Someone We Know: A Novel

On Saturday, October 14, Olivia Sharpe, an Aylesford housewife, tries to rouse her sleeping 16-year-old son, Raleigh, and sees text messages on his phone. The texts ask if Raleigh broke into a house the previous night. Olivia is shocked; Raleigh has never gotten into any trouble. She angrily confronts him, and Raleigh panics and says he doesn’t remember what house he broke into. He thinks to himself that he can’t tell her whose house it was. He says he didn’t steal anything. Olivia tells him to get dressed so he can go and apologize. When Paul Sharpe, Olivia’s husband and Raleigh’s father, comes home, Raleigh lies, saying he only entered two houses. Raleigh tries to reassure his father that the homeowners will never know that he was there. Paul gets him to admit that he was actually using his hacking skills to rummage through the homeowners’ computers. Raleigh confesses to writing emails from someone’s email account.

Olivia again suggests that Raleigh go to the houses and apologize, but Paul angrily disagrees, as it would make Raleigh an admitted criminal. Olivia agrees. The next day, Olivia has Raleigh show her the houses. He instead points out a house on Finch Street that he previously broke into, and a second at the end of their street: the house of Robert and Amanda Pierce. He insists he did not steal anything from the houses and promises never to do it again. Olivia writes an anonymous letter of apology and makes two copies for both houses.

On Monday, October 16, Detectives Webb and Moen investigate a report of a submerged car in a lake in the Catskills, near Aylesford. The car appears to have veered off the road, and Webb thinks that it was an accident. However, the divers find no bodies, and the windows are open, suggesting a deliberate submersion. The car appears to have been underwater for two weeks. They find the body of a battered young woman. Despite her condition, Detective Webb can tell that she was once beautiful.

Early that same morning, Carmine Torres finds Olivia Sharpe’s unsigned letter of apology pushed through her mail slot. The letter explains how her teenage son entered Carmine’s house and sent emails from her account. Carmine, who has only been in the neighborhood briefly, is uncomfortable. Though she sympathizes with the unknown mother, she wants to know who the intruder is. Meanwhile, Robert Pierce, who has still not heard anything about his missing wife, reads his copy of Olivia’s letter. He immediately worries that risky information may have been uncovered.

Raleigh has lost his computer and cell phone privileges. Meanwhile, his mother meets up with her best friend, Glenda Newell, at the local coffee shop. They have been close for 16 years, ever since Raleigh and Glenda’s son, Adam, were infants. Raleigh and Adam are drifting apart due to Adam’s substance use disorder with alcohol. Now, choking back tears, Olivia tells her friend about Raleigh’s behavior. Consolingly, Glenda tells her that no real harm has been done. As she walks home, Glenda takes some comfort in the thought that other people’s kids have problems too. Her husband, Keith, has been of little help.

Detectives Webb and Moen arrive at Robert Pierce’s house to tell him about the discovery of his wife’s body, which shocks him. At the Medical Examiner’s Office, he identifies his wife’s corpse. He tells the detectives that he and Amanda were married two years and never fought, they were never unfaithful, and there was nothing unusual about her behavior on the day she went missing. They made love the night before. However, Robert knows these are all lies. The detectives ask Robert where he was that weekend, and he says he worked all day Friday, stayed in Friday night, then worked at home all Saturday; on Sunday, he played golf with friends. The detectives ask if they can search his house, and he tells them to get a warrant. After the detectives leave, he retrieves his wife’s secret phone from the desk drawer where he hid it. He notes that someone shifted its position—suspecting the unknown teenage boy. He buries the phone under a shrub.

At school, Raleigh remembers the innocent beginnings of his break-ins; he’d climbed into the window of a friend’s house to retrieve a backpack he’d accidentally left in the basement. Excited to be alone in an empty house, he explored the rooms, looking for secrets. After that, he broke into several more houses, using a USB stick to snoop through their computers. Interrupting his thoughts, Raleigh’s mother arrives at his school to drive him to the lawyer, Emilio Gallo, she and Paul have hired for him. Gallo says that Raleigh, if caught, could be charged with breaking and entering, unauthorized use of a computer, and identity theft. Raleigh is also vulnerable to civil suits, which could get very expensive. Consequently, they should do everything they can to cover up his crimes. Olivia leaves the meeting feeling disgusted with the lawyer, and with the cynical, litigious state of the country. Meanwhile, Carmine Torres, who lives alone, broods over the letter. Her sense of violation is exacerbated by her feeling that her neighbors have not been very friendly to her.

That night, Olivia goes to a book club meeting at a friend’s house, during which she and the other women receive the news of the discovery of Amanda Pierce’s body. They reminisce about a neighborhood party she and her husband attended, in which the beautiful Amanda flirted with all of their husbands, who made fools of themselves in return. Olivia remembers that Raleigh had broken into the Pierces’ house. Her friend Becky Harris, who lives behind the Pierces, defends Robert Pierce from insinuations that he murdered his wife. This sparks Olivia’s memories of seeing Becky chatting animatedly with Robert over her backyard fence. One of the women, Zoe, brings up the anonymous letter that Carmine Torres, her next-door neighbor, received. The women are shocked, and Olivia freezes inside, but her friend Glenda Newell, guessing that Olivia wrote it, defends the letter of apology. Olivia is grateful. Zoe suggests that the unknown teenager lied to his mother about the number of his break-ins, and that any of them could be victims. Olivia worries that this could be true.