outside, criminal psychiatrist Dr. Madeline Pine's
life appears picture-perfect--she has a beautiful family, a successful mental
health practice and a growing reputation as an expert in female violence. But
when she's called to help investigate a mysterious death at a boarding school
for troubled girls, Madeline hesitates. She's been through tragic cases before,
and the one she was entangled in last year nearly destroyed her...
Yet she can't turn away when she hears about Charley Ridley.
After the girl was found shoeless and in pajamas at the bottom of an icy ravine
on campus, the police ruled it a tragic accident. But the private investigator
hired by her mother has his doubts. And if it were Madeline's daughter who
died, she'd want to know why.
Arriving at the secluded campus in upstate New York,
Madeline's met by an unhelpful skeleton staff and the four other students still
on campus during winter break. Each seems to hold a piece of the puzzle. And
everyone has secrets--Madeline included. But who would kill to protect them?
Intertwining the narrative with the transcript of an
anonymous interview, this stunning suspense debut from Katie Garner will take
you on a twisting path where nothing--and no one--is what it seems.
Excerpt:
Friday, December 16
I’m speeding home when the phone rings, persistent and
angry, demanding to be heard. I know I should answer it, even though I want
nothing more than to throw it out the window. I could let the call slide into
voice mail, delete it, never hear the voice on the other side.
But I can’t.
I jerk to the side of the icy road to a chorus of blaring
horns, dig the phone out from the cavernous tote bag resting on the passenger
seat beside me. The phone is sleek and black, brand-new—opposite of the
cracked, chunky white one I’m used to shoving in my back pocket.
A sweet little chime and the ringing ends.
1 new voice mail.
Quickly, I glance in the side mirror. Car exhaust melts away
into the morning winter sky. Nothing is behind me, nothing but air. I exhale a
deep sigh of relief, press the phone to my ear.
“H-hi, this message is for Dr. Madeline Pine—”
A siren wails in the distance. The phone slips through my
fingers, lands mutely in my lap. A knot swells in my throat. I glance in the
side mirror again, feel my heart pound, each breath shrinking to tiny gasps.
The sirens near. An emergency vehicle speeds past.
It’s only an ambulance.
My body wilts. I take a deep breath. In. Out. The knot in my
throat loosens.
I hate the person I’ve become. I’ve never been this nervous,
this afraid, anxiety and fear clinging to my every move. I wish I could
escape—step into someone else’s life, if only for a moment.
Just twelve short months ago everything was different. I was
different. Any other December, I would’ve been home, prepping for the holidays,
shopping online for last-minute deals on things none of us needed. My husband,
Dave, would be staying too late at work, his dinner wrapped in a blanket of
aluminum foil, kept warm on the stove. My teenage daughter, Izzi, would be
upstairs in her room, scrolling noiselessly through her phone, feet kicked up
on the bed behind her.
The house would’ve hummed with the steady softness of
disjointed home life, but instead here I am, lurched to the side of the road,
the air frigid in the tiny cabin of my car, listening to a voice mail I never
thought I’d hear.
I replay the message:
“H-hi, this message is for Dr. Madeline Pine. If you get
this, I’m Matthew Reyes, a private investigator working on behalf of a family.
Listen, I was hoping you could please call me back at this number, I—I’d really
appreciate it. We have a sixteen-year-old female who died on school property.
The police believe it’s an accident, but the mother hired me to be sure. The
girl was found at the bottom of a hill. No witnesses. I thought you might be
able to help—given your expertise. Please call me back. Thanks.”
I repeat his words in my head. The girl was found at the
bottom of a hill—I can picture it, picture her. She’s there, fallen sideways,
her body splashed across the woodland floor. Moss and stones, skin and blood,
leaves and twigs. I don’t know her, but I don’t have to. I already feel as if
she were mine.
The man who left the voice mail, Matthew Reyes, has a voice
both gravelly and weary, and I know what he wants the moment he mentions the
school. Police often believe they can demand anything they want and get it
immediately—even psychological evaluations—but it takes time to gain trust from
strangers, and even more time to tease out the truth. Especially from teenage
girls.
I start weighing my options. I’m not sure I’m capable of
this, of anything. Especially after last year…especially after what just
happened in that too-hot office during this morning’s disastrous therapy
session.
My face flushes at the memory of the woman who’d been
sitting cross-legged in front of me. Her beautiful face. Her pink silk shirt
blurring out of focus. Her condescending tone—as though the therapy sessions
weren’t all for her benefit to begin with.
