Richard Montanari - The Devils Garden

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Meg Ruley, Peggy Gordijn, Jane Berkey, Christina Hogrebe, Don Cleary, and everyone on the front line at the Jane Rotrosen Agency; thanks to Kate Elton, Jason Arthur, Susan Sandon, Rob Waddington, Trish Slattery, Oli Malcolm, Jay Cochrane, Louisa Gibbs, Emma Finnigan, Lucy Beaumont, Claire Round, Chrissy Schwartz, and all at Random House UK; thanks to Darin Brannon and Tiina Fischgrund; and a special thanks to Robert Masters, Esq. of the Queens County District Attorneys Office, and Detective Rick Torelli, NYPD. As always, grazie mille di cuore, Pop.

ONE

E DEN F ALLS , N EW Y ORK F OUR Y EARS L ATER

O n the day Michael Roman realized he would live forever, five years after the last day of his life, his entire world went pink. A pastel pink at that: pink tablecloths, pink chairs, pink flowers, pink crepe banners, even a huge pink umbrella festooned in smiling pink bunnies. There were pink cups and plates, pink forks and napkins, a plate piled high with frosted pink cupcakes.

The only thing keeping the property from a listing with Candy Land Realty was the small patch of green grass barely visible beneath the maze of aluminum folding tables and plastic chairs, grass that would surely never be the same.

Then there was that other vision of green. Departing green. The money.

How much was all this costing again?

As Michael stood behind the house, he thought about the first time he had seen it, and how perfect it seemed.

The house was a three bedroom brick colonial, with buff-colored shutters and matching pilasters, set far back from the winding road. Even for the suburbs, it was isolated, perched atop a slight hill, embraced by a stand of sycamores, shielded from both the road and neighbors by a waist-high hedgerow. Behind the house was a two-car garage, a gardening shed, a wide yard with a latticework trellis. The lot gave quickly to the woods, sloping down to meet a meandering creek, which ran toward the Hudson River. At night it became eerily silent. For Michael, having grown up in the city, the change was hard to take. At first the isolation had gotten to him; Abby too, although she would never admit it. The nearest houses were about a quarter-mile in either direction. The foliage was thick, and in summer it felt like living in a giant green cocoon. Twice over the past year, when the power had gone out in a storm, Michael felt as if he was on the moon. Since that time he had stocked up on batteries, candles, canned goods, even a pair of kerosene heaters. They could probably survive a week in the Yukon if they needed to.

The clown will be here at one.

Michael turned to see his wife crossing the yard, carrying a plateful of pink frosted cookies. She wore tight white jeans and a powder blue Roar Lion Roar Columbia University T-shirt, along with a pair of drugstore flip flop sandals. Somehow she still managed to look like Grace Kelly.

Your brothers coming? Michael asked.

Be nice.

Abigail Reed Roman, thirty-one, was four years younger than her husband. Unlike Michaels working-class childhood, she had grown up on an estate in Pound Ridge, the daughter of a world-renowned cardiac surgeon. Where Michaels patience seemed at times to be nonexistent his temper usually hovered at a constant 211 degrees Fahrenheit, often rising his wife ran on an even keel. Until she was cornered. Then there were rodents in Calcutta that bowed to her ferocity. Nearly a decade as an emergency room nurse at New York Downtown Hospital will do that to you; ten years of crack heads, PCP heads, exploded lives, torn people, and broken souls.

But that was another life.

Did you frost the cake? Abby asked.

Shit, Michael thought. He had forgotten all about it, which was unlike him. Not only did he do most of the cooking in his small family, he was the go-to guy for all things baked. His Bienensticke had been known to make grown men weep. Im on it.

While jogging back to the house, dodging pink Mylar balloons, Michael thought about this day. Since moving from the city a year earlier, they had not had that many parties. When Michael was small, his parents tiny apartment in Queens seemed constantly filled with friends and neighbors and relatives, along with customers from the familys bakery, a symphony of Eastern European and Baltic languages floating over the fire escape and onto the streets of Astoria. Even in the past few years, since his meteoric rise through the district attorneys office, he and Abby found themselves hosting at least a handful of cocktail or dinner parties for well-selected political guests every year.

Here in the suburbs, though, things had slowed down, almost to a halt. Everything seemed to revolve around the girls. Although it might not have been the best career move, Michael found he didnt want it any other way. The day the girls came into their lives, everything changed.

Standing in the kitchen, ten minutes later, the cake frosted and decorated, Michael heard four little feet approach, stop.

How do we look, Daddy?

Michael spun around. When he saw his twin four-year-old daughters standing there, hand in hand, dressed in their matching white dresses with pink ribbons, of course his heart soared.

Charlotte and Emily. The two halves of his heart.

Maybe he would live forever.

B Y NOON THE PARTY was in full cacophonous swing. Eden Falls was a small town in Crane County, near the banks of the Hudson River, about fifty miles from New York City. Situated north of Westchester County and therefore further from Manhattan, and therefore more affordable to young families it seemed to boast an inordinate number of children under the age of ten.

To Michael it looked like every one of them had been invited. He wondered: How many friends can four-year-old girls have, anyway? They werent even in school yet. Did they have their own Facebook pages? Were they Twittering? Socially networking at Chuck E Cheese?

Michael surveyed the partyscape. In all there were about twenty kids and matching moms, all in some version of J. Crew, Banana Republic, or Eddie Bauer motif. The kids were a constant buzz. The moms were all standing around, cellphones at the ready, chatting softly, sipping herbal tea and raspberry acai.

At twelve-thirty Michael brought out the cake. Amid the oohhs and ahhhhs, his daughters looked concerned about something, little brows creased. Michael put the huge cake on one of the tables, got down to their level.

Does it look good? he asked.

The girls nodded in union.

We were wondering something, though, Emily said.

What, honey?

Is this organic cake?

Coming from a four year old, the word sounded Chinese. Organic?

Yes, Charlotte said. We need organic cake. And guten-free. Is this guten-free?

Michael glanced at Abby. Have they been watching the Food Network again?

Worse, Abby said. Theyve been making me Tivo reruns of Healthy Appetite with Ellie Krieger.

Michael soon realized an answer was required. He looked at the ground, the sky, the trees, again at his wife, where he found no shelter. Well, okay, I would say this cake has guten-free properties.

Charlotte and Emily gave him the fish-eye.

What I mean is, he continued, reaching into his lawyers bag of tricks. It has guten-absent characteristics.

The girls glanced at each other, in that way that twins have, a secret knowledge passing between them. Its okay, Charlotte finally said. You make good birthday cake.