What if everything you’ve ever loved, ever known, ever believed to be true…just disappeared?
From the Publisher: “What would you do if you woke up one morning in a life you didn’t recognize…or, at least, not entirely? That’s the tantalizing premise at the heart of Kelley McNeil’s stunning debut novel, A Day Like This. Following a car accident, Annie Beyers wakes up in a life that’s vaguely similar to the one she remembers living, but with some major differences. Her beautiful daughter, Hannah, apparently never existed, and she’s now separated from her once-loving husband. Their beloved rustic farmhouse in Upstate New York was left behind for a sleek loft in New York City. And she’s now a famous artist, a dream she put aside when she had her daughter five years earlier.
But Annie knows Hannah isn’t a figment of her imagination. She has five years of memories as a mother, as a wife. She knows things she couldn’t possibly know otherwise—the name of her daughter’s school and the lyrics to children’s TV theme songs and the distinct smell of her daughter’s brand of baby shampoo. But how can she explain the other things she shouldn’t know but does, like the code to her apartment building’s front door or the exact cabinet in which she keeps the coffee mugs—an apartment she’s certain she’d never been to before?
Gorgeously written and page-turning, A Day Like This is an affecting family drama with a hefty dose of emotional suspense. When I’d turned the last page, I couldn’t help but to wonder: What would I do if I woke up in a different today? And how hard would I fight to get back the life I remembered?” —Alicia Clancy, Editor
More Info About the Author: Kelley McNeil is the author of the novel, A Day Like This. A native of Pittsburgh, she spent a number of years living in the Catskills region of New York. These days you can find her in South Florida with her family most of the time, and in London the rest of the time. Find more at www.kelleymcneil.com or follow her on Instagram at @kelleylmcneil.
Author Site “…fresh and absorbing.” —Booklist
“Masterfully crafted and wonderfully original, A Day Like This is storytelling at its best, leaving you with the tingly what-if feeling that keeps you wondering about the story and the possibilities for your own life long after the last page is turned.” —Suzanne Redfearn, #1 Amazon bestselling author of In an Instant
“Kelley McNeil has woven a fascinating tale that kept me guessing all the way through, surprising me at every turn. A wonderful, fast-paced read.” —Barbara O’Neal, author of When We Believed in Mermaids
“When we fantasize about different paths we might have taken, we usually think about how our lives would be better—but how much would we have lost to arrive there? In her gorgeous debut, Kelley McNeil explores the question of ‘what if’ through a brilliant premise that kept me captivated hour after hour. This book is bursting with heartache and love, and with tremendous empathy for its genuine and likable characters—including a beloved house. A Day Like This is smart, poignant, and poetic, the story itself like the main character’s life, a blossom that unfolds in fascinating layers.” —Glendy Vanderah, bestselling author of Where the Forest Meets the Stars and The Light Through the Leaves
“Intriguing and moving, A Day Like This is the compelling story of one woman’s search for the truth. You’ll feel every beat of Annie’s heartache and longing as, driven by love and loss, she works to uncover the clues to her past. Tender, evocative, and hard to put down, this is the perfect read for anyone who has ever wondered how a different life choice might have played out.” —Holly Miller, author of The Sight of You
“The best books are those that force us into another’s shoes, into their joys and sorrows, their loves and their losses. Kelley McNeil’s A Day Like This is one of those books. A thoughtful tale rich in both question and possibility, plumbing the mysteries of diverging paths, roads not taken, and the journey toward self-acceptance. This beautiful debut is guaranteed to echo long after the last page is turned.” —Barbara Davis, bestselling author of The Last of the Moon Girls
CHAPTER ONE
I reached down to snip a couple of fat lilac blooms from the lower branches, just as a chill hit my shoulders. The sun had been high and bright in the earlier, midafternoon sky, but puffy white dots had given way to dense gray clouds that reminded me of towering medieval castles floating along an invisible river. If I looked long enough, I could almost see dark turrets in them and imagine an army gathering inside the fortress, prepared to attack. Clouds were bigger in this sky than in other places, here under the giant blue dome above my hayfield home. The breeze picked up, blowing strands from my ponytail loose so they lashed in tiny pinpricks at the corners of my eyes.
