A nasty crime exposes the secrets and obsessions of a small rural
community. Nothing ever happens in Fairhill, Vermont, until the
morning Diana Brewer is found in a hayfield, circled by vultures.
The tight-knit town, where doors are left unlocked and everyone
knows each other, is suddenly gripped by fear and suspicion. As
the community grapples with the shocking event, the once sleepy
town turns into a place of paranoia, where even the simplest
question could be dangerous. Someone in Fairhill is responsible,
and everyone is desperate for answers. The new unputdownable
thriller from the 'queen of the one sit read'.
Chapter One
Early Friday morning, Roy Ressler drives his big tractor down the gravel road that borders his fields, his mind on his daughter’s upcoming wedding. He’s thinking what a beautiful bride Ellen is going to be. It’s nearing the end of October; the air is crisp, trees are alive with colour, and the early morning dew sparkles on the ground. All’s good with the world.
He glances up at the dark figures circling against the bright blue sky ahead of him, to the right, over one of his fields. They hold his attention for a moment, the way they glide, use the air currents. Turkey vultures. There’s more than half a dozen of them. They must have found something. He carries on his way down the road. His dog – a mix of shepherd and black Lab and maybe something else – lopes beside him, keeping clear of the tractor. She stops, sniffs the air.
The birds are massing over one of his fields farther down t he road ahead of him. As he gets closer, he finds himself watching them. He approaches the open gate to the field where the vultures are circling. It must be something big, maybe a deer. They’ll pick the carcass clean; there won’t be anything left. Nature doing its work. But something makes him stop. He turns off the tractor for a moment at the side of the road near the open gate and scans the field. That’s when he notices that some of the birds are already on the ground, three or four of them, hopping and squabbling over something. A carcass of some kind. He can’t see what it is from here, but he catches glimpses of something light coloured.
His dog looks up at him, questioning. Roy starts the tractor again and heads across the open hayfield to take a look. The vultures aren’t flying away yet at his approach; they’re protecting their feast. He knows they won’t attack him since they’re not predators, and they only feed on the dead. He’s curious now, and he keeps driving the tractor toward them, hoping they’ll fly off. They’re big and ugly as sin. Blackish-brown feathers and hairless, reddish faces– they’re made that way because they’re carrion feeders, they stick their faces in dead and rotting flesh. That’s their job – clean-up crew. Not all of nature is beautiful, Roy knows that well enough, but every part of it has a purpose.
The growth in the field obscures what it is they’re perched on. The birds squawk and spread their wings and look even bigger as he rumbles closer; one suddenly flies off with a loud flapping of its wings, but two remain. One stares malevolently at him, face bloodied, but the other is busy feeding, head down, ripping at flesh. The dog sticks closer to the tractor.
When Roy gets within thirty yards of them, the last two take off swiftly with a loud drumming of wings. He still can’t quite see what they’ve been feeding on. He keeps driving closer, the tractor bumping across the field, his body moving familiarly with it. He’s high up on the seat, and now he sees. He turns off the tractor and there’s an abrupt silence. The quiet seems to underscore his shock. It’s not a deer after all. It’s a girl. She’s naked and lying on her back. Her stomach has been ripped open by the birds. Even with her eyes gouged out by the vultures he thinks he recognizes her. He retches, turns his head away.
Roy scrambles in the pocket of his overalls. His hands are shaking, and he almost drops his cell phone as he grabs it. He’s a volunteer firefighter and he’s seen some awful things, but he’s never seen anything like this.
And then he stays there, atop his tractor, guarding her, protecting her from those fucking birds, swearing and yelling and waving his arms at them as they swoop and soar overhead, until help arrives.
“It feels like she’s slamming the lid down on Pandora’s box far too late.”
Paula Acosta hears her alarm go off and gets out of bed. It’s 7:30 a.m. on Friday. Her husband, Martin, has been up before her – he’s an early riser. He teaches at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire, an almost twenty-minute drive. It takes her under five minutes to get to Fairhill High School, where she teaches English.
She swears it gets harder every year. COVID seems to have made everything worse – especially for the ninth graders. The kids’ skills are further behind than ever, their reliance on or addiction to screens and technology even worse. Their social skills seem to be more lacking than before the pandemic, and their attention spans are a fraction of what they once were. Or is it just her? She doesn’t think so – all the teachers see it. She sometimes wonders if she could do something else.
Her daughter, Taylor, is one of those ninth graders. Paula knows it’s hard for kids to attend the same school where their parents teach. She suspects Taylor sometimes finds it mortifying, although she would never admit it. She must hear what the kids say about Paula – about all the teachers – behind their backs. That’s the problem with being in a small community; her daughter doesn’t have the option to go to a different high school. The rural kids are all bussed in to Fairhill High. At least she’s not the principal – he has three kids in the high school, and she knows it’s not easy for them. They act out so they won’t be taken for Goody Two-Shoes, or as getting special treatment. They’re rebels, all three of them, and the girl is the worst. She feels for Principal Kelly, she really does.
She enters the kitchen. Her daughter is seated at the table having a bowl of cereal, head down, scrolling on her phone. Paula’s annoyance at seeing Taylor glued to her phone is always tinged with anxiety. She doesn’t like her daughter spending time on social media. They’ve tried to set limits, but they’ve had to be careful about it. Paula’s done the reading, and she’s seen it with her own eyes – she knows what social media does to girls. How it destroys their self-esteem with impossible comparisons. How it distorts their thinking, their expectations, their priorities. She does a unit on media in her English classes to try to combat it, but it feels like she’s slamming the lid down on Pandora’s box far too late. All the evils of the world are already out there for them to see, to participate in, with the touch of a finger. Even here in their quiet, friendly little town in rural Vermont. It’s one of the reasons some of the kids seem to dislike her – she tells them to get off their devices, to read books, to talk to one another, and they don’t want to hear it. Plus, she’s a hard marker and expects them to actually work. She still has standards.
She leans down and kisses her daughter on top of her smooth brown hair, trying to get a glimpse of her phone screen, but Taylor immediately covers it with her hand. Paula turns away and heads for the coffee, which her husband had made and left warm for her. ‘Did you see Dad off?’ she asks.
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you have anything on after school today?’ Paula tries to sound casual. She doesn’t want to be too nosy – her daughter’s at that sensitive age – but she’s worried that Taylor isn’t fitting in easily this year. Of course, she still has her friends from grade school – they moved to the same high school with her. But it’s a new start for all of them and things change.
Paula has one class of particularly unruly grade nines this year – Taylor isn’t among them, admin gets it – but mostly she’s doing the upper years, preparing them for college. Still, she knows how kids talk.
‘No,’ her daughter mumbles.
‘Maybe you should join a club?’ her mother suggests gently. She doesn’t receive an answer.
Extracted from What Have You Done? by Shari Lapena, out now.
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