A Young Wife Read online

  Praise for

  Pam Lewis

  A Young Wife

  “In this compelling read, Lewis beautifully captures the essence of a place, from the lushness of the Netherlands to the wilds of Argentina to the inhospitable urban streets of New York.”

  —Booklist

  “A stirring journey . . . its images are undeniably alluring.”

  —BookPage

  “Minke’s resilience and determination will make readers eager for a happy ending. . . . Sure to please fans of historical romance and family dramas.”

  —Library Journal Express

  “In her third novel, loosely based on the life of her grandmother, Lewis (Perfect Family) delivers an exuberant protagonist . . . the unexpected twists in Minke’s story and her feisty appeal will keep readers eager to turn the page.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Perfect Family

  “Pam Lewis is the literary equivalent of a forensic scientist. In her compelling second novel, Perfect Family, Lewis pulls the body of a beautiful young woman from a lake, then, layer by suspenseful layer, unpeels and reveals a well-to-do family’s secrets, lies, and hidden heartaches. I was riveted.”

  —Wally Lamb, New York Times bestselling author of She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True

  “Nothing about Pam Lewis’ Perfect Family feels clichéd. . . . Lewis’ plot twists and turns to a satisfying conclusion.”

  —Parade

  “In this fast-paced novel, secrets haunt an old-money Connecticut family after an accident taints their vacation home. As they attempt to understand the tragedy, the truth of their matriarch’s past is revealed, spinning them into a reexamination of their identity. You’ll be swept up too.”

  —Hallmark Magazine

  “Lewis skillfully lures the reader through her narrative maze with plenty of plot twists.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Lewis’s thrilling and gritty novel dispels the myth of the ‘perfect family.’ The characters are flawed, insecure, and enmeshed in a compelling conflict that will satisfy the author’s many fans.”

  —Library Journal

  Speak Softly, She Can Hear

  “Gripping, . . . with a freshness that sets it apart from the thriller genre. There is a queasy darkness to the novel that the reader will savor. Once begun, it’s a hard book to let go of, and the writer’s skill prompts rereading of passages for their craft alone.”

  —New York Post

  “This debut psychological thriller is full of promise for author Pam Lewis, who takes various familiar genre elements and gives them some fresh twists.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Pam Lewis’s novel vividly captures the hippie era of free love, pot and rock ’n’ roll, developing an unsettling and mesmerizing psychological thriller.”

  —Ann Hellmuth, The Orlando Sentinel

  “This psychological thriller is an excellent debut for first-time novelist Lewis. Her settings are vibrant, from the hippie culture in San Francisco to rural small-town life in Vermont. Her descriptions, especially of angst-ridden teen years and those friendships that pull us through them, are dead-on. In subtle strokes, she paints a menacing darkness around Carole, who, no matter how far she runs, can’t seem to escape the threat lurking in the shadows.”

  —Karen Carlin, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

  “[A] chillingly elegant first novel.”

  —Joanne Sasvari, The Calgary Herald

  “Well-written and gripping . . . Readers will stay up late to see whether beleaguered, tortured Carole can free herself from the despicable Eddie.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Lewis, in her debut novel, tells an engrossing tale of an unlikely friendship, the burden of keeping secrets, and the insidiousness of lies.”

  —Booklist

  “Pam Lewis will keep you guessing, she’ll keep you up late at night, but most of all, she will bring you back to the friendships and betrayals of your past. Smart, clever, and emotionally involving. You’ll never feel the same way about keeping a secret.”

  —Brad Meltzer, New York Times bestselling author of The Tenth Justice and The Zero Game

  “The very first chapter of Speak Softly, She Can Hear fires an electric charge that sent me racing through this sexy and suspenseful psychological thriller. Pam Lewis is a sly and sure-footed storyteller whose literary tale of treachery, deception, and truth sits comfortably alongside Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley.”

  —Wally Lamb, New York Times bestselling author of She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True

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  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part Two

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part Three

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Part Four

  Chapter 25

  Acknowledgments

  Reading Group Guide

  Introduction

  Topics and Questions for Discussion

  Enhance Your Book Club

  A Conversation with Pam Lewis

  About Pam Lewis

  In loving memory

  Eelkje van der Wal Thummler

  Elly Thummler Lewis

  PART ONE

  ENKHUIZEN, THE NETHERLANDS

  * * *

  January 1912

  1

  MINKE HEARD HIS velvety voice downstairs; the visitor from Amsterdam must have arrived. Sander DeVries was his name. A wealthy man, according to rumor, and a distant relative, although in the Netherlands everyone was a distant relative. He owned a ship or ships or something. He had children older than Minke and a wife who was dying. This was what she knew.

  She lay on the floor peering down the ladder to the entry of the kitchen. Her mother’s high-pitched laugh betrayed nervousness. Her older sister, Fenna, who at sixteen had the most commanding voice, asked for his coat and scarf, inviting him to sit. Her father cleared his throat. In town, everyone would be talking about this visit. A stranger in Enkhuizen was an event.