I marveled at the sight of the purple stems in my hand. The first thing I’d done after planting the lilacs seven years ago was apologize to them. It was only fair, because if anything was certain, it was that the spindly little stems were not in good hands and would never grow. If there were an opposite of a green thumb, it was mine, and they didn’t stand a chance. It gave us a good laugh, and Graham had performed a comical eulogy for the poor things. I’d sprinkled water over the seedlings and wished them well.
Lilacs were kind of a thing for me. When I was a child, there had been tall lilac bushes near my house, growing wild and mostly unkempt throughout an otherwise gray city neighborhood. They hovered at the edges of cracked sidewalks, overgrown weedy things ignored by just about everyone until they created an aggravating blind spot at the end of a driveway or scratched at a window, at which point they were trimmed back, or cut down altogether, leaving an unsightly trunk of tough brown sticks poking out of the ground—too difficult to remove without considerable effort. But in the springtime, their fragrance perfumed the air with sunshine, while giant blossoms of pale purple and white dotted the bushes in the dozens, promising the arrival of long summer days.
The old neighborhood grouch at the end of the street once caught me with a pair of scissors, reaching up on tiptoes to snip off a few stolen blooms. When she yelled at me to get out of her yard, I wondered why she cared. After all, there was a grimy plastic grocery bag stuck in the branches and shards of broken bottle glass on the ground beneath it. But people were funny about their yards. I’d clutched the flowers tighter and taken off running. Once home, I hoisted myself up onto the counter to retrieve a glass, filled it with water, closed my eyes to breathe in the scent, and placed the treasured flowers in a makeshift vase as a gift for my mother. The flowers had forever reminded me of clean sheets and fresh air and hope.
When Graham and I bought this place, we nicknamed it the Yellow House after the color of the wooden siding, and then spent a considerable amount of time standing on all sides of it, heads cocked to one side, imagining where on earth to start. There was no landscaping to speak of, and when a house sits on ten acres in the middle of an endless field, you really tend to notice such a thing. A white porch spanned the entire front of the house, and from its perch atop a hill, one could enjoy the kind of view that photographers dream of. Like a number of thirtysomethings at the time, we’d left city life in Manhattan to try our hand at life in the country in Upstate New York. Not a hobby farm, exactly, but perhaps inspired by the romantic notion of one. Trouble was, we didn’t know a single thing about old houses or big land. But our timing was good, it seemed—the house had been vacant for a number of years, and the grown children of the previous owners had been eager to get it off their hands. Plus, it was 2007 and they were doling out mortgages like free candy.
So, after handing over the majority of our savings and signing the closing papers, we were the proud owners of a house that looked like it had been drawn from childhood dreams with a box of crayons—a little bit crooked, but perfectly so. The day we signed the closing papers, the first things we’d purchased were items we’d spotted at a roadside stand that sold vegetables, used furniture, and odds and ends. We bought two wooden rocking chairs for the porch, which we painted white, and two three-dollar Styrofoam cups of tiny seedlings marked LILAC.
“It’s a sign,” I’d said to Graham, after spotting the little plants. “My favorite flower!” He’d merely raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“What? You never know,” I remember saying with an optimistic shrug. I imagined the scent of lilacs, wafting dreamily over the edges of the porch, while Graham and I passed evenings in the rocking chairs, looking out over the silos at the farm below. “How long does it take for them to bloom?” I inquired.
The old man who managed the stand wiped a tanned, grease-stained hand across his chin. “Eh, should be ’bout three, four years maybe.” Four years? I grimaced, but then Graham chuckled as he handed me the cup, which I held like a new baby. He surprised me with a kiss, smiled, then grabbed a second cup of baby lilacs before echoing my previous comment: “Hey, you never know.”
Optimism is infectious, after all.
Lilacs aren’t hard to grow. In fact, most people would put them in the weed category. They’re that easy. But my previous experiences with plants of any kind—houseplants, potted plants, vegetables—had all ended in grim death. Once when I was little, my parents had taken us on a rare weekend outing to a farm that grew acres of corn, tomatoes, and a dozen other fruits and vegetables. The farmer wore full denim overalls and let kids help with shucking corn, the scent of corn silk and tomato vines on our fingers in a place that I decided was heaven on earth. So, I felt especially bitter about the absence of the green-thumb gene in my DNA. When it came to plants, Graham told me I either loved them to death or abandoned them. Neither was good. I couldn’t even manage to grow those cheap little cactus flowers they sell at the checkout counter in discount stores. As I’d stood that first day beside my porch, holding the kitchen spoon I’d used to dig the two miniature holes, looking down at the sorry little stems, I had to genuinely feel bad. They sat no taller than two inches amid a stretch of clay soil, already blowing sideways in the unforgiving hilltop wind. I figured they’d never in a million years survive.
