When Never Comes Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF BARBARA DAVIS

  “Heartfelt and beautifully written.”

  —Diane Chamberlain, USA Today bestselling author of Pretending to Dance

  “A beautifully crafted page-turner . . . Part contemporary women’s fiction, part historical novel, the plot moves seamlessly back and forth in time to unlock family secrets that bind four generations of women . . . This novel has it all.”

  —Barbara Claypole White, bestselling author of Echoes of Family

  “Everything I love in a novel . . . elegant and haunting.”

  —Erika Marks, author of The Last Treasure

  “A book about love and loss and finding your way forward. I could not read it fast enough!”

  —Anita Hughes, author of Christmas in Paris

  “One of the best books out there, and Davis is genuinely proving herself to be one of the strongest new voices of epic romance.”

  —RT Book Reviews (4½ stars)

  “Davis has a gift for developing flawed characters and their emotionally wrenching dilemmas . . . a very satisfying tale.”

  —Historical Novel Society

  “A beautifully layered story.”

  —Karen White, New York Times bestselling author of Flight Patterns

  OTHER BOOKS BY BARBARA DAVIS

  The Secrets She Carried

  The Wishing Tide

  Summer at Hideaway Key

  Love, Alice

  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 © 2018 by Barbara Davis

  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.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477808917 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1477808914 (paperback)

  ISBN-13: 9781503950177 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1503950174 (hardcover)

  Cover design by Kimberly Glyder

  To Tom—who married me anyway.

  We’ve only just begun . . .

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  Monck’s Corner, South Carolina

  August 19, 1986

  The room is dark but not quite still. A threadbare curtain breathes in and out at the window, shuddering in the sticky Carolina heat. Outside, the hum of night things fills up the quiet, a chorus of moist throats and raspy wings calling through the torn screen.

  In the bed beneath the window, a girl in a pink cotton nightgown writhes amid tangled sheets. She is a lovely child, raven-haired and pale, a fringe of sooty lashes lying uneasily against her cheeks. Her whimpers turn to tears, turn to wails, turn to shrieks. She is awake but not awake, flailing one moment, rigid the next, stalked by a terror she can neither see nor name. The dreams have come again, her almost nightly companions. But no one is coming to comfort her tonight. Mama has passed out again on the bathroom floor.

  ONE

  Clear Harbor, Maine

  November 19, 2016

  The first ring came with the same throat-thickening panic all 2:00 a.m. phone calls produce. Disorientation. Dread. The certainty that something, somewhere, is terribly wrong.

  Christine shot up with a gasp, grabbing for the phone on the bedside table. “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Ludlow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Christine Ludlow?”

  “Yes. Who’s calling?”

  “Mrs. Ludlow, this is Sergeant Stanley with the Clear Harbor police. I apologize for the call, but we’ve been knocking for some time now. We need to speak with you.”

  Police? Her pulse ticked up a notch, the skin on the back of her neck prickling with the old familiar warning. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

  The voice on the other end of the phone was polite but strained. “We’d prefer to speak in person.”

  A moment later, she was pulling back the front door, staring at two uniformed police officers. “What is it? Why are you here?”

  “I’m afraid it’s your husband, ma’am. There’s been an accident. His car skidded off a bridge and into Echo Bay.”

  Christine’s chest seemed to seize. “Where is he? Is he all right? What hospital have they taken him to?”

  “Your husband isn’t in the hospital, Mrs. Ludlow. He . . . didn’t survive the accident. I’m afraid we’re going to need a next of kin to come down and identify his body.”

  The silence spooled out as the words penetrated. Stephen’s body. Echo Bay.

  “We’d be happy to drive you,” the sergeant continued, his voice full of polite sympathy. It wasn’t his first time knocking on a door in the middle of the night, Christine realized dully. How many wives, mothers, lovers, and friends had gotten the visit she was getting now?

  It took a moment for the sergeant’s offer to penetrate. “No,” she replied, feeling strangely detached, as if watching the scene from a long way off. The last thing she wanted at that moment was a ride in the back of a police car. “Thank you. I can drive myself.”

  The sergeant nodded. “We’ll wait while you get dressed then, and you can follow us back to the station.”

  Christine nodded, trying to wrap her head around what had happened—and the reality of what came next. Bestselling crime novelist Stephen Ludlow was dead, and she needed to go identify his body. But first, she needed to get dressed.

  Christine felt the ground tilt as she stepped into the lobby of the Clear Harbor Police Station. The scuffed black-and-white floor tiles, the unforgiving fluorescent glare, the nauseating aroma of burned coffee and stale cigarette smoke, reminded her queasily of another night—another calamity a lifetime ago. She shook it off. Deal with the calamity in front of you. If life had taught her anything, it had taught her that.

