The Last of the Stanfields Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE LAST OF THE STANFIELDS

  “Marc Levy’s eighteenth novel, an excellent vintage, has all the potential to be this summer’s bestseller.”

  —L’Express

  “A gripping thriller that plunges into the folds of family secrets and the human soul.”

  —Europe 1

  “Marc Levy is the master of modern romanticism . . . The Last of the Stanfields is a novel you simply can’t put down.”

  —Entrée Libre

  “A mystery that draws you in and won’t let go.”

  —RTL

  “A winding hunt for truth . . . What is Marc Levy’s profession? Expert story weaver.”

  —Le Parisien

  “[The Last of the Stanfields] is a free dive into the depths of family secrets under a single guiding question: How well do we know our loved ones?”

  —Le Figaro

  “Edge-of-your-seat suspenseful. A success. We highly recommend.”

  —France Inter, La Bande Originale

  “A magnificent gallery of female characters, not to mention a search for truth that’s riddled with plot twists.”

  —RTL

  “Suspenseful and unpredictable, [The Last of the Stanfields] brings you characters you won’t want to leave.”

  —Aufeminin.com

  “Marc Levy’s new novel shows his mastery from start to finish. Impressive.”

  —RTL

  “Marc Levy delivers a beautiful novel about love and family . . . Levy is an expert at teaching us to never doubt the existence of goodness and forgiveness.”

  —France Info

  “Suspense of a magnificent caliber, tangible and moving.”

  —France Info

  “Marc Levy leads the reader to discover a staggering family secret.”

  —Le Parisien

  “Marc Levy has always been interested in family secrets. But this time he outdoes himself.”

  —Josyane Savigneau, writer for Le Monde

  “An enthralling mystery that revolves around an unexpected family secret.”

  —Aufeminin.com

  “Full of emotion and suspense: a breathtaking treasure hunt.”

  —Web TV Culture

  “A real page-turner. You won’t be able to put it down.”

  —Passion Bouquins

  “A gripping plot, a winding mystery that leads to an unsuspected family secret.”

  —Femina Suisse

  “A family saga done well.”

  —Ouest France

  “Right from the start, you won’t be able to put down The Last of the Stanfields!”

  —Aufeminin.com

  “An absorbing saga . . . the author holds a steady hand crafting a plot that is richly historic, artistic, and—of course—romantic. What’s more, his writing is better than ever and his dialogue is on point.”

  —L’Express

  ALSO BY MARC LEVY

  If Only It Were True

  All Those Things We Never Said

  Replay

  P.S. from Paris

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Marc Levy

  Translation copyright © 2018 by Daniel Wasserman

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as La dernière des Stanfield by Éditions Robert Laffont, in France in 2017. Translated from French by Daniel Wasserman. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2018.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503959125 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1503959120 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781503904057 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1503904059 (paperback)

  Cover design by Kimberly Glyder

  First edition

  To Louis, Georges, Cléa, and Pauline

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  1 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  2 SALLY-ANNE

  3 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  4 RAY

  5 MAY

  6 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  7 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  8 KEITH

  9 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  10 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  11 THE INDEPENDENT

  12 GEORGE-HARRISON

  13 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  14 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  15 MAY

  16 ROBERT STANFIELD

  17 GEORGE-HARRISON

  18 ROBERT STANFIELD

  19 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  20 SALLY-ANNE

  21 GEORGE-HARRISON

  22 MAY

  23 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  24 MICHEL AND VERA

  25 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  26 ROBERT STANFIELD

  27 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  28 SALLY-ANNE

  29 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  30 ROBERT

  31 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  32 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  33 ROBERT AND HANNA

  34 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  35 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  36 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  37 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  38 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  39 ELEANOR-RIGBY

  40

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  “There are three sides to every story:

  your side, my side, and the truth.

  And no one is lying.”

  Robert Evans

  1

  ELEANOR-RIGBY

  October 2016, London

  My name is Eleanor-Rigby Donovan.

  The first name may ring a bell. My parents were huge fans of the Beatles and the song “Eleanor Rigby.”

  Back in the 1960s (my father hates it when I point out that he grew up in the previous century), rock fans were split into two very distinct groups: you were either a Rolling Stones fan or a Beatles fan. For reasons beyond me, it was inconceivable to like both.

  My parents were seventeen when they got together for the first time, in a London pub not too far from Abbey Road. All eyes in the room were glued to an international broadcast of a Beatles concert, everyone singing along to “All You Need Is Love.” With seven hundred million viewers looking on, the moment marked the beginning of a decades-long love story.

  And yet they fell out of touch just a few years later. Life, always full of surprises, reunited them under rather odd circumstances in their late twenties. And so it was that I was conceived a full thirteen years after their first kiss. They sure took their time.

