Since my husband, Marc, left me, the days are blurry, the aperture setting too large, the depth of field too shallow. Only, instead of the usual subjects—raspberries or a plate of avocado toast—it’s me that’s out of focus. In the morning, dreams linger like mist, and the sound of my mother’s voice rings in my head, her cry of alarm before she died. Her scent, lemon and flowers and mint, fills the air in my bedroom.

Before the rush begins—the hustling of my daughter off to school, the hours at the studio, setting up equipment, gauging the light, taking the perfect picture of the glistening ganache, the return route and the homework routine, the ache and anger at Marc pulsing in my veins—I press the ‘Meditation’ sitting on the Wired Happy app. My stepsister Isabel’s voice is as light and clear as the sound of the chimes that accompanies it. She instructs me to take deep belly breathes. “You are being healed, cradled by the sky. You are floating on the wind.”

Isabel is a people fixer. Literally. PhD in psychology. The background of her website, which I designed, is an image of a Greek island. The title “Happiness Doctor” in gold is splashed across the mouth of the Aegean Sea.

Isabel is beloved by the readers of her bestselling book, the fans who’ve taken her seminars and listened to her lectures, her spouse, by my daughter, and, most of all, by me. From the time our parents married—I was four to her seven—Isabel has been my safe space, my companion and my confidant. Always, I’ve envied her confidence, her brilliance, her ability to alleviate suffering.

Still. The sky is not healing me. There is no sun in my imagination, nor am I envisioning the weepy gray New England patch outside my window. In my mind’s eye, the sky is a black canvas strung above Grand Cayman, the night warmed by the Caribbean breeze. It was the last leg of the annual World Happiness Conference, after the farewell party. Isabel was in the passenger seat next to me when I swerved after hitting something.

“I think it was a dog,” the man said, this stranger who’d stopped behind me, the only other driver on that deserted road. He flashed a light on my vehicle, illuminating the streaks of blood on the bumper and the pavement. My heart skittered, like a ping-pong ball that had bounced off the net.

I asked him if he was mistaken, if it was a person that caused the thump. He was convinced he saw a small, four-legged creature. When I pleaded with him to help me locate the animal, he searched the thickets of shrubs, parted the thatch palms.

There was nothing to report, not by him or by me—when I scoured the bushes the next day.

I pull the earbuds out, give up on mediating. My laptop lies next to me, on top of the blankets, as if my new partner. I click on my email, hyperalert now. First, I check the incoming mail, then the junk file where the first message landed. It’s been a little over a week since that missive arrived from an unrecognizable source, the one that read: You were lied to about that night. Have you asked your sister about the blood on the car? The guy who was there knows.

The Happiness Thief
Genre: Domestic Suspense
Release: May 2021
Purchase Link

Forty-one-year-old Natalie Greene lost her mom and her childhood memories in a car crash two decades ago. What remains is a haunting feeling that she was responsible for her mother’s death. After her husband leaves for another woman, Natalie accompanies her famous stepsister, Isabel Walker (aka “The Happiness Guru”) on a retreat to the Cayman Islands. There, a late-night collision triggers Natalie’s long-buried trauma and a heightened sense of guilt.

Upon returning home to Boston, Natalie tries to settle back into her life as a food photographer and single mother to a teenage daughter―but then, one day, an anonymous email arrives about the Cayman accident that suggests foul play. In her search for the truth, Natalie must deal with a mix of fear, confusion, and suspects. With the help of Isabel and an attractive journalist, she uncovers a trail of deceit that begins on that deserted Caribbean road, circles back home, and ends in the most unexpected of places.

Meet the Author
Nicole Bokat is the author of the novels Redeeming Eve, What Matters Most, and The Happiness Thief. Redeeming Eve was nominated for both the Hemingway Foundation/PEN award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction. She’s also published The Novels of Margaret Drabble: “this Freudian family nexus,” She received her PhD from New York University and has taught at NYU, Hunter College, and The New School. Her essays and articles have appeared in the New York Times, Parents magazine, The Forward, and More.com. She lives with her husband in NJ and has two grown sons. Find her online at nicolebokat.com.

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