The Good Father

Ray Callahan has spent twenty-one years being a good father.

He showed up at every school play. He stayed in the house where Claire died rather than run from it. He raised Hannah alone, quietly, without complaint, without explanation. He has been many things since the night his wife's car went into the river. Absent is not one of them.

Then Hannah comes home for the first time in four years and sets a motel receipt on the kitchen table between them.

It is dated November 14th, 2003. The night Claire died. Forty-three miles from the bridge. Checked in at 9:47 p.m. under the name R. Callahan.

Ray has one answer. He has always had one answer. He gave it to the police, to his mother, to the grief counsellor, to Hannah herself over twenty-one years of careful, ordinary family life.

The answer is: I was home.

The answer is a lie. Not the kind built from cruelty - the kind built from arriving ten minutes too late and never finding a way to explain the difference between that and causing something. Between the gap of not being there and the weight of not having made it in time.

Hannah has three days before she flies back to Vancouver. Ray has three days to decide whether the truth, finally spoken, is an act of love or the demolition of everything they have built on top of it.

The Good Father is a psychological thriller about suppressed guilt, father-daughter grief, and the dangerous distance between silence and a lie. Perfect for fans of Big Little Lies, The Silent Patient, Apple Tree Yard, and I Am Pilgrim.

Book Two of The Sealed Truth Series. Each book is a standalone psychological thriller - read in any order.

Also in the series:
Book 1: The Sister Sessions
Book 3: What She Left