Excerpt from Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She checks her phone: nothing. No notification, no alert, just the locked-home-screen photo of a little boy hugging two big dogs, a picture that's four years old but so perfect that Ariel can't bear to replace it with something newer but not as ideal.

It's still two-thirty in the morning on the East Coast, where nearly everyone she knows lives. Ariel hasn't even received any fresh spam. She launches the app that tracks her family's devices—her son's cell, her husband's, her own. The data takes a long time to load, to locate the disparate geo-positions. The first bubble that appears is her own, AP, right here in the center of Lisbon. Then her son's, GP, exactly where he belongs in the middle of the night, four thousand miles away, asleep, no doubt with at least one of the dogs—Scotch—in his bed, probably Mallomar too. The dogs are very loyal to George, and vice versa. The narrow bed can get awfully crowded, a pile of smelly mammals, all of them pressed up against one another, dreaming.

The app still hasn't found John, his JW icon "Locating…" but then surrenders, admits failure, "Location not available" in the passive voice, as if she should blame it on the device, or the person, or the vagaries of the ether, anything except the app itself. Even apps don't want to accept blame.

Ariel has been awake for three minutes.

* * *

When she left her first husband nearly fifteen years ago, Ariel left behind everything else too. She emptied her life completely and started from scratch, filling her new existence one piece at a time—a new old house in a quiet new place, a new baby, a new crazy dog and then a crazier second dog, a new hairstyle and wardrobe, a new career in a new field, new friends and hobbies, a new way of holding herself, of interacting with the world and inviting the world to interact with her. She no longer wanted to move through life first and foremost and always and only as an attractive woman.

It was just recently that she realized she was ready to add the final new piece, to complete her full new life, which wasn't so new anymore, and maybe not quite full enough. She can't help but wonder if she conjured John from her desire, or if it was the other way around.

* * *

He had remained standing at the window for a long time last night, up-lit from the streetlamps that cast a distended shadow across the ceiling, a creepy Munch-like shape in the eerie bluish light of city night, causing Ariel a quick spasm of fear, an unwelcome old feeling that sneaks up on her now and then, surprise attacks that are surprising only in their timing. She knows they're coming, just not exactly when.

Ariel had closed her eyes tight, and inhaled deeply, trying to focus on the immediate physical sensations—the warm breeze blowing up from the Tagus, the distant scream of a seagull, a whiff of seaside air, salty and maybe a little fishy, the needles and pins of her hot prickled skin. She exhaled through her mouth, slow and long and completely in control. It was all about control.

She opened her eyes, ending the little drama that had existed purely in her mind, a private world of panic.

Ariel had been fearless when she was young, which is when people tend to be bold. She'd been an actor, after all. What's bolder? But then life conspired against her audacity, sapped her courage, shattered her confidence that she could move safely through the world. She couldn't. She didn't.

Excerpted from Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone. Copyright © 2022 by Chris Pavone. Excerpted by permission of MCD. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.