{"product_id":"credence-deluxe-edition-isbn-9798217192175","title":"Credence: Deluxe Edition","description":"\u003cb\u003ePenelope Douglas’s bold \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling romance set at a remote cabin in the woods—now in a beautiful collector’s edition featuring gorgeous stenciled edges and special new cover art.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTiernan de Haas doesn't care about anything anymore. The only child of a film producer and his starlet wife, she's grown up with wealth and privilege but not love or guidance. And when her parents suddenly pass away, she knows she should be devastated. But she's always been alone, hasn't she?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJake Van der Berg, her father's stepbrother and her only living relative, assumes guardianship of Tiernan. Sent to live in the mountains of Colorado with Jake and his two sons, Noah and Kaleb, Tiernan quickly learns that these men now have a say in what she chooses to care and not care about anymore.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs the men take Tiernan under their wing, she slowly finds her place among them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBecause lines blur and rules become easy to break when no one else is watching.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne of them has her. The other one wants her. But he's going to keep her.\"Readers who are drawn to emotionally charged   narratives with well-developed characters and intricate relationships will   find \u003ci\u003eCredence \u003c\/i\u003eto be a compelling and unforgettable read.\"—\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAlaska Commons\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003ePenelope Douglas\u003c\/b\u003e is a \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e USA Today\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling author. Their books have been translated into twenty languages and include the Fall Away series, the Hellbent series, the Devil’s Night series, and the stand-alones, \u003ci\u003eMisconduct\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e Punk 57\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e Birthday Girl\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e Credence\u003c\/i\u003e, and\u003ci\u003e Tryst Six Venom\u003c\/i\u003e. They live in New England with their husband and daughter.1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTiernan\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt's strange. The tire swing in the yard is the only thing that makes it look like a kid lives here. There were never any drawings in the house. None on the fridge or walls. No children's books on the shelves. No shoes by the front door or floaties in the pool.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt's a couple's home. Not a family's.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI stare out the window, watching the tire sway back and forth in the breeze as it hangs from the oak, and absently rub the red ribbon in my hair between my fingers, feeling the comfort of the smooth surface.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe always had time to push her on the swing, didn't he? He had time for her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd she for him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWalkie-talkies shoot off beeps and white noise somewhere behind me while footfalls hit the stairs and doors slam above me. The police and paramedics are busy upstairs, but they'll want to talk to me soon, I'm sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI swallow, but I don't blink.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI'd thought the tire swing was for me when he installed it ten years ago. I was allowed to play on it, but my mother was the one who really loved it. I used to watch them out my bedroom window late at night, my father pushing her and the magic of their play and laughter making me want to be in the middle of it. But I knew as soon as they saw me the magic would change. It would disappear.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo, I stayed at my window and only ever watched.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLike I still do.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI bite the corner of my mouth, watching a green leaf flutter past the swing and land inside the tire where my mother sat countless times. The image of her white nightgown and light hair flowing through the night as she swung on it is still so vivid, because the last time was only yesterday.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA throat clears behind me, and I finally blink, dropping my eyes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Did they say anything to you?\" Mirai asks me with tears in her voice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI don't turn around, but after a moment, I give a slow shake of my head.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"When did you last speak to them?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI can't answer that. I'm not sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBehind me, I feel her approach, but she stops several feet back as I hear the clank of the first ambulance gurney as it jostles and creaks down the stairs and is carried from the house.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI tip my chin up, steeling myself at the distant commotion outside as the paramedics open the front door. The calls and questions, the horns honking as more people arrive, beyond the gates, where the media can no doubt see the body being wheeled out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen did I last speak to my parents?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The police found some medications in your parents' bathroom,\" Mirai broaches in her soft voice. \"They have your father's name on them, so they called the doctor and learned that he had cancer, Tiernan.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI don't move.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"They never said anything to me,\" she tells me. \"Did you know your father was sick?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI shake my head again, still watching the tire sway.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI hear her swallow. \"Apparently, he tried treatments, but the disease was aggressive,\" she says. \"The doctor said he . . . he wasn't going to last the year, honey.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA gust of wind picks up outside, churning the swing, and I watch the rope spin the tire as it twists.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It looks like . . . It looks like they . . .\" Mirai trails off, unable to finish her thought.