  My father’s sense of humor knows no limits—it’s how he won my mother’s heart, as the story goes—and so, when registering my birth, he decided to call me Eleanor-Rigby.

  “We listened to that song around the clock while we were creating you,” he confided to me one day in explanation.

  I had absolutely no interest in knowing this particular fact and even less in picturing it. As for my childhood, I could go on and on about how miserable it was, but that would be a lie, and I’m a terrible liar. Like every family, mine is dysfunctional. Here as well, we find two distinct groups: families who admit it, and families who don’t and go on pretending. Our family falls into the first category: dysfunctional but happy, perhaps too happy at times.
It was impossible to say anything serious at home without being made fun of. There’s an overriding will amongst my kin to take everything lightly, even when the consequences are serious. And, I have to admit, while I was growing up it often drove me up the wall. Each of my parents insisted the other was responsible for the lunacy that permeated all conversations, meals, and gatherings throughout my childhood. And I wasn’t the only one driven crazy, either. My big brother, Michel (born twenty minutes before me), and my little sister, Maggie, had to deal with it as well.

  Maggie—named for “Maggie Mae,” the seventh song on the A-side of Let It Be—has a strong personality and a heart bigger than anything, and yet she’s completely selfish when it comes to the little things. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. If you have a serious problem, she’ll always be there for you. Don’t feel like getting into a car at four in the morning with two buddies too drunk to drive? She’ll steal Dad’s keys, hop into his old Austin, and drive all the way across town in her pajamas to pick you up. Then, she’ll drop your friends off at their doorstep, but only after giving them a good scolding, of course, despite the fact that they’re two years older than she is.

  But try grabbing a slice of toast from her plate at breakfast and she’ll give your forearm something to remember. Don’t hold your breath for her to leave you a drop of milk in the fridge either. Why my parents have always treated her like a princess is a mystery. From the start, Mum harbored an unhealthy level of admiration for her—the baby—and thought she was destined for great things. Maggie was going to be a lawyer or a doctor, or even both, savior of widow and orphan alike, eradicating world hunger. In short, she was the golden child, and the entire family had to keep watch over her, and her future.

  My twin brother, Michel, is named for the seventh song on the A-side of Rubber Soul—though on the album, of course, it’s Michelle, the female version of the name. The radiographer didn’t see his willy during the ultrasound. Apparently, the two of us were too closely bound for the doctor to make it out. Errare humanum est. Then: big surprise during the delivery. But the name had already been chosen, and changing it was out of the question. Dad simply dropped the l and the e, and my brother spent the first three years of his life in a bedroom with pink walls and an Alice in Wonderland mural, and the rest of his life explaining to everyone that he wasn’t French. One visit to a shortsighted radiographer can yield some truly unexpected consequences.

  Those whose high level of education rivals their own hypocrisy tend to fidget uncomfortably as they explain that Michel is “special.” Prejudice is the prerogative of people convinced they know everything. The world Michel inhabits is blind to violence, pettiness, hypocrisy, injustice, and malice. To doctors, his world is full of disorder. But for Michel, every last thing and every last thought has its proper place. His world is so spontaneous and sincere that I sometimes think we’re the ones who are “special.” These same doctors have never been able to confirm whether it’s Asperger’s or if Michel is just different. Maybe the truth isn’t that simple.

  Michel is an incredibly sweet man, a true wellspring of common sense and an endless source of laughter. If I’m the terrible liar, Michel’s weakness is that he can’t keep from telling the truth, saying the first thing that pops into his head. Michel waited until he was four years old to start speaking. While queuing up in the supermarket, he opened his mouth to ask a woman in a wheelchair where she’d found her “carriage.” Overcome with emotion at hearing her son finally utter a complete sentence, Mum swept him into her arms for a kiss before turning beetroot red with embarrassment. And that was only the beginning . . .

  My parents were deeply in love from the very first night they got back together. As with all couples, there were some wintry patches when things ran cold. But they always made up and never failed to treat each other with the utmost respect and admiration. I once asked, after a particularly rough breakup of my own, just how they managed to stay in love for a whole lifetime. My father replied, “The key to lasting love is knowing how to give.”

  My mother died last year in the middle of a dinner out with my father. The waiter had just brought out dessert—rum baba, my mum’s favorite—when she suddenly dropped facedown in a mound of whipped cream. The paramedics couldn’t revive her.

  Dad went to great lengths not to weigh us down with the pain of his loss, knowing that each of us was suffering in our own way. Michel kept trying to call Mum every morning, and my father would invariably explain that she couldn’t come to the phone.

