Confessions on the 7:45 Read online

  Be careful to whom you tell your darkest secrets...

  Selena Murphy is commuting home from her job in the city when the train stalls on the tracks. She strikes up a conversation with a beautiful stranger in the next seat, who introduces herself as Martha. The woman confesses that she’s been stuck in an affair with her boss, and Selena, in turn, confesses that she suspects her husband is sleeping with the nanny. When the train arrives at Selena’s station, the two women part ways, presumably never to meet again.

  But days later, Selena’s nanny disappears.

  Soon Selena finds her once-perfect life upended. As she is pulled into the mystery of the missing nanny and as the fractures in her marriage grow deeper, Selena begins to wonder, who was Martha really? But she is hardly prepared for what she’ll discover...

  Lisa Unger is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of eighteen novels. An award-winning and acclaimed writer with millions of readers worldwide, Lisa is widely regarded as a master of suspense. Her books have been published in twenty-six languages, and her nonfiction work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR and Travel + Leisure. Lisa lives in Florida with her family.

  Praise for Confessions on the 7:45

  “I raced through Confessions on the 7:45, completely absorbed in the mystery and intrigue of the story as it kept me guessing. Compelling, dark, twisty and a definite must-read!”

  —Karen Hamilton, bestselling author of The Perfect Girlfriend

  “Confessions on the 7:45 is a masterclass in storytelling. The pacing, the characters, and the story are all pitch-perfect. This is an unforgettable novel.”

  —Samantha Downing, USA TODAY bestselling author of My Lovely Wife and He Started It

  “Lisa Unger expertly unravels the layers of mystery and deceit at the heart of this chilling thriller. A gripping, haunting story that kept me guessing until the very end.”

  —Megan Miranda, New York Times bestselling author of The Last House Guest

  “A stellar work of psychological suspense—rich, deep, and full of surprises. Lisa Unger grabs you, pulls you in, and keeps you guessing. Read it!”

  —Meg Gardiner, Edgar Award–winning author of The Dark Corners of the Night

  “Unger takes you deep into the minds of psychopaths, and while you wouldn’t want to live there, what wild, creepy places they are to visit. Unger is at the top of her game here.”

  —Linwood Barclay, New York Times bestselling author of Elevator Pitch

  “A taut, beautifully written novel. What elevates Lisa Unger’s psychological thriller to a new level are her shrewd insights into the dynamics of a seemingly ideal marriage.”

  —Sarah Pekkanen, #1 New York Times bestselling author of An Anonymous Girl

  Also by Lisa Unger

  THE STRANGER INSIDE

  UNDER MY SKIN

  THE RED HUNTER

  INK AND BONE

  THE WHISPERING HOLLOWS (novella)

  CRAZY LOVE YOU

  IN THE BLOOD

  HEARTBROKEN

  DARKNESS, MY OLD FRIEND

  FRAGILE

  DIE FOR YOU

  BLACK OUT

  SLIVER OF TRUTH

  BEAUTIFUL LIES

  SMOKE

  TWICE

  THE DARKNESS GATHERS

  ANGEL FIRE

  Confessions on the 7:45

  Lisa Unger

  For Jeffrey.

  Because after twenty years and counting,

  you are first, last and always.

  Contents

  Part 1

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Part 2

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Acknowledgments

  PART 1

  ALL OUR LITTLE SECRETS

  “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”

  —George Orwell, 1984

  PROLOGUE

  She watched. That was her gift. To disappear into the black, sink into the shadows behind and between. That’s where you really saw things for what they were, when people revealed their true natures. Everyone was on broadcast these days, thrusting out versions of themselves, cropped and filtered for public consumption. Everyone putting on the “show of me.” It was when people were alone, unobserved, that the mask came off.

  She’d been watching him for a while. The mask he wore was slipping.

  He, too, stood in the shadows of the street, a hulking darkness. She’d followed him as he drove, circling like a predator, then finding a place for his car under the trees. He’d parked, then sat as the night wound on and inside lights went out, one by one. Finally, he’d stepped out of his vehicle, closed the door quietly, and slipped across the street. Now he waited. What was he doing?

  Since she’d been following him the last few weeks, she’d seen him push his children on the swings in the park, visit a strip club in the middle of the day, drink himself stupid with his buddies viewing a game at a sports bar. She’d watched as he’d helped a young mother with a toddler and baby in a carriage carry her groceries from her car into her house.

  Once, he’d picked up a woman in a local bar. Then, out in the parking lot, they romped like animals in his car. Later, he went to the grocery store and picked up food for his family, his cart piled high with ice cream and Goldfish crackers, things his kids liked.

  What was he up to now?

