Mother Dear Read online

  International Praise for the Author

  “This tense psychological thriller from Holland’s answer to Nicci French utilises a classic trouble-in-paradise set-up . . . What makes it so effective is the broader picture Maier paints of dislocated dreamers out of their depth, obliged to cede control over their lives.”

  —The Guardian

  “Maier sketches characters that go beyond the standard thriller stereotypes.”

  —Barnes & Noble Review

  “Maier manages to lead us away from the path we thought we were following and constructs an intriguing morality tale that is a bestseller across Europe.”

  —Daily Mail

  “A sly, unusual thriller.”

  —Felony & Mayhem Press

  “Excellent writing.”

  —Literary Review

  “Terrific.”

  —Sunday Times

  “Excellent little thriller. If you like your crime fiction suspenseful, erotically romantic, tense and pacy, this is definitely a book for you.”

  —Euro Crime

  “Nova Lee Maier is a master of carefully devised plots, and she deserves an award for the final pages alone. But cleverest of all is the way she depicts her characters.”

  —Knack

  “Mother Dear is one of Maier’s best books. Smoothly written and brilliantly plotted.”

  —Vn Thrillergids

  “Nova Lee Maier clearly belongs to the writing elite in our country.”

  —Algemeen Dagblad

  “If you can keep your reviewer’s adrenaline pumping deep into the night, that is craftsmanship.”

  —de Volkskrant

  ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

  Rendezvous

  Close-Up

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2015 by Esther Verhoef

  Translation copyright © 2019 by Jozef van der Voort

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as Lieve mama by Uitgeverij Prometheus in The Netherlands in 2015. Translated from Dutch by Jozef van der Voort. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2019.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542042796

  ISBN-10: 1542042798

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  Contents

  Mother Dear

  Three Weeks Earlier

  Friday

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  Saturday

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Sunday

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  Monday

  Mother Dear

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  Tuesday

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Wednesday

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  Thursday

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  Mother Dear

  Friday

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  Saturday

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  Sunday

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  Monday

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  The fall sun . . .

  “Helen? It’s Ria . . .

  Mother Dear

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  Mother Dear,

  Every morning when I wake up, I savor the scent of the sheets, the fall sunshine streaming through the skylight, and the comforting sound of birdsong. I hear thumps and thuds in the hall and the bathroom, and the children bickering as they get ready for school. I stretch out, relish the sensation—and then the crushing darkness falls once again. A voice in my head whispers, You can’t feel good—you’ve done a terrible thing.

  I often manage to convince myself it’s just a small problem. Something that feels awful for a while but surely won’t last. I’m getting good at it; you might even say I’m becoming an expert. More and more often, I manage to persuade myself that these horrendous memories have nothing to do with me, as if I’d witnessed a car crash or a robbery. Something life changing and harrowing—but for somebody else.

  Not for me.

  I like that last thought best of all.

  And so, everything goes on like it always has: chores, school, work. But those dark and dreadful memories
are anchored in my soul, unseen by the outside world.

  Three Weeks Earlier

  Friday

  1

  Brian grabbed Ralf’s computer and pulled it onto his lap, not noticing his friend’s weak protests—or simply ignoring them.

  Ralf was used to Brian’s pushing him around. And anyway, it was pointless trying to stand up to him when he was using. Ralf took a sip of his Red Bull, laid his head against the worn sofa cushions, and looked up at the ceiling of the shed. The cobwebs had woven themselves like lace around the fluorescent light, and the fiberboard ceiling tiles resembled a tangle of worms. He squeezed his eyes shut. His head was throbbing. Not just because last night had been a long one, but mainly due to his mother’s nagging. She’d called him no fewer than thirty times and sent countless messages. Like some kind of stalker. He hadn’t seen the messages until this morning—his phone had been off.

  He’d stumbled home around six o’clock to find his mother blocking the way to his nice warm bed. She’d been sitting in the kitchen, her eyes hollow and bloodshot, a half-empty bottle of wine on the table. She’d grounded him—grounded! Like he was still a baby.

  He was eighteen, for Christ’s sake.

  He had a car.

  What gave her the right?