But somehow, they did.
Throughout that first summer, I watched with a suspicious eye as they grew a little stronger, and then stood in jaw-dropped bewilderment when I realized they’d somehow lived through a tough Catskills winter. Two years later, I was rewarded with my first, very own lilac—a small little miraculous flower. And later, in the spring after Hannah was born, I’d rocked her on the front porch for hours next to a dozen purple and white blooms. Now my home was filled with vases of miraculous springtime blossoms and the fragrance wafting in on the breeze through raised windows.
When I think back on the day that Hannah left my world, recalling the details in order, one by one, it’s always the lilacs I see first.
After I had selected a final stem, my phone chimed in my back pocket, and my shoulders dropped as I read the text message that popped up from Graham:
Flight delayed. Weather. Call you soon. xo.
As if illustrating the point in divine fashion, a raindrop plopped onto the screen, fat and splotchy. I swiped it away with my thumb just as another hit the back of my neck, surprisingly cold. I collected the blooms in my hand, along with the kitchen shears.
The front steps of the porch needed repainting. I’d noticed this every time I’d climbed them since spring had arrived, seeing the ragged chips at the edges, evidence of this year’s harsh winter’s snow and ice. We used abrasive kitty litter to prevent slipping, wincing over the paint damage each time. This was one of my jobs in the domestic-chore chart of family life—painting the porch. Graham hated the task, but I found something soothing about it. The long smooth strokes of taupe gray down the length of each wooden slat. The clean precision of the smaller brush as I painted the spindles and banisters a crisp cotton white. In previous years, planters would be filled with purple and yellow pansies, and the cushions would be brought out of the garage and placed on the porch swing.
I went inside and walked straight through the kitchen, opening the double French doors at the back of the house.
“Hannah,” I called. “Time to come in. It’s about to rain, sweetie!” Swinging under the great canopy of the oak tree, she probably hadn’t felt any drops yet. My daughter pumped her bare feet and swung higher with glee, flashing a wide, proud grin. She bravely let go with one hand and attempted a split-second wave, and I clapped my hands. She’d been born with a full head of dark brown hair the same color as mine, except that hers had grown like Rapunzel’s—the nickname she quickly earned from well-intentioned if not somewhat grating distant aunts and uncles, seen on holidays twice a year. Her hair was now nearly down to her waist, and as she swung, it flew through the air behind her like a magical cape of childhood innocence, a scene playing out in my mind in exaggerated slow motion. The swing had come with the house, charming me in an instant with its old-fashioned design—two thick ropes and a solid slat of wood, hanging from sturdy branches.
The initials H.B. were carved in the middle of a lopsided heart in the center of the seat, etched by Graham the week Hannah was born. Hannah Beyers.
The clouds were darker behind the house than they had been in the front and were now moving with angry intention, the troops unleashed. “Come on, sweetie,” I called again. “Snack time.” She nodded and began to slow. A rumble of thunder filled the air, rolling across the field of timothy hay blowing in waves. Hannah startled, tapping her feet across the dirt and hopping off the swing with a quickness that only a good fright can inspire. She ran in clipped little steps that threatened a stumble. “Take your time, sweetie. It’s not here yet.”
She darted in with wide eyes, huffing a relieved giggle when she dived into my arms. “Where’d the sun go!” she chirped.
“Sure disappeared fast, huh? Ready for a snack?”
She nodded tiredly, panting as she scooted up onto the kitchen chair. She perched on a booster seat, wearing a pink tutu with a white tank top that had a spot of orange juice on it from the morning. A plastic lei dangled around her neck, and a rhinestone tiara accented with hot-pink feathers sat nestled in her hair. I tickled her bare toes where they dangled beneath the table as she dipped an apple slice into peanut butter and twirled it around. I set a plastic Tangled cup of milk next to her and sneaked a hand around her to snatch a carrot for a loud, crunchy bite in her ear. This ritual usually elicited a giggle, but she rested her head on her fist and pushed the carrots and apples around on her plate with a lazy finger that made my eyes narrow a bit in concern.
