Quinn has the perfect roommate. They met through a classified ad, but they’ve become good friends. Esther is sweet and kind, fun to be with, concerned about helping Quinn achieve her goals. Quinn is not the perfect roommate though; she doesn’t always pay her bills on time, and she can be a little messy to Esther’s perfection. One Saturday night in November, Quinn tries to persuade Esther to try out a new martini bar that just opened, but Esther pleads a cold and stays home wrapped in blankets on the couch. In the morning her window, which opens onto the fire escape, is open but Esther herself is gone. Worried, Quinn goes through her things looking for clues, and what she finds disturbs her. First of all are the notes to “My Dearest” signed EV, Esther’s initials. They seem to imply a different life, with references to some other woman. There are the bright blue contacts–does this mean that Esther’s one eye is actually brown like its mate instead of blue as everyone thinks?
Quinn enlists the help of Ben, a colleague of hers and friend of Esther’s as well. Together they begin to discover more unsettling facts of Esther’s existence, including cryptic messages sent to the cell phone she left behind. Who was she really? Did they actually know her?
Meanwhile, 18-year-old Alec lives in a small town on the shores of Lake Michigan. All his high school friends are off to college but he’s left behind, working a dead-end job in a cafe while keeping his father, the town drunk, from accidentally killing himself. Alec’s mother abandoned them when he was 5, because she couldn’t handle being a mother, didn’t like being touched, couldn’t meet his needs, etc. Alec has many signs of brightness–he loves telescopes and viewing the night sky, and collecting fossils from the lake shore. He’s a sweet, thoughtful kid with virtually no future. Then one Sunday morning in November, a gorgeous woman walks into the cafe and spends hours staring out of the window. He nicknames her “Pearl” because she won’t tell him her name, and she stays in the abandoned house across the street from his, a house rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a little girl. Alec follows her, spies on her, a young man in love. She’s strange though. She swims in freezing water without seeming to feel the cold, won’t give out any personal information, even casually, and spends hours staring at a house across the street.
The latest from Mary Kubica slowly, inexorably reveals the truth, bit by bit. And while I knew the general direction things were headed, there were many clues I missed that only became clear in retrospect. Don’t You Cry is creepy and suspenseful, and will have you questioning things yourself. I didn’t totally love the ending, but it was well done.