We Are All the Same in the Dark - A Novel

NATIONAL BESTSELLER PEOPLE PICK OPTIONED BY SISTER PICTURES FOR TELEVISION The discovery of a girl abandoned by the side of the road threatens to unearth the long-buried secrets of a Texas town s legendary cold case in this superb, atmospheric novel from the internationally bestselling author of Black-Eyed Susans

If you only read one thriller this year, let it be this one. Psychologically absorbing, original and atmospheric. I could not turn the pages fast enough. Elin Hilderbrand, #1 New York Times bestselling author of 28 Summers

It s been a decade since Trumanell Branson disappeared, leaving only a bloody handprint behind. Her pretty face still hangs like a watchful queen on the posters on the walls of the town s Baptist church, the police station, and in the high school. They all promise the same thing: We will find you. Meanwhile, Tru s brother, Wyatt, lives as a pariah in the desolation of the old family house, cleared of wrongdoing by the police but t ried and sentenced in the court of public opinion and in a new documentary about the crime.

When Wyatt finds a lost girl dumped in a field of dandelions, making silent wishes, he believes she is a sign. The town s youngest cop, Odette Tucker, believes she is a catalyst that will ignite a seething town still waiting for its own missing girl to come home. But Odette can t look away. She shares a wound that won t close with the mute, one-eyed mystery girl. And she is haunted by her own history with the missing Tru.

Desperate to solve both cases, Odette fights to save the lost girl in the present and to dig up the shocking truth about a fateful night in the past the night her friend disappeared, the night that inspired her to become a cop, the night that wrote them all a role in the town s dark, violent mythology.

In this twisty psychological thriller, Julia Heaberlin paints unforgettable portraits of a woman and a girl who redefine perceptions of physical beau ty and strength.

Praise for We Are All the Same in the Dark

This chilling tale of buried sins is relentlessly unpredictable. The Times (South Africa)

[Julia] Heaberlin knows how to build to a truly shocking twist, how to break a reader s heart and then begin mending it. What s coming is always unimaginable, Odette s one-time therapist tells her, and by that, I mean just that. It cannot be imagined. What s coming never acts or behaves the way we think it will. That s true for this novel, too. The Dallas Morning News

Leseprobe:

Prologue


It takes about eight to ten hours to hand-dig a grave, more if you was doing it in the dark. Five to six if you have a helper. It ain t like the movies. You need more than just a spade with a good blade. You need a chainsaw for splitting the roots. A pick. Even if you don t hit rocks, you got Texas clay, which can be as bad as rocks. I always carry a measuring tape and a yardstick, because you ve got to make a hole a lot bigger than in your mind s eye. And you ve got to go deep enough that folks and animals walking by can t smell the body rotting. I d go eighteen inches of soil on top to be safe. Bottom line, if you re asking me my opinion, I don t think that Branson girl will ever be found. I never saw anything like the search for her body. Every farm. Every bit of lake property. The cops got a color-coded map and took it inch by inch, year by year, until it was all done. I ll tell you this: If that girl was buried around here, and buried fast, she was bu ried by someone who knows his dirt. That might be a farmer. That might be a person who s killed a lot.

Albert Jenkins, 66, cemetery gravedigger

Excerpt from The Tru Story crime documentary