Incident, The - Hardcover

Neiderman, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0727886096 ISBN 13: 9780727886095

Publisher: Severn House, 2016

Synopsis

A young woman returns to her hometown to confront her troubled past in this absorbing novel of romantic suspense

Six years after ‘the incident’ that no one will talk about, Victoria Myers returns to her small hometown in the Catskill Mountains. After years in therapy, she is determined to start living life to the full once again – particularly when she starts dating handsome Bart Stonefield, son of a wealthy local businessman.

But the past has not yet been laid to rest. No one has ever been brought to justice for the crime committed against the teenage Victoria – and at least one person within the community is concealing the truth about what happened that night. Not everyone is happy about Victoria and Brad’s developing relationship – and what is it that Brad is keeping from Victoria? Is she still in danger?

About this title

About the Author

Andrew Neiderman is the bestselling author of numerous thrillers, including The Devil’s Advocate, which was made into a major motion picture by Warner Bros. He lives in Palm Springs, California. Since the death of V C Andrews, Andrew Neiderman has been the official ghost writer for new V.C. Andrews novels which have enjoyed bestselling success.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Incident

By Andrew Neiderman

Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 2016 Andrew Neiderman
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7278-8609-5

CHAPTER 1

It was an unusually warm summer that year of the Incident. New Yorkers trying to escape the city heat were not happy about the temperatures invading the ordinarily cooler mountains. Usually, everyone dressed a little warmer at night than they did during the daytime, but the high eighties and low nineties hung in until the wee morning hours. It seemed as if the air had amnesia when it came to those characteristic cool breezes.

Victoria was just fifteen then. She seemed to have matured into a young woman overnight. Her first period had come much later than it had for most of her girlfriends, and for a while her breasts appeared to have frozen in their development. It weighed on her mind so much that many times she was tempted to ask her mother whether or not she needed to see a doctor. Her mother didn't pick up on any of her hints, though, except to say, 'Don't be in a rush to get older. It's not what it's cracked up to be.'

An essential part of innocence was an unawareness of how much and how often you were attracting male interest. It was almost as if she woke up one day, noticed the looks and knew she had crossed a line. At first, it seemed to Victoria that she was drawing the eyes and smiles of men and not the eyes of the boys at school. Perhaps they were too used to seeing her in that in-between state, but that soon began to change. Her mother, despite her apparent disinterest in Victoria's maturing, practically leaped at her one day and said she wanted take her shopping for a more appropriate bra and new jeans, blouses and skirts. She was growing out of everything.

As it was for most of her girlfriends, the filling out of her figure felt like an accomplishment. Her self-confidence was racing to catch up. She was still a little unsure of herself, unsure of how far she should go to highlight her new feminine attributes. Millie Brockton, a girl in her class, suffered no such hesitation. She wore blouses and skirts that were obviously too tight. Her excuse was she had to wear hand-me-downs from her older sister, but anyone could see how much she enjoyed toying with the boys by leaning back in her chair and straining the buttons. She had the breasts boys called bumpers.

On the other hand, Victoria's mother pounced whenever she caught so much as one button on her blouse undone, especially the one that enabled the revelation of the top of her deepening cleavage.

'Don't be oblivious, Victoria,' she would say without elaborating. So much of what her mother told her those days was between the lines. 'Figure it out yourself,' she'd reply if Victoria questioned something. 'Don't make me say it.'

Did all mothers hold their daughters to such a high standard?

There were definite class distinctions in Sandburg and the other small villages in the township and county. Perhaps it was because people in small towns knew so much about each other – knew who had money or who had some black sheep relative, or knew who was cheating on her husband or his wife. People in the late fifties and early sixties who had achieved college diplomas and professional status had an air of superiority about them. Her father wasn't as obvious about it as her mother, who had the best posture of any woman Victoria knew. She had told her that Grandmother Annie had her parade about with a book on her head for hours when she was barely five.

She didn't have Victoria walk about with a book on her head, but she was always reminding her not to slouch. Early on, her mother set down a higher level of achievement for her. It was not uncommon for her to hear her mother say, 'We don't do that,' when remarking about something someone else her age had done or their parents permitted. There was a level of expectation that Victoria resented. Children of teachers and school administrators didn't break rules or get sent to the principal for discipline. And daughters? Especially daughters could never be promiscuous. The level of expectation was stifling.

Although she was fifteen and could work, she didn't have a summer job that year. Her mother wouldn't let her work in one of the resort hotels. The parties the busboys and waiters and waitresses had in those were notorious. There was little or no supervision of the younger ones. Some even moved into the helps' quarters and were already like college age kids off on their own, smoking, drinking and having sex. She laughed when she first heard it put that way – having sex – as if it was something you could order in a restaurant. 'Are you having the shrimp special or are you having sex?'