  He had to move out, and soon. Maybe rent a place with friends somewhere in Rotterdam or The Hague. If only he had the money.

  His mother had yelled and yelled, barely pausing to breathe. His father had appeared when he heard the noise but hadn’t gotten involved. He never did. “Your mother knows you better than anyone,” he’d said, before heading off to work.

  But she didn’t know anything about his life. He’d snuck out a thousand times before to drive to The Hague or Antwerp with Brian or other friends. They’d done things she’d only ever seen on the TV shows she always sat gawking at like a zombie. No, she didn’t have a clue. But she still thought she knew everything about everything.

  And she loathed Brian.

  “Why can’t he make friends with people his own age?” she would say. Or, “I don’t like his attitude.”

  Ralf would shrug. She didn’t have to hang out with him, did she?

  Some of his friends had also warned him about Brian. They were just scared of him.

  Too bad for them. Whether they liked it or not, Brian was his friend. He was OK. Maybe not for everyone, but he was right for Ralf.

  A friend to everybody is a friend to nobody.

  2

  “Ugh, typical.” Helen felt the first drops as she pushed her bike out of the garage. She turned up her collar, lowered her head, and cycled past the barriers and onto the main road. It had been dry and sunny all day, but as soon as she finished work, the heavens had opened. Cursing under her breath, she veered around a pedestrian who was opening an umbrella in the middle of the bike path. The smell of wet asphalt and damp earth filled her nostrils, and her thoughts wandered to the tattoo on her forearm she’d gotten a few months ago. It was very subtle. From a distance, it looked like a gray stripe, but when viewed up close, it read “Count Your Blessings.”

  Worse things could happen to a person than a little rain. She saw the proof of that firsthand every day. The anxiousness that had filled her since she became a mother was only amplified by the struggles that so often played out in front of her. Patients would get an injection, close their eyes, and disappear—and where they went, nobody knew. All that was left was a limp, helpless body that the sickness had to be cut out of. But sometimes the sickness couldn’t be excised—and very occasionally, the blood pressure would drop, the heart would stop beating, and no amount of effort could bring the patient back from wherever they had gone.

  Death didn’t discriminate. Not by age, not by gender or race. Whether you were beautiful or ugly, fat or thin, it made no difference. Death took what it wanted, at random.

  That was why she still always felt a wave of relief when her daughters and her son got home safely from school or from a party. There was no sound more reassuring than the thud of their heavy wooden gate.

  Helen hummed along to a Beatles track on her iPod. She wasn’t a Beatles fan except for this song, because her mother used to sing it to cheer her up. The rain might be falling now, but George Harrison’s warm tenor assured her that the sun was coming.

  She breathed deeply, drinking in the damp air. The tires on her Batavus hissed along the path.

  In the distance, she could already see the edge of the forest, the trees and shrubs lining the old railroad embankment. Nearly home.

  3

  Brian entered an address on Google Maps and zoomed in on the aerial photo with rapid, impatient movements. The image froze above a detached house on the outer edge of a well-to-do suburb. This house had the biggest yard of all, plus a light-blue rectangle lined with deck chairs.

  “Nice,” whispered Ralf.

  “Should I tell you a secret?” Brian leaned in closer. His small brown eyes glittered. Brian’s left eye was slightly smaller than his right, giving him a permanently angry, defiant look. “Did you know these people keep cash in their house? A lot of cash?”

  Ralf didn’t stir. He tried to keep his expression neutral. They’d talked about it so often. A robbery. Not a shop or an office, where there would be cameras everywhere and maybe even a gun behind the counter, but somebody’s house. That was where the easy money was, ripe for the taking in the form of watches, gold, diamonds, and cash—provided you knew where to look.

  “How do you know?” Ralf tried to swallow, but there was a lump in his throat.

  “I’ve got eyes and ears.” Brian looked back at the screen. He zoomed the aerial photo out until you could see that the house stood on a dead-end road, partly hemmed in by trees and shrubs. “Perfect,” he whispered.

