Bestselling and award-winning
author Lisa Unger returns with her best novel yet. Reminiscent of the classic Strangers
on a Train, Confessions on the 7:45 is a riveting psychological thriller
that begins with a chance encounter on a commuter train and shows why you
should never, ever make conversation with strangers.
Be careful who you tell your darkest secrets...
Selena Murphy is commuting home from her job in the city
when the train stalls out on the tracks. She strikes up a conversation with a
beautiful stranger in the next seat, and their connection is fast and easy. The
woman introduces herself as Martha and confesses that she's been stuck in an
affair with her boss. Selena, in turn, confesses that she suspects her husband
is sleeping with the nanny. When the train arrives at Selena's station, the two
women part ways, presumably never to meet again.
But days later, Selena's nanny disappears.
Soon Selena finds her once-perfect life upended. As she is
pulled into the mystery of the missing nanny, and as the fractures in her
marriage grow deeper, Selena begins to wonder, who was Martha really? But she
is hardly prepared for what she'll discover.
Expertly plotted and reminiscent of the timeless classic
Strangers on a Train, Confessions on the 7:45 is a stunning web of lies and
deceit, and a gripping thriller about the delicate facades we create around our
lives.
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Chapter Two
Anne
It had been a mistake from the beginning and Anne
certainly knew that. You don’t sleep with your boss. It’s really one of the
things mothers should teach their daughters. Chew your food carefully. Look
both ways before you cross the street. Don’t fuck your direct supervisor no
matter how hot, rich, or charming he may happen to be. Not that Anne’s mother
had taught her a single useful thing.
Anyway, here she was. Again. Taking it from behind, over
the couch in her boss’s corner office with those expansive city views. The
world was a field of lights spread wide around them. She tried to enjoy it.
But, as was often the case, she just kind of floated above herself. She made
all the right noises, though. She knew how to fake it.
“Oh my god, Anne. You’re so hot.”
He pressed himself in deep, moaning.
When he’d first come on to her, she thought he was
kidding – or not thinking clearly. They’d flown together to DC to take an
important client who was considering leaving the investment firm out to
dinner. In the cab on the way back to
the hotel -- while Hugh was on the
phone with his wife, he put his hand on Anne’s leg. He wasn’t even
looking at Anne when he did it, so for a moment she wondered if it was just
absent-mindedness. He was like that sometimes, a little loopy. Overly
affectionate, familiar. Forgetful.
His hand moved up her thigh. Anne sat very still. Like a
prey animal. Hugh ended the call and she expected him to jerk his hand back.
Oh! I’m so sorry, Anne, she thought he’d say, aghast at
his careless behavior.
But no. His hand moved higher.
“Am I misreading
signals?” he said, voice low.
Stop. What most people would be thinking: Poor Anne!
Afraid for her job, she submits to this predator.
What Anne was thinking: How can I use this to my
advantage? She really had been just trying to do her job well, sort of. But it
seemed that Pop was right, as he had been about so many things. If you weren’t
running a game, someone was running one on you.
Had she subconsciously been putting out signals?
Possibly. Yes. Maybe Pop was right about that, too. You don’t get to stop being
what you are, even when you try.
They made out like prom dates in the cab, comported
themselves appropriately as they walked through the lobby of the Ritz. He
pressed against her at the door to her hotel room. She was glad she was wearing
sexy underwear, had shaved her legs.
She’d given Hugh – with his salt and pepper hair, sinewy
muscles, flat abs -- the ride of his life that night. And many nights since. He liked her on top.
He was a considerate lover, always asking: Is this good? Are you okay?
Confessional: Kate and I – we’ve been married a long time. We both have –
appetites. She couldn’t care less about his marriage.
Anne didn’t actually believe in the things other people
seemed to value so highly. Fidelity – really? Were you supposed to just want
one person your whole life? Marriage. Was there ever anything more set up to
fail, to disappoint, to erode? Come on. They were animals. Every last one of
them rutting, feral beasts. Men. Women. All of society was held together by
gossamer thin, totally arbitrary laws and mores that were always shifting and
changing no matter how people clung. They were all just barely in line.
Anne neither expected nor encouraged Hugh to fall in love.
In fact, she spoke very little. She listened, made all the right affirming
noises. If he noticed that she had told him almost nothing about herself, it
didn’t come up. But fall in love with Anne he did. And things were getting
complicated.
Now, finished and holding her around the waist, Hugh was
crying a little. His body weight was pinning her down. He often got emotional
after they made love. She didn’t mind him most of the time. But the whole
crying thing -- it was such a turn off. She pushed against him and he let her
up. She tugged down her skirt, and he pulled her into an embrace.
She held him for a while, then wiped his eyes, kissed his
tears away. Because she knew that’s what he wanted. She had a special gift for
that, knowing what people wanted -- really wanted deep down – and giving them
that thing for a while. And that was why Hugh – why anyone – fell in love.
Because he loved getting the thing he wanted, even if he didn’t know what that
was.
When he moved away finally, she stared at her ghostly
reflection in the dark window, wiped at her smeared lipstick.
