Motherless

A WHISPERING VOICE at the BACK of MY MIND REMINDS ME that I’VE BEEN THIS WAY for SOME TIME. DEAD, THAT IS. The dead have a very broad view of the living, of actions performed out of sight, of thoughts believed to be private. I would know. Losing both parents is a trial no child should endure, and Marina and Dylan have endured enough. They deserve the one thing I could never give them: a mother’s love. A mother’s love, and the truth. My children have believed a lie about me for years and years. After all this time I can still feel their hurt in my heart. But the tether holding me to them is frayed from years of neglect . . . and I have to find a way to make my confession before it snaps. But when the truth comes out, what other beasts will I unleash? “Why do we lie to the children?” someone asked me once. “To protect them,” I answered. How terrible it is that they need protection from me. Guilt may be the most dangerous motive of all. On a rainy night seventeen years after his wife's presumed suicide, Garrett Becker sees her walking down the street. A car accident snatches him away from this world before he can reach her. Marina has spent her whole life mothering her brother, who suffers from an anxiety disorder. After their father's accident, they face losing their home--the only place Dylan's fears are held at bay. Crushing debt is just one of their father's secrets. Old keepsakes lead Dylan to believe their mother is alive and lives nearby. Sara Rochester is a successful chocolatier who doesn't dwell on her past and never expected the resurrection of its ghosts. But after Dylan confronts her, Sara consents to parent the only way she knows how: with money, chocolate, and a gross deficit of experience. Sara's hesitant presence divides Marina and Dylan. Marina doesn't believe that Sara is their mother. The woman's paper-thin lies suggest she might even be responsible for their mother's death. When Marina's suspicions spark an investigation, no one is prepared for the tragic truth or the powerful redemption that Marina's actions expose. Narrated by a storyteller with more to lose than any other character, Motherless is a richly layered mystery about the power of perception--and deception--among people seeking forgiveness for irreversible sins. Following the death of their father, parentless Marina and Dylan are led to suspect that successful chocolatier Sarah Rochester is actually the mother who they believed to be dead, but Marina comes to believe that the truth may be more complicated