"Award winning author Kathleen O’Donnell weaves a gripping psychological thriller. With intriguing twists and turns it will easily captivate the reader’s attention from the beginning. [...] In addition, the characters are drawn with great credibility and conviction. It’s a fast-paced novel that will keep you engaged from the first page to the last. A well-crafted and gripping thriller..." Piaras, Goodreads
The Best Book I've Read This Year! I just finished it and I loved it! It has more twists and turns than a roller coaster. This book would make an amazing movie, but the book will always be better. I can't wait to see what she writes next! – Rena, five-star review on Amazon.
From two-time Book of the Year finalist and Thriller of the Year Award winner Kathleen O’Donnell comes a gripping psychological thriller filled with quirky, unexpected twists.
A girl in serious trouble
Delilah Diamond had it all, the popular cooking show, a dream house, and a great romance with her producer, until the producer’s wife gets wind of it all. Delilah loses her show, her job, and her house. She’s forced to go back to her hometown where everyone has skeletons in their closet—or worse.
A home not like any other
She arrives just in time for the unfortunate death of her high school crush, but senses something's wrong with the story of his demise. Before she realizes it, she's knee-deep in a past that almost crushed her years before, and could very well crush her now, for good.
A mother who keeps sordid secrets
Local law enforcement is a homegrown drunk, and useless, so someone higher up the food chain sends a big city detective who starts sniffing around her classmate's suspicious death and her mother’s past. Delilah’s protective hackles are raised. She knows her mother has shameful secrets, but the more she learns, the more she realizes she doesn’t know the whole story.
A hometown that comes together, even in crime
In small towns, you protect your family and your neighbors come what may, but will Delilah be able to protect her mother without exposing her own sins? The ones she worked so hard to cover up? Will she be able to deter the detective away from the truth?
You can't go home again. Or can you? Should you? How safe is home when you know where the bodies are buried?
Girl Gone Home is ultimately a story about love, family, loyalty and circling the wagons no matter what terrible crime's been committed. It’s quirky, heartfelt, and reminiscent of Dolores Claiborne and the works of Kate Atkinson, Jane Hamilton, and Janet Evanovich.
EXCERPT
“Willy
Wally came to a bad end,” Fran said. “Just like I predicted.”
“Only
you’d gloat over the dead at a funeral.” I’d just walked in, looked at my
watch. My mother irritated me in less than sixty seconds. A record.
“We don’t
do funerals, Delilah. The stiff puts a real damper on the festivities.”
“Right.
Memorials after the fact only.”
“Who even
knows where the nearest funeral home is?” Fran said, unimpeded by the Marlboro
in her mouth, long ash miraculously still intact. “Okay, I know where it is,
but who gives a highfalutin crap? Potluck and booze give whoever croaked a fine
send off—this is a bar for Chrissake. You’re back on the Highway. Better
forget those fancy city ways.”
From my
spot bellied up to the bar I watched the sea of cowboy hats attached to heads
full of rampage and Coors from the tap. They went whole hog at these things.
The only commercial enterprise for as far as the crow flies, Vi’s Place teemed
with quasi-mourners spilling through both front and back doors to the overflow
outside. The middle of nowhere meant good business for anyone with stuff to
sell.
“No idea
why I let you drag me to this thing,” I said. “I’m still knee-deep in unpacked
boxes.”
“Still?
You move in geologic time. It’s the food. That’s why you came. You’ve always
been a sucker for the highway potlucks. Besides, won’t kill you to show some
respect for a guy you went to school with. Dead just like that.” She’d have
snapped her fingers if they weren’t already occupied with the whole
cigarette/ashtray/coffee cup situation.
“Nothing
says respect like eating beanie-weenies while drunks heckle the bereaved,” I
said. “Good times.”
“Good
turnout.”
“I should hope so.
Willy Wally wasn’t even forty.” I stopped when I noticed Fran paid a lot of
attention to my words. “Never mind.”
She flicked her ash
into the ashtray. “Doc Bates won’t show. Accident or no, tough to look your
daughter in the eye after you shoot her husband.”
“Isn’t Doc in jail?”
“You know he’s not.
Investigation’s still on. Doubt it’ll turn up anything criminal. Shit happens
out here.”
“Like there’s gonna
be a real investigation.” I rearranged my butt on the hard stool, scooted it
closer to hear Fran over the hootin’-and-a-hollerin’. “Unbelievable. What a
fiasco. Whole thing’s terrible.”
“What do you care?
You didn’t even want to come.”
“I don’t and I
didn’t. Well, that’s not altogether true. Of course, I care. It’s sad isn’t it?
A young man killed?”
“Culling out the herd.
You see Wally’s widow, Wanda? Jesus, Mary and Joseph try to say that three
times fast.”
“I don’t know.
Probably wouldn’t know her if I did.”
