Read an extract from Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan.
After a messy divorce Olivia finds herself back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, taking over her father's beekeeping business.
Meanwhile, Ava is also in search of a fresh start, moving to Adams with her daughter Lily, who is in her final year of high school.
Olivia's son Asher falls for the new girl at school, and Lily can't help loving him in return. With Ash she feels happy for the first time, yet she wonders if she can trust him completely.
Then one day Olivia receives a phone call. Lily is dead and Ash is being questioned by the police. Olivia is adamant that her son is innocent, but she also recognises the flashes of his father's dangerous temper in him . . .
In this extract from Mad Honey we meet Olivia.
OLIVIA
The day of
The first time it happened, it was over a password.
I had only just signed up for Facebook, mostly so that I could see pictures of my brother, Jordan, and his wife, Selena. Braden and I were living in a brownstone on Mass Ave while he did his Mass General fellowship in cardiac surgery. Most of our furniture had come from yard sales in the suburbs that we would drive to on weekends. One of our best finds came from an old lady who was moving to an assisted living community. She was selling an antique rolltop desk with claw- feet (I said it was a gryphon; Braden said eagle). It was clearly an antique, but someone had stripped it of its original finish, so it wasn’t worth much, and more to the point, we could afford it. It wasn’t until we got it home that we realized it had a secret compartment— a narrow little sliver between the wooden drawers that was intended to look decorative, but pulled loose to reveal a spot where documents and papers could be hidden. I was delighted, naturally, hoping for the combination to an old safe full of gold bullion or a torrid love letter, but the only thing we found inside was a paper clip. I had pretty much forgotten about its existence when I had to choose a password for Facebook, and find a place to store it for when I inevitably forgot what I’d picked. What better place than in the secret compartment?
We had initially bought the antique desk so that Braden could study at it, but when we realized that his laptop was too deep for the space, it became decorative, tucked in an empty space at the bottom of the stairs. We kept our car keys there, and my purse, and an occasional plant I hadn’t yet murdered. Which is why I was so surprised to find Braden sitting in front of it one evening, fiddling with the hidden compartment.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He reached inside and triumphantly pulled out the piece of paper. “Seeing what secrets you keep from me,” he said.
It was so ridiculous I laughed. “I’m an open book,” I told him, but I took the paper out of his hand.
His eyebrows raised. “What’s on there?”
“My Facebook password.”
“So what?”
“So,” I said, “it’s mine.”
Braden frowned. “If you had nothing to hide, you’d show it to me.”
“What do you think I’m doing on Facebook?” I said, incredulous.
“You tell me,” Braden replied.
I rolled my eyes. But before I could say anything, his hand shot out for the paper.
PEPPER70. That’s what it said. The name of my first dog and my birth year. Blatantly uninspired; something he could have figured out on his own. But the principle of the whole stupid argument kicked in, and I yanked the page away before he could snatch it.
That’s when it changed— the tone, the atmosphere. The air went still between us, and his pupils dilated. He reached out, striking like a snake, and grabbed my wrist.
On instinct, I pulled back and darted up the stairs. Thunder, him running behind me. My name twisted on his lips. It was silly; it was stupid; it was a game. But it didn’t feel like one, not the way my heart was hammering.
As soon as I made it to our bedroom I slammed the door shut. Leaning my forehead against it, I tried to catch my breath.
Braden shouldered it open so hard that the frame splintered.
I didn’t realize what had happened until my vision went white and I felt a hammer between my eyes. I touched my nose and my fingers came away red with blood.
“Oh my God,” Braden murmured. “Oh my God, Liv. Jesus.” He disappeared for a moment and then he was holding a hand towel to my face, guiding me to sit on the bed, stroking my hair.
“I think it’s broken,” I choked out.
“Let me look,” he demanded. He gently peeled away the bloody cloth and with a surgeon’s tender hands touched the ridge of my brow, the bone beneath my eyes. “I don’t think so,” he said, his voice frayed.
Braden cleaned me up as if I were made of glass and then he brought me an ice pack. By then, the stabbing pain was gone. I ached, and my nose was stuffy. “My fingers are too cold,” I said, dropping the ice, and he picked it up and gently held it against me. I realized his hands were trembling and that he couldn’t look me in the eye.
Seeing him so shaken hurt even more than my injury.
So I covered his hand with mine, trying to comfort. “I shouldn’t have been standing so close to the door,” I murmured.
Finally, Braden looked at me, and nodded slowly. “No. You shouldn’t have.”
Mad Honey
By Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan
A riveting novel about what we choose to keep from our past, and what we choose to leave behind.
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