Her mother taught a summer semester at the college, and her father's job was not the same as a school teacher's. He was working most of the summer, too. When she was invited, Victoria could go over to Mindy Fein's house to swim. Mindy's parents had put in a pool two years ago. Her father owned the drugstore in town. Most of the time, Mindy worked there, even before she was of legal age, but occasionally she had weekdays and weekend days off and there was a pool party. They were one of the only families she knew who had a live-in maid, a black woman who, besides having to clean and cook, was left to supervise. She seemed like part of their family.

Victoria's main activity during the summer was to care for the house, clean and polish furniture, do laundry and, if she had a mind to, cut the grass now that she was old enough to ride the mower. When she did that, mostly out of boredom, she wore her two-piece and often heard car horns when boys drove by. She pretended to be deaf, but smiled to herself and commanded herself not to slouch.

Even back then, the question haunted her. Was she beautiful or just sexy now? Could you be one without the other?

On Friday and Saturday nights, the teenagers in Sandburg gathered unofficially in front of George's soda fountain store, a small confectionary store where toys and cigarettes, pipe tobacco and cigars were sold as well. The volume on the jukebox was turned up so that the music spilled out of the opened doorway. To older people, it was as if a dam had been breached. They quickened their pace to walk by, shaking their heads with disapproval as if similar memories of their own youth had been stolen. Sometimes kids would literally dance in the street, annoying passing drivers whose horns blared, only encouraging them more. Those teenagers who had their driver's licenses and cars would go from village to village, looking for action, but always returned before the night ended, just in case they missed something.

Teenagers from New York whose parents had rented bungalows nearby mingled with the locals. Occasionally, the firehouse, where there was a big room for community events, was opened for a Saturday-night dance. It broke reasonably early and the kids would pour out still high on excitement to hang in front of George's and continue this mating process that generated summer romances, peppered with rides in convertibles, necking and petting under bridges or on lightly traveled side roads, going to the drive-ins, for pizza, or night swimming in the nearby Sandburg Lake – and all of it always with a track of rock and roll to stamp a memory over a kiss or a vow of love.

Will you still love me tomorrow?

Virginity was in far more danger during the summer. The boys of summer with soft large dice hanging off their car's rearview mirrors, swooped in like birds picking off baby turtles that struggled over beaches to reach the safety of the sea. They homed in with their eyes and smiles full of challenges and daring. You started to smoke, if you didn't already. You started to drink alcohol seriously, and you recognized the sound of a condom being unwrapped. You even knew the scent.

Victoria intended only to skirt the edges of this world. She thought of herself as an interested observer, not yet ready to become part of anything. After all, she had just gotten her wings. She left for the village that Friday night intending to meet up with Jena and Mindy. There was talk of a party at Sandburg Lake that particular evening. Her parents would never approve of her going, but she was intrigued by the idea of doing something forbidden. Toby Weintraub, a senior, had her driver's license and her mother's car. She was closest to Mindy and said she would take the three of them, but only bring them back to the village afterward.

'I'm not going to be anyone's taxi home.'

Nevertheless, it seemed perfect.

Victoria's parents were going to dinner just down the road at the Levys' that night. They left with the usual warning about her eleven o'clock curfew. She was, in their minds and hers, one year away from a midnight curfew. One year and she'd become another Cinderella. Her mother didn't notice that she was wearing her bathing suit under her school T-shirt and bright madras plaid Bermuda shorts. She thought she would say something about her wearing shorts at night, but only her father made a comment, telling her that, contrary to popular belief, Bermuda shorts did not originate in Bermuda. 'They were created by the Brits servin' in tropical climates,' he explained.

'Trivia to die for,' her mother said with a histrionic sweep of her right hand and then told him to move along or they'd be rudely late for the Levys' dinner. Was there any other kind of late?

'Lock up,' her mother called back.

Victoria went to check on her hair and add some makeup her mother would have disapproved of.

She set out for the village full of anticipation. Despite everything, even years later, she could vividly recall the tingling all over her body as she hurried to the village that night. There was no doubt that what made it more exciting was the forbidden nature of what she was doing – going to a lake party at night, where surely there would be alcoholic drinks and all sorts of wild activity. There would be boys she didn't know, and the boys she did know would be very surprised to see her there. Would one or more of her girlfriends drift off with someone? Would she dare?

She practically ran all the way into the village. At the corner of Wildwood and Main Street, she cut through the path worn down through the bushes and saplings behind the Millers' house. It wound around to the right and came out in the alley between Kayfield's Bar and Grill and Trustman's vegetable market, enabling her to reach the action in the center of the village at least ten minutes sooner. It was already quite busy. All the stores were still open. They had these ten weeks of summer during which to make their year's income. Like most resort communities, the season was live or die. Putting in twelve or more hours of work was the norm.

But there was also that thunderous excitement in the air created by a weaving of the music, the laughter and the sounds of cars, their engines being revved up, their drivers and passengers taunting each other and girls on the sidewalk. It was as if all these teenagers had broken free, as if their childhoods were a form of enslavement of the senses. Unchained, they would rock the earth itself.