Keeping an eye on her, I went to the sink and ran the water, trimming the lilac stems at an angle beneath the stream. The usually bright kitchen had grown darker with the clouds, and just as I turned away from the window, I thought I saw a shadowy dark figure of a woman standing by the tree from the corner of my eye. I stopped short, the hairs raised on the back of my neck, and swallowed. I glanced over to see Hannah watching the tree, as well. After a moment I looked back, slowly peering through the dripping raindrops on the glass as I held my breath, listening to the sound of my heart pounding in my chest.
She was still there.
Or was she? It was hard to tell.
The rain dripped, making the image dance, and then it was just the tree and swing. No one there. It was just my imagination, surely brought on by the storm, I told myself. I shook my head free of the unsettling image and picked up the purple blooms with quivering hands. The ceramic pitcher that was normally beside the sink was missing, so I tossed the last grains of coffee from a can, filled it with water, and placed them inside, their calming fragrance already filling the room.
I looked over at Hannah again, wilting a little in the chair. “Not hungry? Want something else?” I asked.
She shook her head limply. I set the flowers in the center of the table, and another clap of thunder sounded, just as rain began in earnest, tapping hard now against the windows. “You feeling okay, kiddo?” I set my hand on her forehead and frowned. “Uh-oh, I think you have a fever, sweetie.” I placed the back of my hand gently onto her cheek, and she peered up at me. Her blue eyes had taken a hint of downward gray into them, a telltale sign when she was sick. I smoothed her hair back from her face just before my phone rang on the table. I pressed the speaker button.
“Hey, honey.”
“Hey, bad news,” Graham said.
“Oh no. Let me guess . . .” I’d been checking the weather in Atlanta throughout the day. “The flight was canceled because of storms up north.”
My shoulders slumped and I again looked outside. “No, you have to be joking. There’s nothing?”
“Afraid not. I’m trying to get on a flight first thing in the morning, but it’s chaos here.”
“Hi, Daddy,” Hannah chimed in with a small voice.
“Hi, pumpkin. How’s my girl?”
“Good,” she said weakly.
“You guys all right?” he asked.
“I think our girl’s got a fever.” I took the thermometer from the cabinet and placed it in her mouth.
“Under your tongue,” I reminded her with a wink.
“What? How’s that even possible?” Hearing the stress in his voice, I switched off the speaker and picked up the phone.
“She just finally got over that awful cold on Tuesday,” he added.
“I know. But you know how it goes. It probably went to her ears again.” I cradled the phone against my shoulder.
“Sweetie, do your ears hurt?”
“A little. This one.” She tugged. I made a sad face and tickled her cheek.
Graham was quiet for a few moments. “Not exactly how we planned this weekend. I’m so sorry, honey.”
I sighed, my eyes welling. “No. Not at all.”
“Well hey, look. We’ll still have tomorrow night, right? I think the weather’s supposed to clear up. We’ll have dinner on the porch, and I’ll take my best girls for ice cream.”
I smiled a little. “Sounds perfect.” An electronic beep sounded and I read the display. “Her temperature is 101.7.” I glanced at the clock. “It’s four o’clock on a Friday, and she’s probably going to need an antibiotic. Doctor closes at five . . .” I rustled through a basket of medicines, locating the children’s ibuprofen, poured the dose, checked it, then handed it to Hannah.
“Here you go,” I whispered, brushing a finger across her chin.
“Think they’ll squeeze her in?” Graham asked.
“On a Friday afternoon? I don’t know. Hopefully. If I call right this second and get lucky.”
“We don’t want to wait until Monday. Maybe he’ll call something in without you having to go.”
“Not likely.”
“All right, I’m gonna let you go. Call me as soon as you leave the doctor, okay?”
“Will do, promise.”
“Oh wait, real quick . . . did the roof guy come today? Did you get the estimate?”
I had hoped he wouldn’t ask. “He did.”
“And?”
“Same as before, unfortunately.”
“I thought for sure this one would come in lower,” Graham said solemnly.
“I know. Me too.”
“Okay. It was worth a shot, I guess. Last ditch effort.”
I heard the airport announcing flight information in the background of the call. “I’m so sorry you’re having a miserable travel day. I hope you have an okay night.”
He groaned. “Thanks. Me too.”
“Can’t wait to see you,” I said.