  4

  Wildenbergh was nearly one hundred years old by the time an entire neighborhood sprang up around it during the early nineties. That was why their backyard was so much bigger than those of the other houses. She and Werner had neighbors on only one side: a childless couple—both architects—with whom they didn’t have much contact. Woodland, shrubs, and ditches surrounded the yard on the other two sides. Behind that lay an embankment overgrown with bushes and poplars, on top of which there had once been a railroad line. The cart track that ran along it now was rarely used. Total privacy. Nothing but greenery and freedom. Living in a place like this felt like a permanent vacation.

  Helen had known about the former farmhouse for a long time. She had biked past it often enough back when the nearby towns and villages hadn’t yet swelled into one big sprawl. Even as a child, she had found the house beautiful and imposing, with its big, tall windows and grand front door, and that love had never left her. Werner had been easy to convince when it came up for sale seven years ago. Thom and Sara were in third and fourth grade back then, and Emma was still in first; they had grown up in the house that their mother used to daydream about as a child.

  Helen biked under a dark and dense thicket of treetops—oaks, poplars, and birches that had stood for as long as she could remember. After passing the embankment, she left the paved road and joined a narrow, sandy path that led downhill through shrubs and parkland. Many local bikers used this track instead of the main road. It led onto a dead-end street; on the left were full-grown hazels and hawthorns, and opposite them, two large houses. One was the sleek white villa belonging to Otto and Frank, and the other was Wildenbergh, the name immortalized in a mosaic on the façade.

  Helen wheeled her bike up the driveway and pushed open the tall wooden gate between the house and the garage.

  She parked her bike by the deck. Thom’s and Emma’s were already there, Emma’s schoolbag hanging from the rack by her handlebars. Helen sighed as she picked it up and walked through the back door into the house.

  Thom hadn’t done much better with his bag—it was lying on the floor in the utility room. A little farther on lay Emma’s coat, three and a half pairs of shoes, an energy drink bottle, and a lunch
box. The TV in the kitchen was playing Comedy Central, interspersed with the tinny sound of music from a smartphone.

  Helen raised her voice. “Hello? Are you going to clean up your things?”

  No response.

  She hung up her coat and entered the kitchen. “It’s not very nice to come home and find it looking like this, guys.” She made a show of placing Emma’s schoolbag on the dining table. “This was still on your bike.”

  Emma glanced up from her laptop. She was wearing black eyeliner. “Did anybody die at the hospital today?”

  “I expect so, but not in my department.”

  Emma looked back at her screen. She had begun using makeup when she started junior high, but she wasn’t very proficient. There were clumps of mascara on her eyelashes and dark smudges under her eyes.

  Helen wanted to mention it but bit her tongue in time. Living in a house full of teenagers was like walking through a minefield. “Where’s Thom?”

  Emma shrugged.

  “Don’t you have any homework?”

  “Just an exam on Monday.” Emma divided her attention between her laptop and her cell phone. Her thumb glided across the cracked screen.

  Thom walked into the kitchen. “Hey, Mom,” he said, and wrapped his arms around her.

  Helen kissed the top of his head and tousled his soft, reddish curls. Her friends’ sons had all grown distant overnight, but Thom had remained his old cuddly self, even though he was already fifteen and shaving twice a week.

  “Sara stole my charger,” said Thom.

  “Borrowed,” Helen corrected him.

  Thom let her go. “If I don’t ask for it, I won’t get it back. That’s called stealing. And now she’s probably at Jackie’s place again, right?”

  Helen nodded. Her elder daughter—who had turned seventeen this summer—had biked straight to her best friend’s after school and would spend the night there. Helen assumed she wouldn’t see Sara again until Sunday evening; the girl treated Wildenbergh like some kind of all-inclusive resort. She was planning to study in Leiden next year, and then she’d come back only on weekends to have her laundry done. Helen didn’t want to think about it too much.

  “Mom, I want a tattoo as well,” came a voice from behind the laptop.

  Helen looked up in surprise.

  Emma gestured over the right-hand side of her body. “Around here, a branch with pink and red flowers.”

  “That sounds great.”

  Emma’s face veered between disbelief and joy. “Oh, Mom, really?”

  “Sure, why not? Maybe you could get a snake on your neck too—it’d be so cool, all the way up to here . . .” She drew a line with her index finger from her cleavage to behind her ear.