Safe in My Arms

  Praise for Safe in My Arms

  “A smart and insightful page-turner, Safe in My Arms is a twisty mystery filled with keen observations about the impossibly high standards of motherhood and the critical importance of finding friends willing to accept you as the forgivably flawed person and parent you really are.”

  —Kimberly McCreight, New York Times bestselling author of Reconstructing Amelia and A Good Marriage

  “We’ve read stories about the cutthroat world of high school and colleges, but in Safe in My Arms, Sara Shepard reminds us that things can get dark in academia way before that. This sharp, smart, and oh-so-twisty look at the sinister side of a privileged preschool is the kind of book that will have you staying up way too late—even if it’s a school night.”—Rachel Hawkins, New York Times bestselling author of The Wife Upstairs

  “Sara Shepard returns to the domestic suspense scene with a deep dive into the lives of three mothers at a fancy private preschool, all of them harboring dark secrets. Taut, smart, and twisted, Safe in My Arms is everything I love in a suspense novel, a whip-smart tale of just how far a mother will go to protect her child. All the stars!”

  —Kimberly Belle, internationally bestselling author of Stranger in the Lake

  “Set against an intriguing backdrop of ambition, privilege, and entitlement, Safe in My Arms explores how friendship, family, and loyalty help us persevere. Sara Shepard has crafted a twisty, compelling meditation on the long-buried secrets that haunt us, and the ways in which embracing those dark aspects of our pasts can ultimately set us free.”

  —E. G. Scott, internationally bestselling author of In Case of Emergency

  “No one writes about secrets like Sara Shepard! Safe in My Arms is a whopping page-turner of a book, packed with lies, betrayals, and head-spinning twists. I’ll never think about preschools the same way again.”

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

  Praise for Reputation

  “Reputation follows the goings-on in a university community after a hack lands everyone’s private business squarely in the public eye. Like all of Shepard’s work, it is an inarguable page-turner filled with murder, intrigue, and female characters who are somehow simultaneously easy to adore and loathe.”

  —Fortune.com

  “Reputation has everything you’ve been waiting for: university gossip, Internet hackers, scandals, affairs, murder.”

  —Literary Hub

  “An Agatha Christie for the twenty-first century, Shepard masterfully crafts a prestigious town rife with hidden temptation and sin. . . . From chapter to chapter, Shepard’s plotting breathlessly careens between characters, with each cliff-hanger swiftly answered by another, ratcheting up the stakes until the killer is finally unmasked. A fast-paced, twisty-turny mystery perfect for a cozy weekend read.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Sara Shepard reaches delicious, vicious heights with Reputation. I felt like I was sucked into a video game, slipping into different skins in every chapter. It’s the love child of Dead to Me and Scream, a creepy tale about modern technology and good old-fashioned human flaws. We’re so lucky that Shepard is out there watching the way we live, seeing the best in us, and, oh yes, the cringe-inducing, often laugh-out-loud worst as well.”

  —Caroline Kepnes, author of You, Hidden Bodies, and Providence

  “[Shepard is] a master at keeping you on your toes—and this novel is no exception. If you’re looking for a new novel that draws you in and just won’t let go, you’ve found it.”

  —Marie Claire, “The 27 Best Fiction Books by Women This Year”

  “Shepard throws every cliché imaginable at the reader and then artfully massages them into a brilliant narrative told in the voices of the many women involved in the story who, having managed to make victims of one sort or another of themselves, all emerge victorious, each in her own fashion. . . . Everyone is hiding a closetful of secrets, which, when finally revealed, provide some excellent misdirection and a few OMG moments, until one final and shocking truth emerges. Fans of domestic suspense will devour this one.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  Also by Sara Shepard

  ya

  Pretty Little Liars Series

  The Lying Game Series

  The Perfectionists Series

  The Amateurs Series

  adult

  The Visibles

  Everything We Ever Wanted

  The Heiresses

  The Elizas

  Reputation

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Sara Shepard

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  DUTTON and the D colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

  has been applied for.

  ISBN 9781524746780 (paperback)

  ISBN 9781524746797 (ebook)

  book design by katy riegel, adapted for ebook by estelle malmed

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Dominique Jones; Cover image by Stephen Mulcahey

  pid_prh_5.7.1_c0_r0

  For Mothers

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise for Sara Shepard

  Also by Sara Shepard

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Part Two

  Piper

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Piper

  Eighteen

  Piper

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Piper

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Piper

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Piper

  Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PART ONE

  —

  You lie on the hard, cold floor. You can’t scream. Your head throbs in pain, and you think you might be bleeding. You can hear kids laughing not so far away, on the playground. You want to call out to them, but there’s something wrong with your voice. You can’t open your eyes. The pain is in your back, your jaw, your chest. Pain th
at doesn’t make sense. This might be the end. It might be coming soon.