Fran slipped her
cigarette into the slot on the ashtray on the bar. “You’d know her all
right—still two-bagger ugly. Wanda and Willy Wally Watkins. Why on earth poor
Willy Wally didn’t strangle himself with his own umbilical cord, I’ll never
know, with that dumbass name.”
Nothing sordid
happened that Fran didn’t know about in great detail. Whatever the backstory,
and there was always a backstory, she knew it and loved to tell me about
the whole mess. I got zippo this time. Fishy.
“What do you know
about this, Fran? You know something. I can tell.”
“You obviously can’t,
since I know zilch, other than Willy Wally and Doc went hunting like always.
Doc accidentally shot him. Makes sense to me. Willy Wally’s schnoz made him
look like a moose or some such.”
“You’re talking a
mile a minute. Like you do when you’re dancing around the truth.”
“Shit happens around here.”
“I’m aware. Fran,
you—”
“Dee,
aren’t you a sight.” Vi amputated my interrogation with a voice that sounded
like someone dragged a cheese grater over her vocal cords. Her familiar
shortening of my name gave me a warm fuzzy. “Been trying to get over to this
end to say hey, but this crowd, no patience.”
“Not much changes on
the Fifty-Three,” I said.
Including Vi who
still looked like a jack-o-lantern left too long on the porch.
“If it did, I’d know
it. Been behind this bar fifty years if you can believe that. But look at you.
You’re fresh as peach pie. Damn shame your TV show got cancelled,” Vi said.
“Yeah, well thanks.
TV shows come and go.”
“She can still cook
like the dickens though. What with that cooking class.”
“Cordon Bleu is
hardly a cooking class, Fran. I—”
“Now you’re back home
where you belong.” Vi wiped down the bar with a snake-tattooed hand, pulled a
frothy topped beer. “Where in Jesus’s name are those good-for-nothin’ bums I
hired to help me out today? Goddamn-lazy-bastard-shit-for-brains . . . ” She
carried the mug to the other end, insults trailing.
“Is she wearing the
necklace I gave you for your birthday?” I said.
Fran brushed crumbs
off the front of her “Smooth Move Ex-Lax” t-shirt.
“Oh, that little
bauble? Well, yes. Vi went on and on about how much she wanted it. I didn’t—”
“Do you know how much
that little bauble cost?”
Fran gave zero fucks
about the cost.
“Never mind.” I put a
sock in it.
“Lord a mercy,
Delilah.” Margene Cox made a beeline, heaped plate in hand. “I liked to fell
out when I heard you’d come home. Wondered when we’d finally lay eyes on you.”
“Only been back a
couple weeks,” I said. “Still settling in.”
Margene draped the
silk sweater around her shoulders that I’d bought Fran last Christmas.
“Nice sweater,” I
said.
The sharp stab of
Fran’s elbow to my ribs shut my mouth.
“Fran give it to me.
She’s generous as always. Only fits if I don’t wear it. So hot out here the
devil up and left, but still cools down like the dickens at night.” Margene
stuffed a whole jalapeno popper into her mouth. I felt mildly surprised most of
her teeth looked intact. “You out at the old Winston pig farm?”
“Mm hmm. No pigs
anymore.”
“You missed Jefferson
Davis.” Margene licked her greasy fingers. “Dadgum it. He’s dyin’ to bend your
ear about that farm.”
“My loss.”
“You know Willy Wally
passing the way he did near tore my heart in two.” Margene wiped a nonexistent
tear. “You dated him didn’t you, Dee?”
“Mercy no,” Fran
said.
“Well, I swanee,”
Margene said. “Dee nursed a crush on Willy Wally ya’ll could see from space
back in the day.”
“Emily dated Willy
Wally,” Fran said.
For once I didn’t
mind Fran’s poking in.
“Oh, right. Emily.
Land’s sake.” Margene pushed her plastic fork through the turkey tetrazzini on
her paper plate.
“Where’s Arthur?” I
looked around for Margene’s husband.
“Oh, honey, had his
memorial right here a couple years back.”
“Lots of memorials
the last few years,” Fran said. “I told you about Arthur’s.”
She probably did but
I hadn’t been listening.
“Not the same without
Blanche and Edith, is it?” Margene squeezed in closer, set her plate on the
bar. “Blanche dyin’ of the cirrhosis after Earl died in that car wreck, drunk.
Too many memories. And Edith with the Alzheimer’s over to her sister’s in Portland.”
Before she could run
on any more, Willy Wally’s father hushed the gathered to thank everyone for
coming. I wandered away from my lunch, Fran, and Margene’s census update. A
drunk blocking the exit got a free swat from me. Heat plus the pissy sour
outhouse smells slapped me hard. Came as no revelation Vi still resisted indoor
plumbing.
“You look just like
you do on TV,” a man said two seconds after I got out.
