And When I Die, page 1
AND WHEN I DIE
BIANCA SLOANE
Text Copyright © 2022 by Bianca Sloane
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, places, dialogue, and plot are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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ISBN: 9798357075031
V4
BOOKS BY BIANCA SLOANE
STANDALONE NOVELS
Killing Me Softly (Previously published as Live and Let Die)
Sweet Little Lies
What you don’t know
And when I die
THE EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE SERIES
Every Breath You Take
Missing You: A Companion Novella to Every Breath You Take
The Every Breath You Take Collection (Box Set of Every Breath You Take and Missing You)
THE LIVE TO TELL SERIES
Live To Tell
Tell Me A Lie
White Christmas (A Live To Tell short story)
CONTENTS
Prologue
1. Ava
2. Erica
3. Whitney
4. Carly
5. Jordan
6. Whitney
7. Lauren
8. Ron
9. Carly
10. Jordan
11. Carly
12. Erica
13. Jordan
14. Whitney
15. Ron
16. Ava
17. Carly
18. Erica
19. Whitney
20. Ava
21. Carly
22. Erica
23. Lauren
24. Ava
25. Lauren
26. Ron
27. Ava
28. Jordan
29. Lauren
30. Ava
31. Carly
32. Lauren
33. Ava
34. Ron
35. Erica
36. Ava
37. Jordan
38. Erica
39. Lauren
40. Ava
41. Carly
42. Ron
43. Jordan
44. Ava
45. Erica
46. Ava
47. Ron
48. Ava
49. Erica
50. Ron
51. Jordan
52. Ava
53. Lauren
54. Ava
55. Erica
56. Ruthie
57. Ava
58. Ruthie
59. Ron
60. Erica
61. Ava
62. Ron
63. Carly
64. Lauren
65. Jordan
66. Erica
67. Ruthie
68. Ava
69. Jordan
70. Lauren
71. Ruthie
72. Ava
73. Erica
74. Ava
75. Jordan
76. Ava
77. Erica
78. Ava
79. Ruthie
80. Ava
81. Erica
82. Ava
83. Erica
84. Ava
85. Ruthie
86. Ava
87. Detective Maggie Diehl
88. Ruthie
89. Carly
90. Detective Maggie Diehl
91. Ava
92. Erica
93. Ruthie
94. Erica
SATURDAY
95. Whitney
96. Erica
97. Whitney
98. Erica
99. Ruthie
100. Ava
101. Erica and Ruthie
102. Carly
103. Ava
104. Kimberly
Author’s Note
Author’s Note II
Want more AND WHEN I DIE?
Acknowledgments
Books By Bianca Sloane
About the Author
PROLOGUE
So, this is how she dies.
She’s sixteen. She doesn’t think about how she’ll die. She thinks about what color to paint her nails. What she’ll wear to Skip Lane’s party next weekend and whether Mikey Gold will notice. Her English comp paper on The Scarlet Letter that’s due in four days and how she’s only halfway through the book. SATs, college, being a lawyer, or maybe a fashion designer. A husband—a cute one—kids—also cute—and a big, beautiful house.
Those are the things she thinks about.
She doesn’t think about how she’ll die.
She knows she will. Die, that is. Everyone dies. Like her Grandma Joanne who had a heart attack last fall at the age of sixty-five. Or Mrs. Lupico, her fifth-grade teacher, who died from breast cancer two years ago. Or the really bad car accident Stacy Keaton’s dad was in the year they turned twelve.
No one she knows has ever been viciously stabbed to death.
With each gasping breath, her lungs swell with blood. Blood coats her eyes. Blood pounds in her ears. Blood streaks down the length of her hands. Blood runs from the strands of her hair like rain.
Through the haze of blood, she sees a house. A white house with black shutters, a red door, and a light in the window. A house where there’ll be people. At least she won’t be found in the street. At least her parents won’t have to wait too long to find out what happened to her.
At least she won’t die alone.
She blindly zigs and zags toward the white house with black shutters and a red door. She staggers up the front walk and commands the heavy brick of her hand to pummel the red door, ready to beg whoever is on the other side to let her in.