That’s what I have to remind myself. That’s what I have to
hold on to. They’re for her. Not me. I’m the one who’s fine. I should be taking
comfort in that, taking comfort in the fact that I never have to see her
beautiful face again, never have to be reminded of—
It’s over. I didn’t have a choice before. Now I do. I have
lots of choices. An avalanche of choices. My life before today was preprogrammed
for me. Not anymore. I fixed it.
Tears slip down my cheeks. I bite them back, strangle the
phone in my lap, squeeze it so tight I wonder how it fails to snap in two.
Choices. Possibilities.
My mind whirls as I punch the gas, merge into traffic, race
home. I run inside, slam the door, bolt the lock. Gazing around my
gloom-infested house, I shrivel back as wind blows branches of a nearby tree,
scraping the side of the house like fingernails.
Peering at the bulging paper bag of prescriptions on the kitchen
island, my eyes prick with tears. My glasses fog. I take them off, rub the
lenses clean on my turtleneck.
After so many months, the pills should be working. I should
stop taking them altogether. Just throw them all in the toilet, flush them
down, watch them whirl around the porcelain bowl.
I think of words my daughter, Izzi, said to me: Mom, please
just stop.
Stop.
I don’t know the person I’ve become, too empty, too full,
all at once. I need to change. I want to be different. Every day, I think of
ways I can be. It can still happen. I’m free now. I have choices now,
possibilities. Maybe it’s never too late to change everything. Maybe I just
need to escape.
Besides, wiggle room is all it takes for a snake to get out
of its skin.
The phone rings again. I snuff the urge to hurl it across
the room before glancing at the screen. It’s the same number as before. The
same number as the voice mail. I hold my breath and answer.
“Hello?”
“Hello—is this Dr. Madeline Pine?”
“Um—yes. It is.” My heart thuds. “Who’s this?”
A sigh of relief, deep and heavy, into the phone. “This is
private investigator Matthew Reyes. Thank you so much for answering, Dr. Pine.
I—I know it’s a chaotic time of year and you’re probably busy with family
but…would you be able to make a trip up to Iron Hill?”
“I—I don’t know where that is.”
“It’s about two hours north of Poughkeepsie. Upstate New
York.”
“Right, okay.” Far. Very far. Too far for my ailing car to
make it. I know I should just buy a new one, but I can’t. My husband Dave
always said the color perfectly matched my eyes. Now I can’t even remember the
last time we looked at each other.
“So, are you busy this weekend?” Reyes asks, then pauses. “I
mean, you’re sure you don’t mind ditching your family right before the
holidays?”
“When you put it that way, it sounds horrible.” Awkward
laugh. “But, um, my husband and daughter aren’t home now, anyway—they’ve gone
away to visit my in-laws.”
“You have no idea how grateful I’d be if you could make it,”
he says, sounding hopeful. I don’t know what he looks like, but I can imagine
him smiling. “I mean, I’ve been calling around to different psychologists all
day, and—well, it should only be for a couple of days. You’d definitely be back
by Christmas, the latest.”
I wince, feel a surge of sorrow. I’m too embarrassed to
admit that Dave and Izzi have no intention of spending the holidays with me
this year. It’s what I deserve after what I did.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “please refresh my memory. Have we ever
met? You said you’re a private investigator hired by the victim’s—er, the
deceased’s—family?”
“Yes, I mean, we haven’t met, but I read about the work you
did on the Strum case last year. I believe one of the victims was around the
same age as our current victim. And I pulled up your book online—Dark Side: A
Psychological Portrait of the Criminal Female Mind. You specialize in women.
Just so happens the case is at an all-girls boarding school.”
My stomach clenches. Focus. Deep breath. I shift my gaze to
the calendar hanging in the kitchen. I don’t even know why I bother to keep one
anymore. I have the same schedule now, week in, week out. Before, the month of
December would’ve been filled with holiday office parties, Izzi’s end-of-year
school activities, Dave’s plans for winter break, which I’d always beg him to
change.
I glance up. Friday, December 16. This morning’s therapy
session slashes across my mind again. I see her face. Blank, empty. Her lips
begin to curl around a word. I see myself in the reflection of her eyes. I’m
close. Closer. I swallow hard.
“The, um, the students don’t go home for the holidays?” I
ask, slumping down to the floor.
“Winter break is Saturday, the tenth to New Year’s. A few
students stayed behind.” Reyes pauses. “The students who either couldn’t travel
for various reasons or chose not to go home.”