  The observer only sees, never interferes. Still, tonight she felt the tingle of bad possibilities. She waited in the cool night, patient and still.

  The clicking of heels echoed, a brisk staccato up the deserted street. She felt a little pulse of dread. Was there no one else around? No one else glancing out their window? No. She was the only one. Sometimes didn’t it seem like people didn’t see anymore? They didn’t look out. They looked down, at that device in their hands. Or in, mesmerized by the movie of past and future, desires and fears, always playing on the screen in their minds.

  The figure of the young woman was slim, erect, confident. She marched up the street, sure-footed, hands in her pockets, tote over her shoulder. When he moved out of the shadows an
d blocked her path, the young woman stopped short, backed up a step or two. He reached for her, as if to take her hand, but she wrapped her arms around her middle.

  There were words she couldn’t hear, an exchange. Sharp at first, then softer. On the air, far away, they sounded like calling birds. What was he doing? Fear was a cold finger up her spine.

  He moved to embrace the girl, and she shrank away. But he moved in anyway. In the night, he was just a looming specter. His bulk swallowed her tiny form, and together in a kind of dance they moved toward the door, at first jerking, awkward. Then, she seemed to give in, soften into him. She let them both inside. And then the street was silent again.

  She stood frozen, unsure of what she’d seen. Later, when she realized what he’d done, who he truly was under the mask, she’d hate herself for staying rooted, hiding in the shadows, only watching. She’d tell herself that she didn’t know then. She didn’t know that beneath the mask, he was a monster.

  ONE

  Selena

  Selena loved the liminal spaces. Those precious slivers of time between the roles she played in her life.

  She missed the 5:40 train because her client meeting ran long, knowing before she even left the conference room table that there was no way she would be home in time for dinner with her husband Graham and their two maniac boys, Stephen and Oliver. The wild hours afterward—showers, pajamas, random horseplay, vicious but brief sibling battles, television maybe if either of them could sit still a minute—that concluded in story time would have to unfold without her. Selena didn’t often work late; she made a point to be home on time. Chaotic as their evenings often were, that was the best part of her day.

  But when she did miss the train that night—she didn’t even bother trying to get to the station—it created a space that hadn’t been there before. Just a little over two hours between the 5:40, which she normally took, and the 7:45, which she intended to catch after finishing up a few things at the office.

  In that gap, she could feel herself expand. She wasn’t working. She wasn’t mothering. She just was. She could think. And truth be told, Selena did have some things she needed to think about. These things were a white noise in the back of her mind.

  She slipped out of the cab she’d taken back to the office, into the cool autumn evening. The noise of the city washed over her, the manic rush of people on their way home after a long day. Then she stepped into the hush of the quiet lobby, with its marble floors and gleaming walls. Selena nodded to the doorman who knew her, then swiped her card through the gates. Up the elevator alone.

  Here her heart started thumping, mouth going dry. Her bag was too heavy, the tote pulling down on her tight shoulder muscles. She hadn’t missed the train on purpose; she really hadn’t wanted to cut the client off as he went on and on.

  But.

  The office was empty. The literary agency had a small staff; most of them people with families. Many of the parents left before school pickup, then worked at home in the afternoons. Beth, her boss, also her lifelong best friend, had things set up like that so that people could work well and take care of their families—imagine that. It was the rare humane workplace.

  She didn’t bother flipping on the light in her office, enjoying the glittering downtown view through her big window. A rush of heat to her cheeks as she dropped her bag. She shifted off her jacket and sat in front of the computer and took a deep breath before opening the lid on her laptop.

  It was after 6:15 now. The boys would have had their dinner. If Selena knew their nanny, Geneva, and the efficiency with which she ran the show, Oliver and Stephen would also be showered and in jammies. She probably had them settled in front of the television already.

  Selena leaned back in her ergonomic chair, felt its pleasant tilt.

  She hadn’t hidden the camera, precisely. Geneva had been made aware of cameras in the home—one upstairs, one down. Selena had simply moved the one from the boys’ bedroom, and told neither Graham nor Geneva about it.

  She paused another second. Her desk was cluttered with framed pictures of the boys and Graham, drawings from school, a ceramic owl Oliver had made at art camp. She picked up the glazed misshapen thing; he’d carved his name in the clay bottom. She touched the ridges of the wobbly O, the backward e. Somewhere she heard a vacuum cleaner running.

  Her wedding picture—where her smile beamed, and Graham was dashing in his classic tux. He’d whispered to her while the photographer snapped away—dirty things, funny things. Then: This is the best day of my life. His breath in her ear, his arms around her. Her whole body tingled with joy, with desire. Nearly ten years ago now. God, it was a heartbeat, a blink, a single breath drawn and released.