“I’m going to leave her,” Hugh said. He flung himself on
one of the plush sofas. He was long and elegant; his clothes impeccable,
bespoke, made from the finest fabrics. Tonight, his silk tie was loose, pressed
cotton shirt was wilted, black wool suit pants still looking crisp. Garments,
all garments – even just his tennis whites -- hung beautifully on his fit body.
She smiled, moved to sit beside him. He kissed her, salty
and sweet.
“It’s time. I can’t do this anymore,” he went on.
This wasn’t the first time he’d said this. Last time,
when she’d tried to discourage him, he’d held her wrists too hard when she
tried to leave. There had been something bright and hard in his eyes –
desperation. She didn’t want him to get clingy tonight. Emotional.
“Okay,” she said, running her fingers through his hair.
“Yeah.”
Because that’s what he wanted to hear, needed to hear. If
you didn’t give people what they wanted, they became angry. Or they pulled away.
And then the game was harder or lost altogether.
“We’ll go away,” he said, tracing a finger along her jaw.
Because of course they’d both lose their jobs. Hugh’s wife Kate owned and ran
the investment firm, had inherited the company from her legendary father. Her
brothers were on the board. They’d never liked Hugh (this was one of his
favorite pillow talk tirades, how Kate’s brothers didn’t respect him). “We’ll
take a long trip abroad and figure out what comes next. Clean slate for both of
us. Would you like that?”
“Of course,” she said. “That would be wonderful.”
Anne liked her job; when she’d applied and interviewed,
she honestly wanted to work at the firm. Numbers made a kind of sense to her,
investment a kind of union of logic and magic. Client work was a bit of a game,
wasn’t it – convincing people to part with their cash on the promise that you
could make them more? She also respected and admired her boss – her lover’s
wife -- Kate. A powerful, intelligent woman.
Maybe Anne should have thought about all of that before
she submitted to Hugh’s advances. He wasn’t the power player; she’d
miscalculated, or not run the numbers at all. She made mistakes like that
sometimes, let the game run her.
Pop thought it was a form of self-sabotage. Sometimes, sweetie, I think your heart’s not quite in it. Maybe
he was right.
“Ugh,” said Hugh, pulling away, glancing at his watch.
“I’m late. I have to change and meet Kate at the fundraiser.”
She rose and walked the expanse of his office, got his
tux from the closet, and lay it across the back of the couch. Another stunning
item, heavy and silken. She ran her fingers lovingly along the lapel. He rose,
and she helped him dress, hanging his other clothes, putting them back in the
closet. She did his tie. In his heart, he was a little boy. He wanted to be
attended to, cared for. Maybe everyone wanted that.
“You look wonderful,” she said, kissing him. “Have fun
tonight.”
He looked at her long, eyes filling again.
“Soon,” he said. “This charade can end.”
She put a gentle hand to his cheek, smiled as sweetly as
she could muster and started to move from the room.
“Anne,” he said, grabbing for her hand. “I love you.”
She’d never said it back. She’d said things like “me,
too” or she’d send him the heart- eyed emoji in response to a text, sometimes
she just blew him a kiss. He hadn’t seemed to notice, or his pride was too
enormous to ask her why she never said it, or if she loved him. But mainly, she
thought it was because Hugh only saw and heard what he wanted to.
She unlaced her fingers and blew him a kiss. “Goodnight,
Hugh.”
His phone rang, and he watched her as he answered.
“I’m coming, darling,” he said, averting his eyes, moving
away. “Just had to finish up with a client.”
She left him, his voice following her down the hall.
In her office, she gathered her things, a strange knot in
the pit of her stomach. She sensed that her luck was about to run out here. She
couldn’t say why. Just a feeling that things were unsustainable – that it
wasn’t going to be as easy to leave Kate as he thought, that on some level he
didn’t really want to, that once things reached critical mass, she’d be out of
a job. Of course, it wouldn’t be a total loss. She’d make sure of that.
There was a loneliness, a hollow feeling that took hold
at the end. She wished she could call Pop, that he could talk her through.
Instead her phone pinged. The message there annoyed her.
This is wrong,
it said. I don’t want to do this
anymore.
Just stay the
course, she wrote back. It’s
too late to back out now.
Funny how that worked. At the critical moment, she had to
give the advice she needed herself. The student becomes the teacher. No doubt,
Pop would be pleased.
Anne glanced at the phone. The little dots pulsed, then
disappeared. The girl, younger, greener, would do what she was told. She always
had. So far.
Anne looked at her watch, imbued with a bit of energy. If
she hustled, she could just make it.
Excerpted from Confessions
on the 7:45 by Lisa Unger, Copyright © 2020 by Lisa Unger. Published by
Park Row Books.
About the Author
Lisa Unger is the New
York Times and internationally bestselling author of eighteen novels,
including CONFESSIONS ON THE 7:45 (Oct. 2020). With millions of readers
worldwide and books published in twenty-six languages, Unger is widely regarded
as a master of suspense. Her critically acclaimed books have been voted
"Best of the Year" or top picks by the Today show, Good
Morning America, Entertainment Weekly, Amazon, IndieBound and
others. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Wall
Street Journal, NPR, and Travel+Leisure. She lives
on the west coast of Florida with her family.
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