She had no way to explain why or how the normally sleepy little village took on the look of a Hollywood movie set. There were dogs sleeping on the sidewalk, their eyes half open as if they were just as curious about the changes in the hamlet. Cats peered out from under stairways, curious but afraid. Residents looked out their windows, some amused, some annoyed. The elderly men and women who were practically fixtures sat in front of Weintraub's department store reliving their own youth, just the way they did most any chance they had. There were no balloons, no spotlights and no extra decorations. It was her hometown, miraculously transformed into a place full of promise and excitement. Normally, it was the subject of jokes, a one-horse town where you could die on the street and not even be noticed by the undertaker.

Jena and Mindy were in front of George's, Mindy hiding a cigarette behind her, watching for anyone who knew her parents and then taking a puff, blowing the smoke with her back to the street. At the lake, no one would have to hide anything. They could wear the darkness as masks and lose their names in the shadows.

'Wearing your bathing suit?' Jena asked as soon as she saw her.

'Yes. What about you?' If it was difficult to see that she was wearing hers, it was impossible to know if Jena was wearing one. She looked as if she had thrown on her grandmother's house dress, something she would wear to wash floors or vacuum.

'Yes. I forgot to bring a towel, though. You don't have one either, Victoria.'

'We won't need a towel,' Mindy said. 'Jesus, Jena. This isn't physical education class.'

'Maybe Toby will have one,' Jena offered weakly. Mindy shook her head.

'If she does, it will be just for herself. Toby's not going to be here until eight thirty,' Mindy told her. 'No one's going to the lake before it starts getting dark anyway, so don't get your balls in an uproar.'

'What balls?'

'Victoria!'

'She's right. Relax, Jena,' Victoria said, trying to sound seasoned. 'We'll have fun.'

'I've only been there in the daytime,' Jena confessed, 'and never with a boy – only with my parents.'

Jena had a terrible habit of telling the truth, Victoria thought, especially in front of boys. She exchanged a look with Mindy, who rolled her eyes. On more than one occasion, sometimes not so subtly, Mindy told her the only reason she invited Jena to anything was because she was Victoria's friend.

Jena wasn't ugly, but she had one of those bodies that looked as if it belonged on a woman much older because of her wide hips and already sagging breasts. She was always dowdy and always wore what Victoria called curtain clothes, because they just hung loosely over her matronly figure.

She never did much with her dull brown hair either and, except for some lipstick, was afraid to put on makeup – not because her mother would be upset, but because she had no self-confidence. She clung to Victoria's friendship like someone clinging to a life preserver in the rough sea of adolescence. Blind leading the blind, Victoria often thought.

The three girls passed the time talking to other kids they knew. Victoria and Mindy were approached by some of the city boys who offered to take them to the lake, but they shrugged off the invitations, teasing with promises to meet up later. Toby arrived and the four of them set out with expectations for a night to remember. As if to emphasize that, Toby revealed a pint of rum she had taken from her home.

'Helps build courage,' she remarked and passed it to Mindy first who then gave it to Victoria. She drank less than a thimbleful and gave it to Jena who surprised them all with her long swig. Victoria remembered wondering if she wasn't a secret boozer after all and maybe that was why she couldn't lose weight.

Toby, on the other hand, was a tall, lean girl with one of those ironing board figures that suggested she'd been cursed at birth. Her brother Herbie was a stout fifteen-year-old in their class and often in trouble. Lately, he had flirted with Victoria, but she didn't even return a look. She knew her mother would never approve of her hanging out with Toby, much less her brother. Her father worked as a gas delivery truck driver and had a reputation for a wild temper when he got drunk, which seemed to be a frequent occurrence of late.

The whole night was fraught with forbidden danger. Every moment she seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the pool of jeopardy. Yet it was exactly that danger that made it attractive.

By the time they arrived at the lake, there were a few dozen kids and at least a half-dozen bonfires. The sun had just gone down fully behind the mountain and the veil of protection the darkness cast seemed to smother reluctance. The city boys they had met in the village spotted them quickly and invited them to their bonfire, where they passed around more whiskey and cigarettes. All but Jena went into the lake, the boys surrounding them, splashing them, constantly trying to embrace them.

Mindy was the first to couple up. Two boys were courting Victoria. She entertained the idea of going off with the taller boy called Spike. He said he was a senior and lived in the Bronx. She didn't have to choose in the end. He practically elbowed his friend out of the way and she let him kiss her while they were still in the water, waist deep. She remembered feeling a little dizzy. She had sipped more alcohol than she had ever had before. When they stepped out of the water and made their way back to their campfire, Jena, who had drunk too much, was sprawled out and practically asleep. She hadn't even taken off her curtain clothes.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Incident by Andrew Neiderman. Copyright © 2016 Andrew Neiderman. Excerpted by permission of Severn House Publishers Limited.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Severn House
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0727886096
• ISBN 13: 9780727886095
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224