While We Were Burning (eBook)

Sara Koffi (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
320 Seiten
Jacaranda Books (Verlag)
978-1-914344-67-1 (ISBN)

Infos

'Patricia's shoes. That's what I'd heard that morning, echoing outside of my bathroom window.' After her best friend's mysterious death, Elizabeth Smith's picture-perfect life in the Memphis suburbs spirals out of control, causing her to hire an assistant to keep her world from hurtling off its axis. In comes the composed and elegant Brianna. But Elizabeth's obsession is catching, and Brianna quickly becomes accomplice rather than diversion. Why? Because Brianna has questions, too... She wants to know why the police killed her young Black son. Why someone in Elizabeth's neighbourhood saw him and thought to call the police. Who she can hold responsible for his death. As the two women hurtle towards the truth, it becomes clear that neither of them is who they claim to be. A scorching debut that is as heartbreaking as it is thrilling, examining the intersection of race, class, female friendship, and the devastating consequences of everyday actions.

Sara Koffi is a writer and editor from Memphis, Tennessee, with a B.A. in English from Whittier College. As a writer, she strives to explore the nuances of 'unlikable female characters' and humanize Black women by giving them space on the page to breathe. While We Were Burning is her debut novel.

Textauszug

1

Elizabeth

‘Beale Street after five? I’d rather kill myself.’

Patricia was leaning against the main lobby’s printer, her nurse costume clinging tight to her skin. It was inappropriate for an office setting, in every sense of the word, the blouse cut too low and the skirt too short. Her only real saving grace was that she waited until I’d finished with my shift at the Learning Center to change into it, making sure no one saw her but me.

That seemed to be the rhythm of our entire relationship. Patricia always coming just as I was going. Patricia wanting to tag along on errands that I desperately wanted to get done by myself. Ever since I’d opened the door to her welcoming me to the neighbourhood with homemade brownies and a megawatt smile, she’d been around, a little offbeat, a fly in the ointment that was my attempt to not have a fly in my ointment.

‘Yeah, well, that’s what David told me they were up to,’ I replied, my fingers gliding along the printer’s control screen. ‘Getting a drink at the Absinthe Room.’

‘So, they’re pregaming before the Halloween party tonight.’ Patricia rolled her eyes, punctuating the end of her sentence. ‘What is it with men and trying to relive their college glory days?’

I bit my tongue, hard, as a fresh copy landed in the printer tray. I knew for a fact that Patricia had wanted to be a nurse when she was in college and that she’d flunked out of the program. It was one of those stories she’d always come back to, when there were any lulls in our conversations, whenever it seemed like there might be a single moment of silence between us.

I never asked her why. Why she was so hell-bent on reliving something from her past that’d clearly hurt. Why she always felt the need to bring it up again like she was stuck in some modern-day version of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Maybe it was the failure.

Maybe Patricia wasn’t used to it. Maybe that was the first time it’d ever happened, the first time she’d ever been scarred by anything like it. Like a little kid who can’t stop telling people about the first time they ever got a sunburn at the beach.

Failing was a novelty.

‘What are you supposed to be, Liz?’ Patricia nodded over at my outfit. ‘You look… interesting, at least.’

‘Stevie Nicks,’ I answered with a slight shrug. ‘But maybe without the innate talent and grace, I’m coming off more like a burnt-out hippie?’

Patricia smirked, but she didn’t laugh. Like she was amused but didn’t want to fully admit it. ‘Did David buy you that?’

‘Nope. I thrifted most of it.’

‘Thrifted? Why?’ Her eyes widened with abject horror. ‘You and David aren’t having money problems, are you?’

‘No, that’s not—’

‘Because you could tell me, if you were,’ she interrupted. ‘Jack and I would be happy to help—’

‘We’re not having money problems.’ It was my turn to do the interrupting. ‘David and I are fine. I just think thrifting is better for the environment. That’s all.’

‘Better for the environment?’

‘You know, fast fashion and all that.’ I shrugged again as I pulled a stack of freshly printed copies close to my chest. ‘I read an article about it online. Recycling clothes is all the rage.’

‘Okay…’ Patricia murmured, like she didn’t believe a word of what I was saying.

And it took everything in me not to drop the stack of copies back onto the landing tray, pull up the article I’d seen on my phone, and make Patricia digest every word. There was just something about suburbanites and lying. They lied so much that they assumed everyone else was always lying, too. Lying about how much they’re pulling in a year. Lying about how wonderful it is to be a mother, a father. Lying about how much they love the holidays, their spouses, their car, their job, their life.

Always lying, lying, lying.