  She swung her feet around and descended the ladder to the middle rung, where she hung on, leaning forward to catch a glimpse of him. She was supposed to stay out of sight because Fenna had already laid claim to the position he was expected to offer. Fenna was the thicker, stronger of the two sisters. Fenna with her certainty and coarse sense of humor had the stomach for a dying woman.

  In his lovely, smooth voice, Meneer* DeVries spoke of his automobile, the icy condition of the roads, and the stale smell of the sea here in Enkhuizen and his regret that over the years their families had not been closer. In that silken voice, he explained it was his Elisabeth’s idea that one of the van Aisma girls be asked to come. Elisabeth was, as they knew, of course, the daughter of Papa’s much older cousin, Klara, a name Minke recognized as that of the woman whose funeral she had attended in Leeuwarden fi
ve years earlier. Meneer’s voice became grave. “This is work for a person of great patience,” he said.

  “I’m patient,” Fenna said quickly.

  “And what of the other girl?” He was talking about her! She stepped quietly down the ladder to peek into the parlor. He sat at the family table, facing in her direction, his fingers drumming the wooden surface, surrounded by Fenna, Mama, and Papa.

  “Well, here’s the other one!” Minke realized he was talking to her, that the conversation had stopped, that he’d caught her spying. Feeling her face redden, she entered the room. He stood, his chair scraping against the floor. He was as tall as her father, who was himself the tallest man in town. But where Papa was rail-thin, Meneer DeVries had the powerful look of an athlete. He had ginger-colored hair and mustache, and a chiseled, handsome face.

  Why, Minke wondered, noticing for the first time, had their mother ever allowed Fenna to wear that outgrown dress for company? The dress was so tight at the waist and the bodice that Fenna’s breasts strained against the material. Fenna cared nothing for her looks. Her hair was the same white-blond as Minke’s but lacked luster. Her blue eyes bulged slightly, and her skin was ruddy from sunburn. She twitched with annoyance at Minke’s intrusion.

  “Please.” Meneer DeVries pulled his chair from the table. He stared at Minke so intently that she thought something was expected from her, but she could not think what. “Do sit down,” he said, not taking his eyes from her. She glanced for permission at Mama, who shrugged in confusion. The visit was not going as Mama had expected.

  “I’m going to Amsterdam with Meneer DeVries.” Fenna’s voice held an edge.

  Mama laughed again from nerves. She badly wanted this job for Fenna, who was trouble in the household. In fact, Minke wanted her gone as well and felt guilty for it, but it had been difficult going through school in Fenna’s wake. Doing anything in Fenna’s wake. The boys expected Minke to be loose. The girls kept their distance. Better for Fenna to be far away in Amsterdam.

  Minke slipped into the empty chair Meneer had offered, not knowing what else to do with herself.

  “Thank our guest, Minke,” Mama said, and Minke tipped her face to him and said in a near whisper, “Thank you, Meneer DeVries.”

  “So, Minke, is it?” he said. “That’s a very pretty name.”

  She looked down at her lap. She had been told to stay out of the parlor today, and here she was drawing the attention.

  “And you would be the elder sister?”

  “She’s younger,” Fenna said.

  He considered this a moment, then paced about the table, his hands locked behind his back. He stopped behind Fenna. “Fenna, you’re very like my Elisabeth. Two peas in a pod.” Fenna beamed. She could be cute in an impish way when she smiled. “But that is why I am now glad to meet your sister.”

  No one said anything. It didn’t exactly make sense. Minke had nothing to do with this arrangement. Meneer DeVries shut his eyes and canted his face toward the ceiling. It was a complete change in mood, as though just the mention of his ill wife had overcome him. His massive hands landed on Fenna’s shoulders. “My wife is a strong-willed woman, and I suspect that you too are strong-willed.”

  “I am,” Fenna said, and Minke wondered how he knew that so quickly.

  He shook his head. “Such a combination won’t succeed. In the company of a strong-willed woman, my wife will fight, refuse medicine, disobey. In her final days, she needs a quieter soul. I see this quality in Minke; it is Minke who should come.”

  Fenna whipped around and gripped his hands as if laying claim. “But that’s not fair,” she said. “It’s been decided!”

  “That’s precisely right,” Meneer DeVries said. “I have decided.”

  “Mama?” Minke felt utter confusion.

  “Meneer DeVries, are we to understand this correctly? That you’ve decided against Fenna in favor of Minke to nurse your wife?” Mama asked.

  Meneer DeVries nodded and withdrew his hands from Fenna’s grip.

  “This wouldn’t have happened if you’d stayed upstairs like you were supposed to,” Fenna said.

  “It’s not my fault,” Minke said.

  “She gets everything she wants, and she always has,” Fenna said to Mama. “You and Papa always favor her over me.”

  Oh, she could make Minke so angry with that old, utterly false complaint. Fenna had always ruled the roost with her demands and tantrums. Mama and Papa spent so much time worrying over her that Minke sometimes felt invisible.