The door swings open to reveal a woman. A horrified, shrieking woman in a beautiful, shimmering white silk blouse. At least she thinks it’s silk. She falls against the horrified, shrieking woman in the beautiful white silk blouse, hoping the blouse wasn’t her favorite. The woman screams orders at someone and she feels the two of them sink to the floor. The woman in the beautiful, shimmering white silk blouse cradles her, tries to hold the chasm in her chest together with one hand as she claims help is on the way, if she’ll just hold on.
It’s a nice thought. Holding on. Being saved. It’s a thought the horrified, shrieking woman in the beautiful, shimmering white silk blouse needs to cling to. It’s not a thought she herself can clutch at. There’s no point.
Because this is how she dies.
1
AVA
Ava Ewing tapped her index finger against the steering wheel as she glanced out the driver’s side window, her eyes peeled for her daughter. The harsh yellow-white glare of the late afternoon, late September sun blasted into the car like a cannon. She looked at her watch for the third time in a minute, her brain plowing through the details of the conference call she was leading in a half hour.
She should have let Carly catch a ride home with one of her teammates. A day like today was one more reason why, trite and selfish though it may have been, she missed her son, Jimmy, being at college, because she could have had him pick up his sister after school.
She was feeling guilty, she supposed, which is why she’d insisted at breakfast she’d pick Carly up after practice, even though it meant taking a bite out of her work from home day. Ava had been home approximately five out of the last thirty days. This after-practice pickup was her woeful attempt at spending a few stolen minutes with her child. It was pitiful really, since she’d be back on her laptop after dinner, then up at five tomorrow to be in the office by seven thirty.
And soon, Carly would be sixteen, getting her license and a car all in one day. She’d passed the written test six months ago and had shown herself to be a diligent, easygoing driver. She and Kyle had already picked out the seven-year-old BMW they were going to give their daughter on the big day. A shiny new ticket to freedom.
She’d be lucky to see Carly at all.
Ava sighed and looked out the window again, relieved to see her daughter emerge through the gates of the football field in what looked to be semi-serious conversation with her pom squad teammate, Whitney Dean. It wasn’t hard to miss the naked adoration on Carly’s face as she listened to Whitney, the girl with all the boxes checked for “Most.” Beautiful. Talented. Congenial. Outgoing. Confident. Intelligent. “Most Likely to Succeed” stamped across her forehead in bold red ink. Both girls were laden with sparkly maroon and silver pom-poms, water bottles, protein bars, duffel bags, and purses that cost more than the rickety green Pinto Ava had bought with her babysitting money when she was sixteen. Ava wrinkled her nose as her daughter finished off the last of her protein bar, crumpling the silver wrapper in her hand and shoving it in the side pocket of her duffel bag. Her daughter used to turn her nose up at them, calling them gross and weird. But since Whitney Dean lived off them, so too must Carly. In
Ava’s eyes narrowed behind her sunglasses as she watched Whitney’s free hand slice through the air as she explained something of clearly vital importance to Carly, given how solemn her daughter looked as she hung on every syllable.
It baffled Ava, this unyielding fascination with Whitney.
Then again, Carly was a puzzle whose pieces Ava was convinced she’d never put together.
She’d never understand Carly, because she’d never been like Carly. Endlessly lacking in confidence, no matter how many wins she scored, prone to idol worship and following the crowd. The classic people pleaser.
Nothing at all like Ava. At forty-seven years old, Ava wasn’t much different than she’d been at sixteen, because even then, she hadn’t really given a shit. She’d always kept her nose clean or as her Aunt Matty would say, stayed on the right side of righteous. Ava was one of those women almost stubbornly free of vanity, inclined toward throwing on what was clean and close, cheap and easy. She dutifully went to the salon every six weeks to trim the wild curls of her mostly dark mane, resisting her stylist’s suggestion she color the few sprigs of gray sprouting from her temples, or the wiry strands woven into the back. She washed her face with the Noxzema of her youth and covered it in drugstore makeup. Her bottom teeth were crooked, a slow failure of the braces she’d worn all through junior high. Even though her dentist told her that new technology could permanently fix the problem, she’d decided not to care.
Ava’s one acquiescence to vanity were her mind-numbingly expensive clothes, in particular, the rows of designer suits populating her closet, worn not just because that’s what was expected of a senior VP at a global consulting firm, but because they were well made and lasted a near lifetime. Because wearing a suit required no mental gymnastics about what matched and what didn’t. She didn’t have the time or patience to stand in her closet for a half hour each morning dithering about which blouse went with which skirt.