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI know what it looks like. I knew when I found them this morning. Toulouse, my mother's Scottish terrier, was clawing at the door and begging to get into their bedroom, so I cracked it open. The thought occurred to me that it was weird they weren't up yet, but I let the dog in anyway. Just before I closed the door again, though, my eyes shot up, and I saw them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn the bed. In each other's arms. Fully dressed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe wore his favorite Givenchy suit and she was in the Oscar de la Renta gown she wore to the Cannes Film Festival in 2013.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe had cancer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was dying.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey knew, and my mother had decided not to let him leave without her. She decided that there was nothing else without him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNothing else.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA sting hits the backs of my eyes, but it's gone almost immediately.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The police haven't found a note,\" Mirai says. \"Did you find-\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut I turn my head, meeting her eyes, and she instantly falls silent. What a stupid question.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI lock my jaw, swallowing the needles in my throat. Over all the years of nannies and boarding schools and summer camps where I was kept busy and raised by anyone but them, I'd found little pain in anything my parents did anymore. But it seems there are still parts of me to hurt.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey didn't leave me a note. Even now, there was nothing they wanted to say to me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI blink away the tears and turn back around, trying to stare hard at the swing again as it twists and glides back and forth in the wind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI hear Mirai sniffle and sob quietly behind me, because she knows. She knows what I'm feeling, because she's been here since the beginning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfter another minute I see her outside the window, walking past me, and I hadn't even realized she'd left the room.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe carries shears in her hand and charges right up to the tire swing, and as she raises the scissors to the rope, I clench my fists under my arms and watch her press the handles together, working through the rope until the tire hangs by twine and eventually falls to the ground.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA single tear finally falls, and for the first time since I've been home all summer, I feel something like love.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHours later, the sun has set, the house is quiet again, and I’m alone. Almost alone. Reporters are still lingering beyond the gates.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMirai wanted me to come home with her to the small one-bedroom she was certainly paid more than enough to not have to live in. But since she had always been here night and day and traveling wherever my mother went, it made more sense not to keep an apartment at all, much less rent a bigger one. I politely declined.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe took Toulouse, since that dog gets along with me about as well as he would with a wet cat, and said she'd be back first thing in the morning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI should've been nicer to her. When she offered to stay here instead, I just wanted everyone gone. The noise and attention made me nervous, and I don't want to hear all the phone calls Mirai has to make tonight, which will just be a reminder of how all hell is breaking loose out in the world and on social media.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey're saying things about my parents.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey're speculating about me, no doubt.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe pity. The predictions of when I'll follow my mom and dad, either by overdose or by my own suicide. Everyone has an opinion and thinks they know everything. If I thought I lived in a fishbowl before . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI walk back to the stove, letting out a breath. My parents left me to deal with this shit.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSteam rises from the pot, and I turn off the burner and pour the ramen into a bowl. I rub my dry lips together and stare at the yellow broth as my stomach growls. I haven't eaten or drunk anything all day, but I'm not sure I had any intention of eating this when I finally wandered into the kitchen tonight to make it. I just always liked the process of cooking things. The recipe, the procedure . . . I know what to do. It's meditative.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI wrap my hands around the bowl, savoring the heat coursing through the ceramic and up my arms. Chills break out over my body, and I almost swallow, but then I realize it'll take more energy than I have.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey're dead, and I haven't cried. I'm just more worried about tomorrow and handling everything.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI don't know what to do, and the idea of forcing small talk with studio executives or old friends of my parents, over the weeks to come as I bury my mother and father and deal with everything I've inherited makes the bile rise in my throat. I feel sick. I can't do it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI can't do it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey knew I didn't have the skills to deal with situations like this. I can't smile or fake things I'm not feeling.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDigging chopsticks out of the drawer, I stick them in the bowl and pick it up, carrying it upstairs. I reach the top and don't pause as I turn away from their bedroom door and head left, toward my own room.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCarrying the bowl to my desk, I pause, the smell of the ramen making my stomach roll. I set it down and move to the wall, sliding down until I'm sitting on the floor. The cool hardwood eases my nerves, and I'm tempted to lie down and rest my face on it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIs it weird I stayed in the house tonight when they died just down the hall this morning? The coroner estimated the time of death as about two a.m. I didn't wake up until six.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy mind races, caught between wanting to let it go and wanting to process how everything happened. Mirai is here every day. If I didn't find them, she would've. Why didn't they wait until I'd gone back to school next week? Did they even remember I was in the house?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI let my head fall back against the wall and lay my arms over my bent knees, closing my burning eyes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey didn't leave me a note.