Still Waters - Tor/Forge Blog

If you’re reading this email, I am dead. I know this will sound strange, but someone has been trying to kill me.

Liv and Gabe Ahlstrom are estranged siblings who haven’t seen each other in years, but that’s about to change when they receive a rare call from their older brother’s wife. “Mack is dead,” she says. “He died of a seizure.” Five minutes after they hang up, Liv and Gabe each receive a scheduled email from their dead brother, claiming that he was murdered.

The siblings return to their family run resort in the Northwoods of Minnesota to investigate Mack’s claims, but Leech Lake has more in store for them than either could imagine. Drawn into a tangled web of lies and betrayal that spans decades, they put their lives on the line to unravel the truth about their brother, their parents, themselves, and the small town in which they grew up. After all, no one can keep a secret in a small town, but someone in Leech Lake is willing to kill for the truth to stay buried.

New York Times bestselling and Emmy award-winning author Matt Goldman returns with a gripping, emotional thrill ride in this compelling story on grief and uncovering the past before it’s too late.

Still Waters will be available on May 21st, 2024. Please enjoy the following excerpt!

CHAPTER ONE

The Ahlstrom twins were not really twins. They were Irish twins, though they weren’t Irish either. But they were siblings and estranged ones at that. Odd because they seemed to get along with everyone else. Friends and coworkers had accused each sibling of being Minnesota Nice. So nice they might as well have been Canadian.

Liv and Gabe Ahlstrom had not spoken to each other in over a year when Liv picked up her phone and called her brother, who was not even a favorite in her contacts. Her florist was. The wine store down the street was. Even her dentist was. If your dentist is a favorite but your brother isn’t, well, that’s saying something. Months had passed since Liv had last thought of Gabe. Years had passed since she’d last seen him. For Liv, growing up with Gabe in northern Minnesota felt like something that had happened in a previous life, a life Liv had no desire to revisit.

“Hello?” said Gabe.

“Hi,” said Liv. “Listen, I have some bad news. Mack is dead.” She said the words out loud for the first time. They left her mouth in a rapid-fire, matter-of-fact tone. Liv felt empty and expected grief to fill the void, but grief did not come. She had hardly known her older brother. She did, however, know her slightly younger brother, Gabe, all too well.

“What?” said Gabe. “What do you mean Mack is dead? What are you talking about?”

Liv stood in the bay window of her townhouse looking down on Bedford Street. Spring splashed color on the West Village. Tulips
bloomed in sidewalk planters. Green buds tipped tree branches. The dark overcoats and boots of winter had been closeted in favor of pastel jackets, athletic wear, and sneakers. Liv kept her eyes on the street. She needed a distraction when talking to Gabe: her laptop, the TV, gazing down on passersby in lower Manhattan. Something. Anything. Talking to Gabe made her anxious, and a diversion softened the edge.

“I just got off the phone with Diana,” said Liv. “Mack had a seizure at the office yesterday. They rushed him to the hospital but he never regained consciousness. They took him off life support and he died this morning.” Liv caught her reflection in the window. She was thirty-eight years old and finally looked like the grown-up she’d always pretended to be. Organized. Driven. Focused. Responsible. There was a girl in there somewhere who Liv didn’t allow to have any fun. The pressure she put on herself had crinkled the corners around her eyes and lined her forehead.

“My God,” said Gabe. “Mack was only fifty. Damnit. A seizure? How did that happen? He’d never had a seizure before, had he?” The sad truth was that neither Liv nor Gabe knew whether or not their older brother had ever had a seizure. They were as distant from him as they were from each other.

Liv listened for emotion in Gabe’s voice but heard none. At least they had that in common. Maybe they were both in shock. Maybe
they both had hearts as cold as a northern Minnesota winter. Or maybe they were both healthy, well-adjusted, compassionate human beings except when it came to family. No shame in that. It’s why we have self-help books and moving boxes. Liv turned away from the window and sat on the couch next to her laptop. She scrolled through Facebook and said, “Diana told me Mack had been acting strange lately.”

“What does that mean?” said Gabe. “Strange how?”

“She said Mack seemed anxious. Nervous. Couldn’t sleep. Weird, right? And that he talked about us a lot.”

“That is strange,” said Gabe. “Mack wanted nothing to do with us. How did Diana sound?”

“Destroyed,” said Liv. “Totally destroyed. Her husband died.”

So much distance lay between Liv and Gabe: three thousand miles, three time zones, and three decades of disharmony. They had never liked one another, at least that’s how Liv remembered it. But that couldn’t have been completely true. Their brother Mack was half a generation older and rarely around. Their parents were busy running the family resort, leaving Liv and Gabe to fend for themselves—Liv and Gabe must have found a way to get along at least some of the time. And yet, after graduating high school in consecutive years, they each moved away from northern Minnesota. Liv went east. Gabe went west. They’d seen each other only a handful of times since. A handful of times in the past twenty years.

Gabe said, “When’s the funeral?”

“Thursday,” said Liv.

A short pause, then, “I wonder why Diana called you.”

Here we go, thought Liv. Gabe just learned his brother died and a minute later he’s wondering why Gabe’s widow had called Liv
first and not him. This was where Liv had to be careful. She’d never put Gabe down for not going to college. She’d never poohpoohed his dream of being a rock star. She’d never denigrated his parade of odd jobs while he chased that dream. Liv had never boasted about her accomplishments. And yet Gabe had a hair-trigger inferiority complex. “I don’t know,” Liv said. “She had to call one of us first.”

“I should give Diana a ring,” said Gabe.

“Yeah,” said Liv. “You should. She’d appreciate it.”

“Are you going to the funeral?”

“Of course,” said Liv. “I mean, we have to, right? Doesn’t matter if we hardly ever saw Mack. He’s our brother. We’re the closest
blood relatives he has.”

Gabe hesitated then said, “Do airlines still have discounts for a death in the family?”

Money. Another topic where Liv had to be careful. Liv and Gabe weren’t friends in real life but they were on Facebook, which allowed her to peek into his world, if only voyeuristically. In the photos he’d posted, he never wore anything nicer than jeans and a T-shirt. His apartment appeared small and modest. His travels seemed limited to day trips in Southern California—Mount Baldy, Malibu, San Diego. Liv was obviously doing a lot better than Gabe when it came to finances.

“Gabe, don’t sweat it,” said Liv. “I have tons of miles. They’re going to expire soon. I can get your ticket.”

“Really?”

No, not really. Last year Liv cashed in 300,000 miles to fly Cooper and herself to Paris first class. “Yeah,” lied Liv. “Use ’em or lose ’em. I can get your hotel, too.”

“Thanks,” said Gabe. “Appreciate it.”

“Yeah-yeah, of course.” Liv heard her husband’s footsteps on the narrow wooden staircase leading up to the third floor. Their townhouse was thirty feet deep and twenty feet wide and two hundred years old and, Liv often thought, the foundation of their relationship. They’d lucked into Bedford Street in their mid-twenties. They’d pooled every resource they had and then some to buy it. Liv couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

She was about to call out to her husband when her laptop dinged. She looked at her screen and saw the notification. It was an email from Mack Ahlstrom. Mack Ahlstrom, her and Gabe’s older brother. Their older brother who had died hours ago. Liv’s throat went dry. She manipulated the pointer on her screen to hover over the email. Her fingers trembled. She took a deep breath . . . and clicked on it.