  Why had you done it—any of it? Why hadn’t you been happy to leave well enough alone? If only you could go back to the beginning. If only you could start over, change things, change yourself. This is what you think about as you lie there, helpless: your regrets.

  But also that maybe, just maybe, you deserve this.

  One

  When they walked into the loft that first day, they were full of hope. It was fall again. The autumn after a tough year, the economic downturn sweeping through even the toniest of communities, including theirs. But now, things were starting to look up. It was the start of a new school year. New beginnings. Everyone was eager to connect, eager to be part of something bigger.

  Even those who had things to hide.

  The Silver Swans Nursery Academy was new to Lauren Smith, Andrea Vaughan, and Ronnie Stuckey, but they’d heard it was the best place to send one’s young children in all of Raisin Beach, California, and they felt fortunate that there was a spot for their children this term. They were excited to attend the school’s Welcome Breakfast, an event held every September on the very first day the kids were sent into the classrooms. The breakfast used to be a lavish affair, with a pyramid of donuts, piles of every fruit imaginable, and an ice sculpture of the school’s mascot, an erudite, bespectacled owl sitting on a branch, ostensibly ready to teach the young Silver Swans students all he knew.

  But this year was more tempered. There were bagels and a variety of spreads; there were grapes and pineapple and an assortment of juices; there was coffee, the tureens lined up, the paper cups ready, though also accompanied by a sign of a smiling cartoon Planet Earth declaring, Love me! Travel mugs preferred! There was not, however, a man in a chef’s hat cooking omelets to order. Nor were there caterers circulating with bacon-Gruyère bites. It felt excessive to shower everyone with a gluttonous spread after so many had lost their jobs and so many businesses had gone bust.

  After Lauren Smith shook sugar packets into her coffee, she came face-to-face with Piper Jovan, the school’s director, who was making a point of greeting each parent. It was hard not to gape at even a dressed-down Piper. The woman’s dark, thick hair spilled down her shoulders. Her eyes were ethereal blue, and her lips were plump, and she had a Marilyn Monroe beauty mark next to her mouth. And that body!

  “Wow, the Grand Recession didn’t hurt you any,” Lauren blurted.

  Piper blushed mock-bashfully, then looked Lauren up and down. “I don’t think we know each other yet.”

  “Lauren. My son is Matthew? Seven months? My husband should be up in a minute. Well, I hope. He works on a TV show? Ketchup? We moved here last year.” Lauren was babbling. She always did when she was nervous.

  Then a young man standing just behind Piper tapped her arm and murmured. Lauren studied him closer. “Is this your son?” she asked Piper.

  The guy—chubby-cheeked, dark hair neatly combed, wearing a fastidious black oxford buttoned up to his collar—barked with laughter. “I’m her assistant!”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Lauren’s gaze bounced from him to Piper. “I’d heard you had a son, Piper, and I just thought . . . anyway, it’s nice to meet you!” She smiled dumbly at the man. “What’s your name?”

  “Carson Dillard.” He was still snickering. “And I’m twenty-five. Piper’s son is thirteen. No amount of moisturizer is that good.”

  Lauren’s guffaw came out like a honk. Piper just stared like Lauren had three heads. Lauren slunk off, her face blazing. They all would talk about this later, how Piper had the tendency to make you slink away.

  “Oh, Lane!” Piper said loudly, turning to the next parent who’d arrived. Lane Wilder looked like the human version of a Labrador retriever. “Thanks for stopping by!”

  Lane smiled sheepishly. “Oh. Yeah, thanks. I put Patricia on the kids.” He was the kindergarten teacher downstairs. This was his first foray to the loft as a parent, and his girlfriend, Ronnie Stuckey, beamed at him with pride.

  But Piper’s smile flattened when she noticed Ronnie. Ronnie was taller than Piper, and thinner, and her face had perfect golden-ratio proportions. This made other women jealous, even women like Piper.

  “Hi, I’m Ronnie!” Ronnie said brightly. Her accent was from . . . somewhere. Not Raisin Beach, that was for sure. “My daughter, Esme, she’s in the fours? Lane and I are—”

  “Partners.” Lane reached for Ronnie’s hand. “Piper, I’m so excited you’re going to finally meet Esme’s brave, wonderful mom.”

  Piper’s gaze swept up Ronnie’s body. While other mothers were going for the natural look this morning, Ronnie unapologetically had a smoky eye and glossy lips, and her face looked airbrushed. Piper also seemed utterly confounded by Ronnie’s bag, which looked like an old-style western jacket with its long leather tassels and grommets and was emblazoned with a large G for Gucci. A trained eye might say it was a fake.