“I know. I miss you guys. I’ll try to get the first flight out tomorrow, but it might not be until afternoon.” He hesitated, then added, “Are you going to be all right there tonight? You could always—”
“I’ll be fine.” I peered out toward the tree again and locked the glass door.
“You sure?” I could hear the concern in his voice.
“Promise. Everything’s fine. We’re good.” The thunder clapped again and I jumped. It would be a long night.
“Okay. Well, give Hannah a kiss for me. One for you too. And try to get some sleep.”
Hannah leaned over toward the phone. “Bye, Daddy.”
“Bye, pumpkin.”
“I gotta go and see what I can get with the doctor. Love you,” I said, ending the call to speed-dial the pediatrician. “Beyers, Hannah.” I explained the symptoms to the nurse with the efficiency I’d learned over the past five years. No fluff. No opinion. Just the basics. And held my breath while she paused in deliberation . . .
“Can you be here in thirty minutes?” she asked. “Our last patient just canceled.”
As I calculated the time, my eyes darted to the clock, then to the rain now pouring in torrents outside. It was at least a thirty-five-minute drive to town on a perfect, sunny day, with no rain and no farm tractors going ten miles an hour . . . and even that was pushing it. I glanced at Hannah, who looked more miserable by the minute.
“Mrs. Beyers?” The voice on the other end was kind, but there was no messing around with appointment nurses at the pediatrician’s office.
Phone in hand, I ran to the foyer, stuffing my feet into the first pair of shoes that were handy— a muddy pair of gray clogs I normally reserved for home only.
“Uh, yes! Sorry. We can be there.” I winced, hoping for the fifteen minutes of forgiveness I’d beg for when I got there. “Thank you!” I hung up and tossed my phone, scooping Hannah onto my hip. I smoothed her hair back from her face and kissed her forehead.
“Okay, sweetie. We’ve gotta go.”
“Right now?” she whined. “Yep, I’m sorry. Right now.”
“But . . .” She yawned.
“You can take a nap in the car.” I cradled her head into the soft nook of my shoulder as I carried her. She was getting bigger now, and I sometimes wondered, as mothers do, when the last time would be that I could pick her up in my arms. “Come on, let’s get a jacket on.” I hustled to the front hall and grabbed my windbreaker and Hannah’s purple raincoat. It was dotted with a repeating pattern of tiny gray elephants splashing water from their trunks. I set her down and pulled the sleeves over her arms and then did a frantic hunt for my keys while shuffling a grumbling Hannah back toward the garage door. I threw a bag of Goldfish crackers and a juice box into my purse on the way and picked up her rain boots.
“No! I hate these! They feel sticky on my feet without socks!” Hannah kicked as I tried to slide a boot over her small foot.
“I’m sorry, sweetie. But we gotta go! And it’s wet outside, so we need boots!” My voice was full of fake bright cheer pulled tight like a wire that might snap. She looked up at me with big round eyes. I took a deep breath and knelt down. “Okay, how about this . . .” I picked up her glittery gold ballet flats and gently handed them to her. “If you wear the boots now, you can put these on when we get there. Deal?” She smiled and nodded. “Okay. Good.”
The TV was still switched on in the living room.
The lilacs sat on the table next to the browning apple slices and carrots.
My phone lay where I’d tossed it onto the sofa and forgotten it.
I’m replaying these details again, as I have a thousand times before. Over and over, I go, in the same way a detective might pore over evidence files, hoping to notice something new. What exactly was playing on the TV? Imagination Movers on the kids’ channel. How many lilac stems were on the table?? Five, I think. Was it apples and carrots? Or just apples? Definitely both. We always did both when we did peanut butter. What color toenail polish was Hannah wearing? Chipped cotton-candy pink.
Do you want more details? Because I can go on.
What song was playing while the Imagination Movers danced around in their blue and red jumpsuits as we walked out the door? “Nina’s Song.” Were there really hot-pink feathers dotting Hannah’s tiara, or was it the plain one? Feathers. Definitely. A tiny one fell off and floated to the floor just as I took it off her head. Her hair smelled of baby powder and grass.
Is that enough?
The breakfast dishes were still in the sink.
How many details does a person have to recall in order to prove they were real?
Every time the scene ends the same: with me wishing I’d let her put her gold shoes on right then, the perfumed scent of lilacs wafting in the air, and a clap of thunder just as I slammed the garage door closed.
This excerpt from A Day Like This is published here courtesy of the publisher and should not be reproduced without permission.
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