Lovely Wild Read online

  From New York Times bestselling author Megan Hart comes a haunting and insightful novel about a woman trying to find her place in the world…

  Brought up in the savage captivity of her unstable grandmother’s rural Pennsylvania home, Mari Calder once yearned for rescue. Now she struggles every day to function as an adult in the confines of normal society. Left with only a foggy recollection of her childhood, she’s consumed with being a dutiful wife to her husband, Ryan, and mother to their two children.

  But an unexpected twist of events returns her to that long-forgotten house in the woods. Soon, Mari is greeted with reminders of a past life, the clarified memories only inviting a new level of strangeness into her fragile world. To protect her family, she must find the beautiful, powerful strength hidden in her inner chaos. Because someone is bent on exploiting Mari’s trauma, and as normal and wild begin to blend, a string of devastating truths force Mari to question all she thought she knew.

  Praise for the novels of

  New York Times bestselling author Megan Hart

  “Hart’s beautiful use of language and discerning eye toward human experience elevate the book to a poignant reflection on the deepest yearnings of the human heart and the seductive temptation of passion in its many forms.”

  —Kirkus Reviews on Tear You Apart

  “A fantastic story that will stick with readers.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Tear You Apart

  “A tense look at dark secrets and the redemptive power of truth.”

  —Kirkus Reviews on The Favor

  “Heartfelt…the detailed physicality involved in caring for an elderly loved one is portrayed vividly and compassionately.”

  —Publishers Weekly on The Favor

  “This is a quiet book, but it packed a major punch for me…[Hart]’s a stunning writer, and this is a stunning book.”

  —Super Librarian on The Space Between Us

  “[A] haunting, devastating, heart-wrenching tale…this story will stay with you long after you reach the last page.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Precious and Fragile Things

  “Deeper is absolutely, positively, the best book that I have read in ages…the story line brought tears to my eyes more than once.… Beautiful, poignant and bittersweet…Megan Hart never disappoints.”

  —Romance Reader at Heart, Top Pick

  “Well-developed secondary characters and a compelling plot add depth to this absorbing and enticing novel.”

  —Library Journal on Broken

  Also by New York Times bestselling author Megan Hart

  FLYING

  TEAR YOU APART

  THE FAVOR

  THE SPACE BETWEEN US

  ALL FALL DOWN

  PRECIOUS AND FRAGILE THINGS

  COLLIDE

  NAKED

  SWITCH

  DEEPER

  STRANGER

  TEMPTED

  BROKEN

  DIRTY

  MEGAN

  HART

  Lovely Wild

  To the wild at heart

  who walk in grass with bare feet and catch the fireflies

  To my children, my greatest achievement—

  I love you more than anything else

  And to Emily Ohanjanians

  for helping to turn that book into this one, here’s to many more!

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  After

  Lovely Wild Reader’s Guide

  Questions for Discussion

  Listening Guide

  ONE

  IN HER DREAMS, she is still wild.

  But she’s not dreaming now. At the moment, Mari Calder stands at her kitchen sink rinsing out a pot in which macaroni and cheese is still stubbornly clinging. She takes the sponge, rough on one side but not so much that it will scratch the expensive, shiny pot, and she scrubs. Macaroni softens under the stream of hot water that turns her fingers red. White suds cover her hands, and noodles stripped of their cheesy orange coating swirl into the drain where they catch and swell.

  They look like maggots.

  Tenderly, Mari scoops them into her palm. She leaves the water running, the rush and roar of it nothing like the sound of a waterfall. She dumps the sodden, bloated macaroni into a trash pail overflowing with the similar dregs of meals left unfinished. She stands over the trash for some long moments, staring at the waste.

  She’s never hungry anymore, at least not the way she used to be. Here in this house she has a pantry full of cans, jars, bottles and boxes. Waxy containers of chicken broth snuggle next to bags of exotic rice in multiple colors and boxes of instant mashed potatoes. Cookies, crackers and potato chips in crumpled bags shut tight against the air with plastic clips, or sometimes dumped without ceremony into tight-lidded plastic containers. Clear, so she can see what’s inside. So she can run her fingertips over the contents without actually touching them.

  And always, always, snack cakes. They come wrapped in plastic, two to a package, in flimsy cardboard boxes. She likes the chocolate kind best, though she’ll eat any flavor, really. Her very favorites are the special ones that come out for holidays. Spongy cakes shaped like Christmas trees or hearts or pumpkins, covered in stiff icing she can peel away with her teeth. Mari buys them a box at a time, casually, like they don’t matter to her at all, but she never puts them in the pantry or in the special drawer where all the other snacks go. She hides them. She hoards them.

  She doesn’t have to. Her fridge is always full. The freezers, too, both of them, the small one in the refrigerator here in the kitchen and the full-sized chest freezer in the garage. Sometimes, mostly at night when everyone else is asleep, Mari likes to stand in front of the freezer and peer inside at all the wealth she has collected.

  Ryan never seems to notice or care how much food there is in the house. He