“Huh?”
The sun glittering
off the rows of cars lined up on both sides of the highway made me squinty. I
got closer. Strange man held out a too elegant hand, flashed a badge with the
other.
“I’m Billy Dale,” he
said. “You’re Delilah Diamond from Fork in the Road. Am I right?”
“Billy Dale what?”
Name like that
usually preceded a Jim Bob or Buck Dee.
“Just Billy Dale.”
“You’re not from
around here then,” I said.
“Nope.” He withdrew
his unshaken hand.
Billy Dale’s
kick-my-ass-why-don’t-you ensemble cheered me somewhat. His slicked-backed
hair, GQ chin stubble, casual Friday Brooks Brothers khakis and pink
polo made me want to open the bar door, throw him in to see how he fared. The
small crowd milling around outside to avoid the teary farewells inside
dispersed as if they smelled an unfamiliar no good cop. Nothing like stranger
danger to speed folks along their way. Billy Dale peered over the top of his
sunglasses, looked past me at the open vista, dirt, and sagebrush.
“Jesus,” he said.
“You could seriously get off the grid out here.”
“What do you want?”
“Just making
inquiries about the shooting incident.”
“At a memorial? Willy
Wally’s barely cold.”
“When I drove up
didn’t realize this, whatever this is, was going on.” He gestured toward the
food covered picnic tables.
I kicked up a puff of
dirt with the toe of my Converse, shifted my weight from one foot to the other.
Billy Dale studied the fly-infested open jar of mayo on a nearby table,
waiting, silent, doing that let-them-talk-to-see-what-spills cop thing. He
flicked an imaginary something off his shirtsleeve. His blank face and open-too-wide
eyes gave him a real dimwitted appearance—the kind of guy who moved his lips
when he read.
“Where’s Rusty?” I
said. “He’s been the law out here forever.”
“On a bender
probably.”
“No doubt.”
“Mind if I do some
asking now?” he said.
I let that hang like
a corpse from a noose.
“You know,” I finally
said after the silence got too awkward even for me. “I just came back here.
Moved away eons ago.”
“So I heard.” Billy
Dale leaned against a clean sedan that must’ve been his. “Some say they’re surprised
to see you back.”
“None more than me.”
“You came back for
the—this—potluck thingy?”
“No. Coincidence.”
“Coincidences give me
cramps,” Billy Dale said serious as all get out.
Like I cared about
his bowels.
“Willy Wally your old
high school boyfriend?” He went on.
“Christ, no. He dated
my friend. Emily. She—”
“You all right?”
Billy Dale said.
I’d swayed to one
side. The beer I’d chased lunch with gurgled its way up the back of my throat.
I beat it back, steadied myself.
“I’m fine. This heat,
outhouse smell, I’m not used to it anymore.” I pulled away from the hand he’d
gripped my arm with, snooty-like. He probably did it to help, but too bad so
sad.
“Right. Well,
Jefferson Davis told me you—”
“Oh you’re already on
a first name basis? Jefferson Davis and I haven’t so much as cast shadows near
each other in twenty years.” Droplets popped up above my top lip.
“Right. Well,
speaking of names. You call your mother by her first name?”
“Always have,” I said
halfway lying. “Fran is her name.”
I’d replaced Mom with
Fran when we moved to the highway, when she went full wacko, to distance
myself from her in the only way I could then, to get under her skin. Joke was
on me since her skin proved unyielding, but it stuck.
“Fran knows Doctor
Bates well?” Billy Dale said.
“Everybody here knows
everyone else well.”
“Willy Wally too?”
“Yes, but they didn’t
exactly run in the same circles since Fran’s old enough to be his mother.”
We stared each other
down. I wondered if he could see me sweat.
He blinked first.
“Can you think of any reason Fran would’ve called Willy Wally the day before he
got shot and the day of?”
“Who knows? It is a
small town,” I said. “Why don’t you ask Fran?”
“Did. Said she
doesn’t recall.”
“She’s no spring
chicken. Memory’s going.” I twirled one finger near my ear.
“Fran called Willy
Wally four times the day before he died, twice the next.”
“She’s a talker,” I
said.
There it was.
Fran did know more
than she’d admitted. I crossed my arms over my chest, shoved both hands under my
dripping armpits, worked hard to keep my face from going funky.
“Not to mention six
calls to Doctor Bates.” He’d taken out a notepad, which I guess meant business.
“I’m sure for
harmless reasons.”
I turned on my heel.
Eat my dust sucker.
Billy Dale hollered
at my back, “I’m sure I’ll find out.”
About the author:
Kathleen O’Donnell is a wife, mom, grandmother and a recovering blogger. She currently lives in Nevada with her husband. She is a two time Book of the Year finalist for her debut novel The Last Day for Rob Rhino. You can find short stories and blog posts on her website.
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