THE LAST ONE HOME: Excerpt

March 6, 2021 | By Women Writers Women Books | Reply More

The Last One Home by Victoria Helen Stone, coming from Lake Union Publishing on 3/30,

A razor-sharp novel of suspense about the lies families tell―and those we choose to believe―by the Amazon Charts bestselling author of Jane Doe.

Lauren Abrams wants nothing to do with her damaged mother, whose spurious testimony sent Lauren’s father to prison for murder years ago. After a serial killer’s confession to the crime restored justice, Lauren chose to live with her father and grandmother. Now an adult, Lauren has come home to the Sacramento family estate for good, her mother’s lies be damned…

It’s been decades since Donna made her cheating boyfriend pay, but she hasn’t forgotten the past. She knows her estranged daughter has made a terrible mistake by returning to the estate. There’s more to the story of the welcoming old homestead―and her childhood―than Lauren knows.

As Lauren settles in, she is haunted by the questions of what really happened with her father, what her mother might be hiding, and what secrets the family ranch holds. It’s getting so dark, Lauren may not be able to see the truth to save her life.

Her dad had been released from prison when Lauren was ten, and he’d won the right to visitation within a few months. After all, he’d been considered an upstanding citizen after his conviction was wiped.

Lauren remembered the whole drama in painfully vivid detail because her mom had panicked for weeks, sure he’d try to get full custody, and Lauren had been terrified she would be sent to live with a killer. Would he have prison tattoos? Wild eyes? A dark, irresistible craving for vengeance on Lauren’s bloodline?

She and her mother had hit the road, trying to outrun the court system, but it had found them in a shitty apartment on the Strip because her mom had finally collapsed in exhaustion and filed for food stamps.

When the court order for visitation came down, her mother had drilled instructions into Lauren for too many days to count. What to do if he touched her inappropriately. What to do if she were kidnapped and hidden. How to find help if she needed it. Write down everything that happens while you’re there, even the smallest detail. I will fight this, Lauren. I’ll fight with everything I have, and I’ll use every detail you record.

But in the end, her mom’s standing in the eyes of the court had been trash. After all, she’d lied under oath and sent an innocent man to jail. The fight hadn’t lasted long. She’d run out of money, and then she’d been completely disarmed and defeated. By her own daughter.

Lauren could remember only her mother’s reactions and not her own. She could only watch those days like a film that led up to her first meeting with her father. He’d sported a huge smile and grand gestures as someone from the county had dropped her off at this very front door.

This beautiful, picturesque, fantasy front door and the fantasy family who had lived behind it.

That first night, lying in bed, scared to death of this father who was a stranger and definitely a killer . . . that night had soon dissolved and re-formed into a week of her lying in bed, worrying about returning home to her mother. Five more days. Then four. Three. Two. Then one painfully quick day before she had to head back to her mattress on the floor under that rattling window in downtown Las Vegas.

Lights flashing every minute of every night. People shouting. Hot rods revving. Walking to school on sidewalks papered with flyers of nude girls, their red lips glinting out endless promises, their printed faces scraped and torn by the broken glass littering the pavement. Men catcalling her, asking when she’d be old enough to party. And her mom always working, working, working every night.

Every visit to her grandmother’s made it harder to say goodbye, no matter where she and her mother were living at the time. Reno. Tahoe. Bakersfield. Every moment away from her mom was another countdown toward the reunion, each trip more painful than the month before.

Three years of being pulled in two, until Lauren had finally been old enough to voice her opinion to the court. “I would like to live with my father now, as I feel my life and schooling would be much safer and more stable with him than with my mother.”

It had been the right choice, but her gut still clenched with pain at the sight of her mom’s pale, stricken face in that judge’s office. Her shaking hands. Darting eyes. Clammy skin. She’d looked like a woman wishing for death. A woman betrayed in the worst possible way by her own child.

Thirteen-year-old Lauren had put her head down and waited for it to be over, and then it had been. She’d hugged her motionless mom goodbye, and she’d gone home with her dad. The end.

He’d had his own place by then. Nothing as idyllic as the ranch, but still a loving and supportive environment. The trip to buy new clothes before the school year had felt like winning the lottery. Lauren had been starting at her sixth school in three years, but for the first time she’d felt like a normal kid.

Which was quite a funny feeling for a girl living with a father who’d gone to prison for murder, but she’d thought less about that and more about the superficial clues that would show up on the radar of middle-school girls.

Her clothes were new and nice. She hadn’t cut her own bangs with a shaky hand and dull scissors. She didn’t reek of cigarette smoke. And she wasn’t transferring in two weeks before the end of the semester like some sacrificial lamb tossed into a lion’s den.

She’d made friends and found classes she loved. She hadn’t walked to school past still-drunk partiers, then come home to fend for herself in a hot apartment until 3:00 a.m. Her dad had paid for her school lunches, and she’d had money left over for a quick soda or snack after class. And she’d joined band because her dad could afford to rent a flute.

She’d been average and unremarkable, and she’d loved every moment of blending in.

The few episodes of visitation with her mom after that had been painful. Her mother had overflowed with warnings and weeping and way too many beers, her anger and paranoia foaming up uncontrollably.

Lauren wondered if she’d gotten better since then. If things had stayed the same, surely she wouldn’t still be alive. Her mother had turned seventy this year. She must have cleaned up. She couldn’t still be working the bar all night at honkytonks and nightclubs.

Her phone hadn’t rung again, so Lauren tucked it into her pocket with a little more confidence that she’d made the right choice. Her mom had called only once in two years. There was no reason to take such a drastic step and cut her off entirely. It didn’t feel fair, and Lauren had spent her whole life trying to be fair.

She gave people the benefit of the doubt. How could she not? It was a lesson she’d learned hard and early. Things weren’t always what they seemed. You couldn’t believe the worst of people.

—

Victoria Helen Stone is the Amazon Charts bestselling author of Jane Doe, which has been optioned by Sony Pictures Television, and Problem Child, as well as the critically acclaimed thrillers False Step; Half Past; and Evelyn, After. Formerly writing as USA Today bestselling novelist Victoria Dahl, she is originally from the Midwest but now writes from an upstairs office high in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. After a career in romance that included winning the American Library Association’s prestigious Reading List Award, Victoria turned toward the darker side of fiction. For more on the author and her work visit www.victoriahelenstone.com.