The Perfect Neighborhood by Liz Alterman


About the Book

Think you know your neighbors? Think again.

When Allison Langley leaves her former rockstar husband in the middle of the night, her sudden departure becomes the talk of Oak Hill. But the gossip comes to an abrupt halt when five-year-old Billy Barnes disappears on his walk home from kindergarten. Is there a predator lurking within the idyllic community? Or, does the child's abduction have something to do with a longtime rift between his mother and half-brother? Weeks later, three-year-old Amy-Pat Davies vanishes from her backyard. In addition to sharing a zip code, the missing children have another thing in common—their babysitter, Cassidy McLean, who has a secret of her own.

Told from multiple points of view, THE PERFECT NEIGHBORHOOD is a twisty tale of domestic suspense, which explores the damage caused by infertility and infidelity as well as the intense pressure that stems from wanting the perfect family.

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Excerpt

Rachel

For the past two months, we spoke of little other than the Langleys.

“Did you hear? She’s gone!”

“No! It can’t be true.”

“If they can’t make it work, none of us stands a chance!”

“Allison and Christopher Langley? Oh, it’s over. Totally. Someone saw him jogging with the dog. Just the two of them. That’s a first.”

“How long do you figure he’ll be alone?”

“Less than a minute. Look at him! I bet he won’t even have to set up an online dating profile.”

“How fast do you think he’ll decide to move back to the city? That house has to have, what, four bedrooms at least? And so close to the elementary school! Let me know the second he decides to sell! I know a couple who’d kill for that location.”

On and on it went for weeks as May slipped into June. Nearly everyone within a three-block radius of the Langleys’ well-maintained Colonial whispered about them over hedges, in the parks and playgrounds, while walking their dogs and toddlers around the pond in the heart of our otherwise sleepy town.

Some refused to believe it.

“The Langleys? No way!”

“I’m sure she’s just off filming another commercial. Probably somewhere fabulous. I wonder what she’s pushing this time? Toothpaste? Rental cars? What a life!”

That might have seemed plausible if Mary Alice Foster’s son, Phil, hadn’t seen Allison hurry into an Uber at four o’clock in the morning without a suitcase.

“Can we trust Phil? No disrespect, I’m just saying, he hasn’t seemed quite right since he got back.”

“Yeah, no offense, but Phil’s not exactly credible. And why is he watching their house? That’s creepy.”

Others insisted they’d seen it coming.

“I saw Allison looking teary at the drugstore a few weeks back, but I chalked it up to allergies. Trees budding and all. Show me a person whose eyes aren’t watering, right? Anyway, I said hello, and she sort of waved back. It wasn’t like we had a conversation. We didn’t really know each other. Did anyone really know the Langleys?”

“I bet she met someone else, maybe a hedge fund guy with a fat bank account.”

“Chris’s got money, doesn’t he? Royalties from that song? Wasn’t it in the background of those beer commercials? Plus, she’s probably made a bundle from those acting gigs.”

“I’m talking about private jet money. She’s what? Thirty-two? Thirty-four? Her window to bag a billionaire’s closing, and she knows it. Probably got tired of life in the ’burbs. Can you blame her?”

Finally, we were able to purge every ill-formed, mean-spirited thought we’d ever harbored about them. Neighborhood-scale vomiting. Sickening. And delicious. I was part of it too. The gossip. It was wrong yet impossible to resist. Some of us were almost rooting against them from the start. You couldn’t help it. So much to envy. Even their names—Allison and Christopher Langley—sounded clean, rich, regal.

With her thick dark hair, perfect smile, and bone structure that implied she’d still be gorgeous at eighty, everyone in the neighborhood treated her like royalty. Our very own Kate Middleton.

And him? His rock-star status, though faded, had even the most aloof mothers in Oak Hill swooning as they dropped off their budding musicians for the piano, guitar, and voice lessons he gave in the afternoons. Nannies, too, left minivans idling at the curb to walk their charges to the door for a chance to see him up close, maybe even talk to him, drink in a few sips of his voice, which carried the faintest hint of a Southern drawl, a souvenir from the years he lived in New Orleans.

 

About the Author


Liz Alterman is the author of a domestic suspense novel, The Perfect Neighborhood, a young adult thriller, He’ll Be Waiting, and a memoir, Sad Sacked. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, and other outlets. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, three sons, and two cats, and spends most days microwaving the same cup of coffee and looking up synonyms. When she isn’t writing, she’s reading.

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