  A pink tinge crept up Ronnie’s neck. “I hope it’s okay Esme is enrolled. Lane and I aren’t married, I mean. But I saw on your website that partners’ children can enjoy the staff benefits, and we filled out the application and were accepted—”

  “Of course it’s fine,” Piper interrupted. “Our inclusion policy extends to all sorts of families. Parenthood doesn’t fit into just one box.”

  “Oh.” Ronnie looked relieved. “Okay, good.”

  “I like your earrings.” Piper’s assistant poked his head around Piper’s frame. He pointed at the jagged metal sculptures that hung so low from Ronnie’s earlobes that they nearly grazed her shoulders.

  Ronnie grinned, touching her left lobe. “Thanks!” But as she walked away, her smile faded. “Did I do something wrong?” she whispered to her boyfriend. “That seemed weird.”

  “What? No!” Lane patted her hand. “Piper can be brisk sometimes, but seriously, she’s great. You’re going to love her.”

  Lauren, meanwhile, was still loitering by the coffee, listening to a pack of mothers nearby talking about how their ten-month-olds were talking in full sentences. Another mother in the group said she’d brought her toddler daughter to volunteer at the local food bank with her. “It’s really enriching her spirit.” A toddler volunteering?

  When someone touched Lauren’s arm, she jumped guiltily. “Sorry!” a voice said. “I just— What you said to the director’s assistant back there, about being her son? I asked her the same thing.”

  Lauren turned to the blond woman speaking. She had a delicate nose, high cheekbones, and kind eyes that were a bright, shimmering blue.

  “I’m Andrea,” the woman said. She offered a hand with pink nails squared off at the ends.

  Lauren introduced herself, too. Then she added, “Now, what were you saying about the assistant?”

  They both eyed Carson Dillard. He was still standing subtly behind Piper with his hands folded at his waist like he was some kind of consigliere.

  “I asked if he was her son, too,” Andrea whispered. “Sometimes, my son stands behind me in just the same way. Like he’s waiting to see what move I’m going to make before doing anything himself.”

  “And when you asked it, did they look at you like you were from another planet?”

  “Well, they were looking at me like that anyway.” Andrea gestured to her body with a shrug. “It’s my first time out. I mean, not out, not out as this”—again she pointed to her chest, which had a hint of a bosom. “I mean out in this community, as a mom. I’m new. God, sorry, I’m so nervous. Don’t mind me.”

  “Ah,” Lauren said. “It’s okay. We’re new, too. Moved here this past winter, right when my baby was due.”

  Andrea took a big drink of her coffee, then cast Lauren a guilty look. “Do I smell like Baileys? I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I had to spike my drink.”

  “Do you have any more?” Lauren blurted, her eyes sparkling.

&n
bsp; Andrea paused a moment as though shocked, but then whipped out an airplane bottle and glugged some into Lauren’s coffee cup. Both of them sipped and smiled conspiratorially.

  “So how old’s your son?” Lauren asked, after mentioning that her seven-month-old was in the nursery.

  “Four. In pre-K. With Miss Barnes.”

  “Miss Barnes?” Ronnie Stuckey, overhearing, came toward Lauren and Andrea tentatively. “The fours? My daughter has her, too.”

  “Oh!” Andrea said, and more introductions were made between her, Ronnie, and Lauren. “So what do you think of her?”

  “Miss Barnes? She seems great.” Then Ronnie looked around the loft in the same way Audrey Hepburn’s character did the first time she walked into Tiffany’s in that movie. “This is all great, you know? Like, insanely great. Although . . .” She glanced at Andrea with trepidation. “Does your son know how to read yet?” she whispered. “Because I just ran into another mom who has a kid in Miss Barnes’s class, too, and she said that her kid breezed through every unit on the Hooked on Phonics app, and now she reads at the third-grade level.”

  Andrea’s eyes bulged. “Were we all supposed to be doing that?”

  “I don’t know! Was there a handbook we missed?”

  “Psst,” Lauren said, moving closer to Ronnie. “She’s got Baileys for your coffee.” She pointed at Andrea. “Just in case all this”—she gestured around at the other mothers, who were clustered and talking in high-pitched voices—“is too much.” Then she quickly added, “I’m just saying, it’s a little . . .”

  “. . . Overwhelming?” Andrea finished.

  The three women shared a look of understanding. Ronnie’s eyes widened at their coffee mugs, but after thinking it over, she said, “What the hell?” Then she glanced toward her boyfriend, who was now speaking in one of those gaggles of eager mothers. “But pour it in quick. My boyfriend over there? He teaches kindergarten here. I don’t want to get him in trouble.”

  Andrea dumped the rest of the bottle into Ronnie’s cup with impressive sleight of hand. After she finished, she did a double take at something on Ronnie’s left wrist. It was a yellow rubber bracelet not unlike the Livestrong bracelets people were wearing in the early 2000s. “Where’d you get that?”