  Sergeant Stanley stepped away to speak to the officer at the front desk, then turned back with an awkward smile and pointed to a row of blue plastic chairs along the wall. “You can
have a seat if you like. We’ve called to have someone escort you down.”

  Moments later, the stainless-steel elevator doors opened. Christine was startled to see a familiar figure step into the lobby. Daniel Connelly was—had been—a close friend of Stephen’s, a drinking companion and a regular at his Friday night card games. But he was a homicide detective, and Stephen had died in a car accident. What was he doing here at three in the morning?

  “Christine.” He took both her hands in his. They were hot and slightly sticky. “I’m so sorry. When they realized it was Stephen, they called me. They thought it might be easier if I was here to . . . explain things.”

  She frowned. Explain things? It was an odd way to put it, a cold, blunt way. She pulled her hands free, trying not to be obvious as she wiped her palms on her jacket. “Thank you, Detective, for coming out at this hour.”

  “Please, call me Danny.”

  He was thickset and beefy, with full ruddy cheeks and a head of wiry gray hair. They hadn’t met more than a few times, and then only briefly, but she’d never been able to understand Stephen’s fondness for the man, beyond the fact that as a homicide detective he’d been an invaluable research contact, always happy to pass along juicy case details in exchange for a box of Cohiba cigars or a bottle of good single malt.

  “I guess we should get on with it,” he said grimly. “Are you ready?”

  Christine nodded. There really wasn’t another option when your husband’s body was lying on a gurney somewhere, waiting to be identified. She allowed Connelly to take her elbow and steer her toward the elevators, saying nothing as he pushed the button stamped with a well-worn B. The basement then. Stephen was in the basement.

  When the doors opened again, Connelly stepped out and turned left, leading her down a white-tiled hall lined with windowless blue doors. He stopped in front of the last door on the right and reached for the knob. A dull buzz filled Christine’s head as she stared at the engraved metal plate: MORGUE.

  Connelly threw her a glance. “You all right?”

  The words seemed to come from a long way off, as if they’d been spoken from the bottom of a very deep well. This couldn’t be happening, couldn’t be real. And yet the look on Connelly’s face told her it was very real indeed. Pulling in a lungful of air, she counted to three and nodded. She was aware of Connelly’s hand at the small of her back as her feet began to move and wondered if the light but steady pressure was meant to propel her forward or keep her from keeling over backward. No doubt he’d seen his share of fainters.

  She experienced a moment of surprise as she stepped through the door. She’d been bracing for unpleasant odors—blood, decay, formalin—but there was only the faint aroma of bleach in the air. It was a small mercy, but a mercy nonetheless. She was determined to keep her eyes moving as Connelly steered her deeper into the room, absorbing it all in one terrible sweep: a high-ceilinged, sterile-looking space with suspended fluorescents and battleship-gray floors.

  She avoided the strategically placed drains built into the floor, unwilling to contemplate their purpose, shifting her gaze instead to the trough-style sinks along the back wall. The wall on her right was lined with numbered doors—square stainless-steel doors in tidy rows, equipped with heavy metal hatches. One of those doors would belong to Stephen soon. She turned away, trying to banish the thought, but everywhere she looked there was a fresh reminder of what she was here to do. And then she saw it, a gurney draped with a plain white sheet. Her breath caught at the sight of it, the air in the room seeming to go cold.

  A man in a dingy lab coat stood on the other side of the gurney, his back to them as he scribbled on a clipboard. As if sensing their approach, he turned. He was young, midtwenties, with a pocked complexion and thick, smudgy glasses. He stood there blank faced, as if waiting for some signal.

  Connelly laid a hand on her arm. “Are you ready?”

  Christine nodded but couldn’t find her voice.

  His eyes slid to the attendant. “Go ahead, Ryan.”

  Without expression or fanfare, the attendant reached over to pull back the sheet. Christine braced herself as she forced her eyes to the body on the gurney, the waxy face a bloodless blue white, slack in death but eerily unmarred. He wasn’t wearing his jacket, and his top shirt buttons were open, his tie loose and askew. Yes, it was him. Had his face been a ruin she would still have known him. There was no mistaking the Robert Mitchum–style cleft in his chin. And yet there was a jarring strangeness too. The movie star good looks were flaccid now and slightly bloated, leaving behind only a blank husk of the man she’d married eight years ago. The iconic charm and carefully polished charisma that had made Stephen Ludlow an international media darling had been extinguished.