But not me. I long suspected it was one of the reasons I never felt like I really fit in to the rest of Harbor Town, no matter how much they wanted me to. I wasn’t interested in crafting some version of myself that I could never live up to. And I wasn’t interested in spending my precious time on this planet surrounding myself with people who wanted their lives to resemble SUV commercials: saccharine, sweet, fake.

On a road headed to fucking nowhere.

‘Speaking of thrifting…’ Patricia paused for a moment as she shot me a pleading look. ‘Have you talked to David about the Neighbourhood Watch program?’

Are you really so removed from reality that thrifting and stealing are the same thing to you, Patricia? I asked her, solely in my head. Have you gone so far down the upper-middle-class rabbit hole that you can only conceptualize something as having been bought if there’s a designer’s name stitched across its label?

‘Uh, no, I haven’t.’

‘Not yet? Or not ever?’

‘…Not ever,’ I admitted with an apologetic glance in her direction. ‘Sorry, Patricia. But it doesn’t really gel with what we believe in. Besides, the last big Harbor Town mystery was solved in less than twenty-four hours.’

‘The last big mystery?’

‘When that kid down the street thought someone stole his bike,’ I reminded her. ‘Remember? It was just in his friend’s garage? His dad had brought it over to have the tires fixed.’

‘That doesn’t even count for anything!’ Patricia laughed through her argument. ‘And for all we know, that could’ve been the first score of a very ambitious thief.’

‘But it wasn’t.’ I laughed now, too, as I started locking up for the night. It was something Patricia would usually help me with if she was scheduled to stay until end-of-day. She’d been a volunteer at the Learning Center long before I’d ever had a job here, although her knack for volunteering only seemed to kick into high gear whenever her in-laws were in town or there was some #GivingBack social media challenge.

But I knew she wouldn’t be helping me lock up tonight, even if she wanted to. Not with how high her heels were, anyway.

‘Please? Just float it by David and tell me what he thinks about it?’ she begged. ‘That’s all I’m asking you to do, Liz.’

‘Why does it matter if David and I are involved with something like that?’ I asked. ‘We’re still pretty new to the neighbourhood. Do people really care what we do?’

‘Are you serious right now?’ Patricia folded her arms across her chest. ‘Everyone’s obsessed with you two. You’re basically the coolest people in the neighbourhood, like Barbie and Ken if they weren’t trying so hard.’

‘I don’t know what that means, Patricia.’

‘It means that yes, people care what you two do. They care a lot. Why else do you think everyone’s tripping over themselves to be at your party tonight?’ Patricia scoffed. ‘Seriously. I’ve thrown Halloween parties where maybe half the neighbourhood came, but your RSVP list was insane.’

‘It was David’s idea. He said it’d be a good way to establish ourselves.’ I chuckled at the thought. ‘As if we were royalty or something. As if people really needed to know who we were.’

‘You’re right about that. Everyone already knows who David is,’ Patricia replied. ‘Which is why having him involved with Neighbourhood Watch would be perfect. If the other guys see him doing something, they’ll join in, no matter what it is. Everyone wants to be in his… orbit.’

Right.

Of course. Everything comes back to David. Always. Because David was David.

And I was just David’s wife.

It wasn’t like that when we first got married. I distinctly remember being my own person and having my own name. It was David and Elizabeth everywhere we went.

Until it wasn’t. Until David started to work on million-dollar projects. Until David’s success was an eclipsing force, the sort of thing that hid other accomplishments in the shadows, no matter how bright they seemed in my hands. And then I was nothing. Still here, still in place by his side, but only seen as an extension, as a ring around his planet, as the woman whose finger he’d deigned to place a ring around.

‘So? You’ll talk to him about it, right?’ Patricia pleaded as she followed me outside the building and toward the parking lot. ‘Pretty, pretty please?’

‘…I’ll think about it.’ It was the last thing I said before offering her a temporary wave goodbye, knowing that I’d be seeing her again in less than thirty minutes at my house for the party.

And knowing that I was never going to speak a word of this conversation to David.

Ever.

* * *

‘How many more of these do you have left in you?’ Jack, Patricia’s husband, was slurring his words as he suddenly appeared at my side. The Halloween party was in full swing now, the foyer of our home transformed into a sea of bodies...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 25.4.2024
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror ► Krimi / Thriller
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: American Fiction • Crime • debut crime • debut fiction • Friendship • literary fiction • Loss • Race • revenge • Suspense • Thriller • womens fiction
• ISBN-10: 1-914344-67-7 / 1914344677
• ISBN-13: 978-1-914344-67-1 / 9781914344671