Which made her own daughter’s slavishness to such impulses hard to stomach.
Since she came screaming into this world, Caroline Gene Ewing had been a pretty little girl. Very pretty. Large, luminous dark eyes, shiny black hair, button nose, and round, glowing cheeks. Then, geeky adolescence visited with a vengeance, depositing an explosive case of acne, her mother’s warped teeth, and frizzy hair in its wake.
Whitney and Carly had been playmates as children, attending the same skating parties, ballet lessons, and tumbling classes. However, once gawky puberty descended, Carly seemingly fell out of Whitney’s orbit. It’s not that Carly became an outcast—she was well-liked with a good number of friends, if the amount of sleepovers and skating parties she was invited to were any indication. However, pretty, glossy girls flocked together and Carly was no longer considered pretty or glossy.
The next shift came at the start of sophomore year, with geeky adolescence slinking away, leaving behind glowing skin and envy-inducing straight white teeth in its wake (hopefully the braces worked better for Carly than they had for Ava). Whitney and her crew took notice, and Carly was back in, receiving invitations to hang out and engage in incessant, obsessive texting, messaging, and chatting and whatever other forms of non-verbal communication teenagers subjected themselves to these days. Whitney had even encouraged Carly to try out for one of the open slots on the pom squad at the end of last year.
It worried Ava, this hero worship of Whitney Dean. Putting someone like Whitney on a pedestal could be problematic. The truth is, Ava needed to do a better job of keeping on top of Carly, or, do her best to in between jetting to London for weeks at a time and quick overnights to New York.
There were times when Ava wondered if the lifestyle was worth it, if they should have opted for simpler careers, a less pretentious existence. They’d moved to Lake Forest, just north of Chicago, when Jimmy was three, Carly on the way. Ava tamped down her jitters about being one of a handful of Black families in this old money suburb, populated by slender, seventy-something blond-bobbed women with gargantuan gold Rolexes affixed to their knobby wrists, the hems of their skinny white jeans hovering far north of their veiny ankles, cashmere cardigans tossed carelessly across their tanned, freckled shoulders. She allowed herself to get swept up in Kyle’s confidence they were doing right by their little family, giving their kids every advantage, allowing them the room to thrive like sunflowers. The kind of posh, idyllic childhood Kyle had enjoyed in the English countryside. The kind of place where mildly paunchy dads piled their sticky-faced children into shiny red wagons and hauled them to town on balmy Saturday afternoons for dripping cones from the local ice cream parlor. The type of town where quartets of teen girls in matching tennis whites and bopping ponytails hogged sidewalks as they stalked toward Starbucks and waiting lattes. The kind of Rockwellian wonderland where an American flag proudly billowing in front of your house was as much of a requirement as a mailbox. Where every corner boasted the tasteful brick facades of financial institutions promising wealth management if you simply came in and said hello.
In Lake Forest, you weren’t trying to keep up with the Joneses because you were the Joneses.
Her daughter glanced at her out of the corner of her eye and Whitney turned and started walking, still talking, Carly jogging to keep up with her. Whitney stopped in front of the car, smiled at Ava, and waved. Ava nodded and waved back as the teammates said their goodbyes before Whitney caught up with Madison Fowler and Peyton Knowles, also drowning in pom-poms and gear, one blond, one brunette, both still carrying their summer tans, both pretty and shiny, engaged in another conversation, all three ambling toward the student parking lot.
Carly lumbered over to the car and threw her gear into the back seat.
“I told you this morning you didn’t have to pick me up,” she said. “Madison could have dropped me off after Peyton and Whitney.”
“It’s no problem,” Ava murmured as she scratched her scalp through her curlsRo.
“Can I drive at least?” Carly asked breathlessly.
“That is an excellent idea,” Ava said as she unbuckled her seat belt so they could switch places.
Carly smiled and slid behind the wheel, re-positioning the seat and carefully adjusting her mirrors. She had her hand on the gear when she stopped, smiling at something that caught her attention out the window. Ava looked up to see a young guy swinging his briefcase and smoothing down what looked to be a red knit tie as he headed toward the teachers’ lot.
“Oh my God, so hot.”
“Is that one of your teachers?” Ava asked.