I lean the back of my head against the wall.
Reyes continues. “The school is asking me to wrap up my
investigation before students and staff return January 2.”
“Okay…”
He senses my discomfort, keeps talking. “Please. Please say
yes. You mentioned you have a daughter. How would you feel if it were her?” he
asks. “If she was found dead, you’d want closure, right? To be sure everything
was done by the book and no stone was left unturned.”
My stomach flips. “Of course I would.”
“So, please. Please say you’ll help.”
I think of my daughter, Izzi, the lengths I’d go to if she
was found at the bottom of a hill. Even if it was an accident, I’d want to know
why. I’d want to know how she got there.
If she was alone. Afraid. Or if someone else was
responsible. I’d want to know. I’d find them, I’d—
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I confess.
I shut my eyes, see her face again, legs crossed, sitting
prim in that too-hot office, the heat blasting, the furniture too big for the
tiny space. I tug at the neck of my sweater, suddenly tight, see my reflection
in her eyes—close, so close.
No. Stop. I suck up a big breath, blow it all out.
“I don’t know if you’re aware, but after that case last
year—” My voice cracks.
“The Strum case?” A note of curiosity in Reyes’s question.
“Yeah. Since then, things have been difficult. I ended up
taking some time off—”
“I—I wasn’t aware. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. It just—it makes cases like this difficult.”
“Oh—”
“But before I say yes or no, can you give me an overview?
What, exactly, I’ll be doing when I get there? I want to be sure I know what
I’m stepping into.”
Reyes lets out a breath. “Yeah—yes, of course,” he says, a
hint of desperation in his voice. “Well, it happened at a private, all-girls
boarding school called Shadow Hunt Hall. They have a very small student body on
a very large campus. It’s densely wooded and incredibly isolated. It’s one of
those ‘back-to-nature, no technology on campus’ sort of places. The girls are
mostly… I guess the best word for it is—troubled?”
“Isn’t that the best kind of girl?”
“Uh, here,” he says, ignoring my attempt at a joke. “I’ll
send you some info.”
I glance at the screen, see he’s texted a link to the
school’s website. I tap it open, swipe down the page. The school is ancient.
Giant and stone, with iron gates and actual turrets, like a possessed
fairy-tale castle. The curriculum looks interesting.
Definitely nontraditional. It’s all music and arts and
dance. I skim the mission statement:
We believe in a holistic, individual approach to learning
and rehabilitation, focusing on a curriculum centered on nature, group trust,
and a healthy mind-body connection.
Code words for no junk food or internet.
Reyes waits patiently on the other end as I peruse the site.
I click on the Tuition & Financial Aid page and flinch. A single term is
more than twice the down payment we put on the house.
“You there? Dr. Pine?”
I lick my lips. “I’m here.”
He pauses. “I’m having trouble getting any of the students
to even talk to me,” he admits. “That’s why I need you.”
I think of Izzi, chewing on her fingernails, avoiding eye
contact when I ask how her day went. Ever since she started high school it’s
been all one-word answers—good, fine—before she’d bound upstairs, not to be
seen again until dinner.
So I can’t imagine how the girls at this boarding school
would react to a male private investigator showing up out of nowhere, prodding them
with questions right after their classmate died. No doubt they’d recoil, want
nothing to do with him.
“Okay… I’ll help you,” I whisper.
Excerpted from The
Night It Ended. Copyright © 2023 by Katie Garner. Published by MIRA, an imprint
of HarperCollins.
Buy Links: (I don’t
receive any compensation for purchased books.)
HarperCollins:
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-night-it-ended-katie-garner?variant=40901604311074
Barnes & Noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-night-it-ended-katie-garner/1142299804
BookShop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-night-it-ended/18847353?ean=9780778334453
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Night-Ended-Novel-Katie-Garner/dp/0778334457
Books-A-Million: https://www.booksamillion.com/p/9780778334453?AID=10747236&PID=7310909
About the Author:
Katie Garner was born in New York and grew up in New Jersey.
She has a degree in Art History from Ramapo College and is certified to teach
high school Art. She hoards paperbacks, coffee mugs, and dog toys and can be
seen holding at least one of those things most of the time.
Katie lives in a New Jersey river town with her husband,
baby boy, and shih-poo where she writes books about women and their dark,
secret selves. The Night It Ended is her debut novel.
Keep in touch on social media:
Author site: https://www.katiegarnerauthor.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kgarnerauthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katiewritesmystery/
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62679690-the-night-it-ended
Comments
Post a Comment