The search for a missing boy entwines the lives of two desperate women. One seeks redemption for her sister; the other will do anything for the love of her life.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Lyn Liao Butler’s What Is Mine, which is out now.
Hope Chen and her husband are raising her nine-year-old nephew, Luca, in the wake of his troubled mother’s death. Luca finally has a safe home in a neighborhood where kids play in the streets and nobody locks their doors. Then one day, Luca and his dog disappear without a trace. Guilt-ridden, fearing the worst but praying for the best, Hope finds her imagination running wild.
Meanwhile, a woman with dangerous secrets to keep buried will do anything to protect her marriage. In one fleeting instant, it’s all within her reach. She can finally give her husband the one thing that will make him love her again.
Hope will do anything to get Luca back. The other woman will do anything to stop Hope. As Hope’s search grows more desperate and the other woman’s plans more twisted, their lives collide in an explosive battle of wits. With a boy caught in the middle, nothing on this deadly path of love and revenge is what it seems.
EXCERPT
“Now don’t you look pretty in the sunlight?” His voice was light, and his tone sounded as if talking to an animal or a small child.
Who was he talking to? Placing a hand on the fence, she looked for breaks in the wood so she could peer into her neighbor’s yard. A part of her couldn’t believe she was skulking around like this, as if she was playing Nancy Drew, girl detective. She was a grown woman, for heaven’s sake. What was she doing, frolicking in here, being eaten alive by bugs? Yellow jackets buzzed around her and then she saw a spot where the wood had separated. Putting an eye to the space, she stared into Mr. Alden’s yard.
It took her a moment to figure out what she was looking at. But then she saw Mr. Alden’s form hunched over something on the ground of the small concrete patio. His back was to her and she strained forward trying to see what it was. She lost her balance and fell against the fence heavily, causing a thump.
Shit.
Hope froze, sure that Mr. Alden had heard and was now on his way to investigate. But when she pressed her eye to the opening again, she saw that he was still talking to whatever was on the ground and didn’t appear to have heard anything. For once, she was thankful for the fact that he was slightly deaf and hadn’t realized she was lurking on the other side of his privacy fence.
It was almost enough to make her turn around and go back to her house. But she couldn’t. She had to make sure Mr. Alden didn’t have Luca. Once she saw with her own eyes, then she could apologize to him for suspecting him. Better to eat humble pie than to ignore her instincts and be sorry later.
Peering through the small opening, she watched as Mr. Alden picked up whatever it was. His back was still to her, so she couldn’t see what he was doing, but whatever he was holding wasn’t very big. Too small to be a child. Just when Hope was admonishing herself for being suspicious of their kindly neighbor, Mr. Alden suddenly lifted his head and froze, one ear cocked as if he’d heard something.
Hope’s cell phone was ringing in the back pocket of her shorts. The ringer was on low, so the chiming notes of the ring tone she’d assigned to Shaun was no more than the tinkle from a music box. But in that instant, it seemed like every creature in the woods had gone silent and every living thing was focused on the ringing coming out of Hope’s rear end. Mr. Alden turned his head in her direction and her breath caught in her chest.