  She put the photo down. Then, she clicked on the app that would allow her to watch on her laptop the video feed from the camera she had placed in the boys’ playroom.

  It took a moment for the image to load.

  When it did, she was not surprised by what she saw.

  Graham, her husband, was fucking Geneva, her nanny, on the activity rug that Selena and Graham had carefully selected together at IKEA.

  The volume was down, so she was spared their grunting and moaning.

  When had she started to suspect? About two weeks ago. She happened to catch a glance between Graham and Geneva. Something that small, a millisecond, a microexpression.

  No, she’d thought. Surely not.

  But she’d moved the bedroom camera to the playroom.

  This was the second time she’d watched them. A weird calm came over her, a kind of apathetic distance from the whole thing.

  Geneva wasn’t that hot, Selena thought, as she watched the young woman who had shiny, wheat-colored hair, and flushed cheeks. Selena leaned closer to the screen, to see the girl more clearly. Attractive, certainly. But not much more so than Selena.

  Okay. The other woman was a bit younger—but only by a few years. Maybe there was a softness to her that Selena lacked, a freshness. But she was nothing special. In fact, Geneva’s just-slightly-above-average looks were a point that Selena had taken into consideration when hiring her as a nanny. Geneva was a reasonably attractive, smart, personable career childcare professional with a long list of glowing references. She was no bombshell. No blushing twentysomething with glossed lips and inappropriately placed tattoos she would later regret. Most women, Selena included, knew better than to bring some nubile hottie into her home on a regular basis. It just wasn’t good business.

  Besides, Geneva was known to Selena—coveted, in fact. They’d met on the playground during Selena’s first year home with the boys. Work, the commute, the race to pick up from preschool, the balancing act that never quite balanced. It had worn her to a nub. She and her husband Graham decided that she should stay home for a time—indefinitely. They could afford that—Graham made good money. There wouldn’t be Range Rovers and trips to Tahoe every spring break. But they would be fine.

  Selena had loved the way Geneva was with the Tucker boys, Ryan and Chad. She was sweet but firm, prepared but not anal. The boys listened to her. Eyes on me, she’d say brightly, and so it was. Geneva wasn’t like the other nannies Selena observed at the park—millennials staring at their phones while their charges ran amok or stared at devices of their own. Geneva chased, pushed swings, played hide-and-seek.

  And, you know, she was not that hot.

  Lovely features—a button nose and full lips, dark, heavily lashed doe eyes, buxom but just the tiniest bit—pleasantly—plump. Broad in the beam, as her father used to say. In a nice way, the way of strong women built for physical labor. Selena was long and slim, a genetic boon for which she was grateful because god knows she didn’t have the time anymore to work for it.

  Now, she turned up the volume a little, listened to them groaning. Did it sound—forced?

  Selena remembered how she and Geneva had chatted almost daily. Selena’s boys—Oliver
and Stephen—loved her. Is Geneva going to be there? Oliver, her older, sometimes asked as they were headed to the park. Probably, Selena would answer, wishing that she had someone like Geneva, even just part-time. Someone with whom she felt good about leaving her children. But she was happy enough to be home. She didn’t miss her publicity job. She’d never had that drive to accomplish that so many of her friends seemed to have. She just wasn’t wired that way. She liked working—the independence of it, the comradery, the satisfaction of doing something well. The money. But it had never defined her.

  Graham: “Oh, yeah. That’s so good.”

  She bumped the volume down again. Picked up one of the framed pictures of the boys, holding it up so that it blocked the screen, and gazed into their flushed, joyful faces.

  Motherhood defined Selena in a way that work hadn’t, the idea that she was there for her children—that she cooked their meals and kept their house, their schedules, their doctor appointments and haircuts. That she was there on car line, at parent-teacher conferences, school Halloween parties. It wasn’t sexy. It wasn’t always easy. There wasn’t a ton of cultural praise for the role, not really. But she found a level of satisfaction in it that she hadn’t found elsewhere.

  Then Graham unexpectedly—well, did anyone ever expect it?—lost his job. Not his fault, really. Publishing was shrinking, and his big salary was hard to justify in a flailing self-help imprint. That very same week, over cocktails, Selena’s good friend Beth serendipitously offered her a huge job—a licensing director position at Beth’s literary agency. Selena’s salary would be more than Graham’s, plus bonuses. Of course, there would have to be a nanny. Because Graham, well, he wasn’t exactly hardwired for caregiving. And finding a job is a full-time job, babe.

  So, it felt like kismet when during a chat at the park—the very next day, when Selena was grappling for solutions to their problem—Geneva told Selena that she was about to lose her job. Mrs. Tucker wanted to be home for a couple of years, she said.