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey dressed up. They put the dog out. They scheduled Mirai to come late this morning, instead of early.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey didn't write me a note.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTheir closed door looms ahead of me, and I open my eyes, staring across my bedroom, through my open door, down the long hallway, and to their room at the other end of the hall.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe house sounds the same.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNothing has changed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut just then, a small buzz whirs from somewhere, and I blink at the faint sound, dread bringing me back to reality. What is that?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI thought I turned off my phone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReporters know to send requests for comment to my parents' representatives, but that doesn't stop the greedy ones-most are-from digging up my personal cell number.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI reach up, pawing for my phone on my desk, but when I press the Power button I see that it's still off.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe buzzing continues, and just as realization dawns, my heart skips a beat.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy private cell. The one buried in my drawer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOnly my parents and Mirai had that number. It was a phone for them to reach me if anything was urgent, since they knew I turned off my other one a lot.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey never used that number, though, so I never kept it on me anymore.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePushing up on my knees, I reach into my desk drawer and pull the old iPhone off its charger and fall back to the floor, looking at the screen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eColorado. I don't know anyone in Colorado.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis phone never gets calls, though. It could be a reporter who somehow tracked down the phone, but then, it's not registered under my name, so I doubt it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI answer it. \"Hello?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Tiernan?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe man's voice is deep, but there's a lilt of surprise in it like he didn't expect me to answer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOr he's nervous.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It's Jake Van der Berg,\" he says.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJake Van der Berg . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Your uncle Jake Van der Berg.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd then I remember. \"My father's . . . ?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Brother,\" he finishes for me. \"Stepbrother, actually, yes.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI completely forgot. Jake Van der Berg had rarely been mentioned in this house. I didn't grow up with any relatives, so I'd completely blanked on the fact that I had one.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy mother grew up in foster care, never knew her father, and had no siblings. My dad had only an estranged younger stepbrother I'd never met. I had no aunts, uncles, or cousins when I was growing up, and my father's parents were dead, so I didn't have grandparents, either.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere's only one reason Jake Van der Berg is calling me after seventeen years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Um,\" I mumble, searching for words. \"My mother's assistant will be handling the funeral arrangements. If you need the details, I don't have them. I'll give you her number.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I'm not coming to the funeral.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI still for a moment. His voice is on edge.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd he hasn't offered condolences for \"my loss,\" which is unusual. Not that I need them, but why is he calling, then? Does he think my father wrote him into his will?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHonestly, he might have. I have no idea.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut before I can ask him what he wants, he clears his throat. \"Your father's attorney called me earlier, Tiernan,\" he tells me. \"Since I'm your only living relative, and you're still underage, your parents apparently left you in my care.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn his care?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eApparently. Sounds like this is news to him, too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI don't need anyone's care.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe continues. \"You'll be eighteen in a couple months, though. I'm not going to force you to do anything, so don't worry.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOkay. I hesitate for a moment, not sure if I feel relieved or not. I didn't have time to process the reminder that I wasn't a legal adult, and what that meant now that my parents were gone, before he assured me that it wouldn't mean anything. My life won't change.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I'm sure, growing up in that life,\" he says, \"you're a hell of a lot more world-wise than we are and can take pretty good care of yourself by now anyway.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"We?\" I murmur.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"My sons and I,\" he says. \"Noah and Kaleb. They're not much older than you, actually. Maybe a few years.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo, I have cousins. Or . . . step-cousins.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhatever. It's basically nothing. I play with the light blue thread on my sleep shorts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I just wanted to reach out to tell you that,\" he finally says. \"If you want to emancipate yourself, you'll get no argument from me. I have no interest in making anything harder for you by uprooting you from your life.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI stare at the thread, pinching it between my nails as I pull it tight. Okay, then.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Well . . . thank you for calling.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd I start to pull the phone away from my ear, but then I hear his voice again. \"Do you want to come here?\"","brand":"Berkley","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233055453413,"sku":"NP9798217192175","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9798217192175.jpg?v=1767724237","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/credence-deluxe-edition-isbn-9798217192175","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}