  Two days after we buried Mum, Dad gathered us all around the kitchen table and declared that wallowing in misery would be strictly prohibited from that point forward. Mum’s death should in no way ruin the close-knit, joyful family that my parents had painstakingly built over the years. The next day, he left us a note on the refrigerator door. My sweet children, all parents die eventually, and it’ll be your turn one day, too, so enjoy the day. Love, Dad. A “logical point,” as my brother would say; don’t waste a single moment feeling sorry for yourself. When your mother kicks the bucket by doing a face-plant into her rum baba, it certainly puts things into perspective.

  Every time I’m asked what I do for a living, I get to sit back and watch people turn green with envy. I write for National Geographic, and am paid a salary—a meager one, but still—to travel, take photos, and write about the world’s diversity. The strange part is that it took traveling to the ends of the earth for me to realize that what I was looking for was right there in front of me the whole time. All I had to do was open my eyes and start noticing the wonder of the world outside my front door.

  It’s not as glamorous as it sounds. Imagine spending all your time on planes. Or sleeping three hundred nights of the year in hotels, sometimes comfortably, but more often uncomfortably due to budget restrictions. Imagine writing your articles aboard bumpy buses, and nearly dying of pure joy at the sight of a clean shower. In a job like mine, once you finally make it home, all you want to do is put your feet up and sink into the sofa, not budging an inch, with a TV dinner in front of you and your family close at hand.

  My love life has been a handful of flings and short-lived relationships, as rare as they are fleeting. Traveling constantly is like being condemned to singledom for life. My longest relationship was with a Washington Post reporter. It lasted about two years, though I had wanted it to go on longer. What a lovely feat of self-delusion it was. We shot emails back and forth and tried to tell ourselves we were “close” without ever having spent more than three days in a row in each other’s company. All in all, the time we spent together over two years added up to just over two months. Our hearts would flutter wildly every time we reunited, and again when we said goodbye. Eventually, the palpitations got to be too much, and we had to call it quits.

  While my life was already anything but banal next to most of my friends’ lives, things took a turn for the truly extraordinary one morning when I opened my post.

  My father had come to pick me up at the airport after an assignment in Costa Rica. I’ve been told that thirty-five is a little old to be so attached to my father. Although I’m fine when I’m away, as soon as I come home and see my father’s face in the sea of people waiting at arrivals, I instantly revert to the sweet bliss of childhood. Try as I might, it’s useless to fight off that feeling.

  My father had certainly aged since Mum died. His hair looked thinner and his belly rounder, and there was something heavy-footed about his stride. And yet he was still just as wonderful, dignified, brilliant, and wacky as ever. For me, nothing was quite as comforting as burying my face in Dad’s neck when he wrapped me in a big bear hug. Call me a daddy’s girl all you want, but I was happy to be one as long as I could.

  Not only had the trip to Central America been utterly exhausting, but I’d spent the whole way back crammed between two sleeping passengers whose heads bobbed and lolled onto my shoulders every time we hit turbulence. Seeing my tired and wrinkled face as I washed up back at my dad’s flat, I c
ould understand how they might have mistaken me for a pillow. Michel came over for dinner and my sister joined us halfway through the meal. My heart leapt back and forth between the happiness of being all together again, and a strong desire for some time alone in my childhood bedroom. While I hadn’t officially lived there since I was twenty years old, in truth, I’d never really left. I rented a studio flat on Old Brompton Road, on the west side of London—rented solely on principle and out of pride, since I almost never slept there. On the rare occasions when I was back in England, I preferred staying under my father’s roof, right where I grew up.

  The day after that particular trip, I did stop by my studio to check my post. There, amid the myriad bills and junk mail, I discovered a strange letter addressed in elegant and ornate cursive handwriting, with flourishes and thick and thin lines, as though it had been written a century ago.

  The letter inside revealed parts of the secret my mother had kept from her family for years. It hinted at something hidden among her belongings that could help shed light on the person she once was. But the anonymous letter writer—the “poison-pen,” as I immediately began to think of him—didn’t stop there. The letter seemed to imply that Mum had taken part in a masterful crime committed thirty-six years ago. The letter gave no further details, but there was enough information given to be alarming, and it just didn’t add up. First off, thirty-six years ago put us in the year leading up to my own birth—it was difficult to imagine a woman pregnant with twins as a criminal mastermind, let alone my kind, rational mother . . . The anonymous letter called on me to seek out the truth, to follow a trail which would take me to the other side of the world. Lastly, the poison-pen implored me to destroy the letter after reading, and not to mention its existence to anyone—especially not Maggie or my father.

  How in hell did this stranger know so much about my family, down to my sister’s name? This was also rather alarming.

  I had just buried my mother the previous spring and was far from finished with the grieving process. I knew my sister would have never played such a cruel joke on me, and it didn’t seem likely that my brother would even be capable of fabricating a story like that. Flipping through my address book, I couldn’t find a single person who would ever dream of doing such a thing.