Girl in the Dark (28 page)

I couldn't answer, because I honestly didn't know.

It almost looked like my aquarium down there, fifteen feet below the surface. Only, everything was much bigger and you could see much farther, you could see as far as you wanted to. As I swam around, I started naming the fish in my head. “Hey, you, little zebrafish, I see you darting away, but I see you! You I'll call Hank. Oh, and you, parrotfish, nibbling on the coral over there, your name is Rembrandt.”

I had gone scuba diving every day since I'd been there. I'd stay under until the diving instructor ticked on his watch, telling me that our time was up and we had to swim back up to the surface.

Then I saw her. A beautiful queen angelfish colored the brightest of blues and the yellowest of yellows with a lovely crown-shaped spot on her forehead. “You, I will name Rosita.” I thought about the letter Dr. Römerman had told me to write. I had never been able to, but sitting by the ocean I knew exactly what I wanted to say. It wasn't much. But I felt it was true.

I never meant for anything bad to happen to you and Anna. I will always love you.

I didn't mind having to go back to the shore. I knew Iris and Mo and Aaron were waiting for me at the dive shop. Then the
four of us would walk to the beach, and Aaron and I would build castles together, just like I used to do with Anna, except that these were made of sand instead of Legos. Then I'd play paddleball with Mo or go for a swim with Iris Kastelein who was definitely my sister over to the raft out in the middle of the bay.

We'd sit there for a while, dangling our legs in the water, our faces turned to the setting sun. Soon the sun would disappear into the water. Iris said this time of day was called “the magic hour.”

I had to ask. “So are we a family now?”

She looked at me with those clear blue eyes edged in black, just like Mother's, only much kinder.

“I think a family is more like—a father and a mother and their kids. So that's not really what we are. But we
are
related. We're kin.”

I stared at my feet.

Then Iris said, “Hey, why am I making it so complicated? Of
course
we're a family. Maybe not your average family, but we definitely belong together. What do
you
think?”

I cleared my throat. “I always wanted to belong to a family.”

“Me too,” she said. “Me too.”

Thanks to all the beautiful people who made
Girl in the Dark
happen:

Patrizia Gelvatti

Sarah Miles

Michael Carlisle and Lauren Smythe at Inkwell

Hester Velmans

Emily Krump at William Morrow

Chris Herschdorfer and Dorien van Londen at Ambos|Anthos

Masie Cochran

MARION PAUW
(b. 1973) is one of the bestselling writers of the Netherlands, whose books also have been published in Germany,
Turkey, Italy, Hungary, and the United States. She made her debut with
Villa Serena
in 2005. Her big breakthrough to a wider readership and critics came with
Girl in the Dark
(2009), which won the Golden Noose Dutch Crime award. The Dutch film rights were sold to Eyeworks and successfully adapted into a movie. Next, she wrote the thrillers
Sinner Child,
Jet-Set,
and
Kicking the Bucket
.
The Savages
is considered to be her debut as a novelist. She most recently published
Something We Need to Tell You
. Her books have sold half a million copies in the Netherlands. Marion lives in Amsterdam with her two children.

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Cover design by Kathleen Lynch/Black Kat Design

Cover photograph © Tobias Regell / Link Image / Gallery Stock

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

GIRL IN THE DARK.
Copyright © 2016 by Marion Pauw. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

This text was translated from Dutch to English by Hester Velmans.

Title page photograph by Glebstock/Shutterstock, Inc.

EPub Edition January 2016 ISBN 978-0-06-242481-5

ISBN 978-0-06-242479-2

978-0-06-245869-8 (international edition)

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