  “Fenna, we meant for you to have the post.” Mama was as red as a beet.

  “And anyway, I don’t even—” Minke began but stopped herself. Want it, she was going to say. Taking care of a sick woman held no appeal for her. She addressed Meneer DeVries. “Fenna would do a very good job for you, Meneer.”

  “She’s far too spirited for the work, as I suspected.”

  “Papa, do something,” Fenna implored.

  Papa opened his hands in resignation.

  Meneer DeVries, still standing behind Fenna, patted her cheeks lightly with both hands. “There, there,” he said. “I am terribly sorry this upset you, but it’s such a delicate matter with Elisabeth.” Fenna was quiet from then on, following Meneer with her eyes as he discussed with Mama and Papa the payment arrangements.

  MINKE MADE THE journey with Meneer DeVries in his shiny yellow car. “A Spijker,” he said. The car’s heater blasted against her feet, which swelled painfully in her tight boots. She stared straight ahead, excited by the terrific speed, terrified when Meneer DeVries slammed on the brakes behind horses and carts. He pulled levers and adjusted knobs. He spun the wheel, and she couldn’t take her eyes from his wonderful honey-colored gloves. Noticing that she was admiring them, he splayed the fingers of both hands and said, “Pigskin. The supplest of leathers.”

  Just then the car slid sideways, tipped sharply to the right, and came to a heaving stop, followed by utter silence.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. It was her fault for distracting him. They’d gone off the road and landed in the drainage ditch at such an angle that outside her window she could see only snow and outside his window, only sky.

  He stared at the wheel as if in disbelief and, with great effort, pushed open the door, which fell back against him from gravity; he finally managed to squeeze through and trudged up the embankment, where she could see his bottom half pacing up and down the road. She never should have come. It was a mistake, and already he no doubt hated her for causing this accident. She didn’t even know if she’d have the strength to climb out as he had. Fenna would have been able to. Indeed, Fenna would already be outside doing something. Running down the road for help, shouting out orders even. Meneer DeVries’s face appeared in the open window. “You steer the car and I’ll push.”

  Before she knew what was happening, he was reaching in through the window to pull her—drag her, really—from the passenger side into the driver’s seat while she scrambled to get her feet under her somehow, an almost impossible task given her heavy coat, the confined space, and levers that stuck out every which way.

  When she was behind the wheel, he gave her a lesson, if you could call it that. He put a gloved hand first on her right leg. The pedal under that foot was for the gas, and gas was what moved the car. Everybody knew that much, even people without cars. Then he laid his hand on her left leg. That pedal was called the clutch, and she was supposed to let it out slowly while pushing down on the gas at the same time to engage the gear so the car would go forward.

  It went forward all right, with a violent lurch and a terrible grinding sound before it stopped cold. Meneer turned the crank at the front of the car so she could try again. The exertion made his face glisten with sweat.

  She tried again and again, tears running down her cheeks in frustration and feeling less capable each time. But on perhaps the sixth try, something felt different. Just as her feet passed each other on the pedals, there came a feeling both soft and solid, and sh
e knew to push on the gas pedal just a hair at first, and a split second later, to press it to the floor. The car jumped up the embankment almost to the road before coming to a stop with the same awful grinding sound as before. But they were free. She’d done it. Meneer was still in the ditch, with an exultant smile on his face, his lovely camel-hair coat splattered, his gloves blackened from wet snow. For the remainder of the trip—even though he was sloppy with mud and the car stank of wet wool—he beamed at her. “Well, well,” he said. “I see I selected a very capable girl.”

  SHE HAD BEEN to Amsterdam once as a child but had little memory of its many converging streets, or the wide canals that threaded the city, so much deeper and darker than the canals at home. The Spijker came to a stop next to a canal at a row of stone houses, twice as high as the houses at home and all with hoisting beams and splendid facades that came to high peaks decorated in scrollwork.

  At home, the houses had only a front and a back door, and the front door stayed shut except for weddings and funerals. But this house had two doors side by side at the front. The door on the right gave onto storage for his imports, Meneer explained, opening the one on the left and ushering Minke inside. She found herself at the foot of a steep, curving staircase, illuminated by gaslight. She didn’t recognize the heavy odor but supposed it was the smell of illness.

  She followed his broad back up to a landing where she could see quickly into a parlor before he hurried her on. The shades were pulled, the room was hot, and she had the impression of a great deal of cloth-covered furniture, too much for the room. The odor was more pronounced on the landing.

  She hadn’t been afraid of what was to come until now; she didn’t know what illness his wife, Mevrouw DeVries, suffered from, what to expect or what to do. She’d heard stories of the grotesque deaths some people suffered, how they sometimes begged to die. When her uncle died, she’d seen him only afterward, tidy and sunken-faced in his coffin. And when her grandmother had become ill, she’d watched as Mama braided her hair and bathed her. Minke had never attended anyone except for Fenna, who took to her bed at the first sign of a cough.