  “Yes,” she said hoarsely, then cleared her throat. “Yes, it’s Stephen.” She was relieved when the attendant dragged the sheet back into place, but angled her body away from the gurney just the same. “What happens now?”

  “The ME will determine cause of death,” Connelly explained. “Though with the icy condition of the bridge, I think we can safely assume the crash will be ruled an accident, death caused by either trauma from the crash itself or by drowning.” He paused, letting the words sink in. “I’m sorry to be blunt, but there’s really no nice way to say it.”

  She blinked heavily at him. “No. I suppose not. Do I just go home now?”

  “There are papers you’ll need to sign. But we were wondering—” He paused to clear his throat, his eyes skittering away briefly. “We were hoping you’d be able to help us with something else.”

  Christine felt the first icy pangs of uneasiness. Something about the change in his voice, his sudden reluctance to look her in the eye, made her scalp prickle. “Help you with what?”

  Connelly looked down at his shoes and sighed. “It’s a rather delicate matter, actually. One I wish to hell I could spare you. But the fact is . . .” The words fell away, his eyes straying again, this time to a gurney on the opposite side of the room. “We need your help, Christine.”

  Uneasiness morphed into dread as her gaze slid along with Connelly’s to the nondescript white mound on the second gurney. He was shifting from foot to foot now, his hands thrust deep in his pockets.

  “Stephen’s wasn’t the only body we pulled from his car,” he said gruffly. “Unfortunately, no identification was found for the second victim. We were hoping . . .”

  The attendant was there suddenly, his blue latex gloves hovering expectantly over the sheet. Connelly gave him a curt nod. No one spoke as the sheet came away, and in the silence, Christine became aware of a clock ticking somewhere. Heavy. Hollow. Like a pulse. And then she found herself staring at a woman.

  She was a ghastly shade of white, her platinum hair fanned out from her head in a snarled, sodden halo. There was a gash on her forehead, and a sickening depression along her right temple. Her eyes were open and glazed, a piercing shade of violet with fixed, bottomless pupils. She was also naked from the waist up, her breasts so full and round they couldn’t possibly have been formed by nature.

  Christine found herself unable to look away. A prostitute? A one-night stand? A casual dalliance or something more? And if so, how much more?

  Connelly cleared his throat. “Do you have any idea—”

  “No.”

  “I know this is hard, Christine, but please take your time. Look closely.”

  “I don’t need to look closely. I don’t know who she is or what she was doing in my husband’s car.” Her voice broke suddenly, and for an instant, she thought about lunging at the detective. “This is why you’re here. Because of her. Because you were Stephen’s friend, and they thought you’d be able to get a name out of me. That’s what you meant when you said you were here to explain things. When you said things, you meant her.”

  “Christine, I know this doesn’t look good. I can’t even imagine what’s going through your mind right now, but we don’t know what this means. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”
>
  “She isn’t wearing a shirt, Detective.”

  “And there might be a perfectly valid explanation for that. Maybe when the divers pulled her out of the car, her clothes . . .” He let the words dangle, the look on his face making it clear he’d drawn the same conclusion she had—the only conclusion that could be drawn when a half-nude woman was pulled from a man’s car in the middle of the night.

  Connelly shifted uneasily, his beefy shoulders bunched. “Was he—do you know if he was . . . seeing anyone?”

  Christine glared at him, astonished. “You’re asking if I knew my husband was having an affair? Like that’s something we’d discuss over dinner?”

  “I’m sorry. I thought maybe women had a sense about these things. Women’s intuition or whatever you call it.”

  She eyed him coldly.

  Connelly ran a hand through his thatch of gray hair. “Look, I’m just trying to do my job. I’ve got two years left in homicide, and I’m out. Until then, I do what they tell me. When they realized who they’d pulled out of the bay, they asked me to come down and talk to you. We’ve got a Jane Doe whose family is going to want to know why she didn’t come home tonight, and we can’t tell them until we know who she is.”

  Christine bristled at the inference that it was somehow her duty to help identify the half-nude woman. “I’m afraid I can’t help you, Detective. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to go home. You said there were some papers I needed to sign.”

  Connelly stepped away briefly, returning a moment later with the clipboard Ryan had been scribbling on. He pointed to a line at the bottom then flipped the page, pointing to two additional lines. Christine signed without reading and pushed the clipboard back into his hands.

  “Are we finished?”

  “For now, yes. You’ll get a copy of the report when the ME’s finished his examination, and someone will call to let you know when you can come down and collect his things.”

  Christine stared at him blankly. “His things?”

  “Keys. Wallet. Cell phone.”

  “Right. His things.” She turned toward the door, fumbling in her pocket for her own keys.

  “Here,” Connelly said. “Let me walk you out.”