Aubrey Hamilton is now a widow or at least that is what she supposes her new status is. Her husband, Joshua Hamilton, disappeared five years ago and was never seen or heard from again. His mother, Daisy, has pushed for a legal declaration of death so that she can collect a sizable life insurance policy and now the state of Tennessee has declared Joshua Hamilton to be legally dead. The problem with the life insurance money is that Aubrey is the beneficiary but Daisy plans to contest that little detail, being the horrible woman that she is.
Aubrey has spent a hellish five years and has no idea how to move forward in her life. All she ever wanted was for Josh to return home to her and for her life to be as it once was. She knows that is not possible because Josh is dead. He would have to be, wouldn't he, to not return to her in five years? After all, they had been in love, right? Of course they had been. They had known each other since they were children and had simply followed the logical path of friendship to true romantic love.
It had been impossible for Aubrey to move forward in her life without Josh because she had no answers. They had gone to a hotel one night to help friends celebrate their upcoming wedding with separate bachelor and bachelorette parties. Josh had kissed her and she watched him head off to the bachelor party. That was the last time she had seen him.
A lot of blood had been found back at their house later and Aubrey had been arrested and charged with his murder. Thankfully, the prosecution did not have enough evidence to convict her so she had been trying to simply get on with her life since then. It was not really working out well.
Then one night she meets a stranger; a man who reminds her so much of Josh. She is ready to feel alive again and enters into an intensely passionate relationship with this man. His name is Chase but is he really who he says he is? Can she trust him?
To make things even more confusing, Aubrey has begun to receive clues that point to Josh being alive after all. But he couldn't be. If he had been alive all this time, surely he would have contacted her. This is a question that Aubrey simply must have an answer to and she starts to dig into the past even though she is unwittingly putting herself in danger. Will she find the answers that she needs and get out alive?
As a longtime fan of J. T. Ellison, I know exactly what to expect from her books and NO ONE KNOWS does not disappoint. With three dimensional characters that bring out strong emotions in her readers as well as a mind bending plot, this is one of the most compelling and captivating of all of her efforts to date. Told in different timelines as well as from different characters, NO ONE KNOWS will keep you on the edge of your seat. It is deliciously nerve jangling and kept me reading late into the night.
If you like mysteries that will make your hair stand on end and your heart pound, NO ONE KNOWS is the one for you. The twists and turns throughout the book will keep you guessing until the ending that you never see coming. You are guaranteed a roller coaster ride that will have you thinking about it long after you have climbed off of the tracks. It might even make you want to get back on and experience the ride once more.
If you are not familiar with J. T. Ellison's work, NO ONE KNOWS is a wonderful standalone book to help you make her acquaintance. You are going to love her!
In an obsessive mystery as thrilling as The Girl on
the
Train and The Husbandβs Secret, New York
Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison will make you
question every twist in her page-turning novelβand wonder
which of her vividly drawn characters you should trust.
The day Aubrey Hamiltonβs husband is declared dead by the
state of Tennessee should bring closure so she can move
on
with her life. But Aubrey doesnβt want to move on; she
wants
Josh back. Itβs been five years since he disappeared,
since
their blissfully happy marriageβthey were happy, werenβt
they?βscreeched to a halt and Aubrey became the prime
suspect in his disappearance. Five years of emptiness,
solitude, loneliness, questions. Why didnβt Josh show up
at
his friendβs bachelor party? Was he murdered? Did he run
away? And now, all this time later, who is the mysterious
yet strangely familiar figure suddenly haunting her new
life?
In No One Knows, the New York Times
bestselling coauthor of the Nicholas Drummond series
expertly peels back the layers of a complex woman who is
hiding dark secrets beneath her unassuming exterior. This
masterful thriller for fans of Gillian Flynn, Liane
Moriarty, and Paula Hawkins will pull readers into a
youβll-never-guess merry-go-round of danger and
deception.
Round and round and round it goes, where it stopsβ¦no one
knows.
Aubrey
Nashville
Today
One thousand eight hundred and seventy-five days after
Joshua Hamilton went missing, the State of Tennessee
declared him legally dead.
Aubrey, his wife (or former wife, or ex-wife, or widowβ
she had no idea how to refer to herself anymore),
received the certified letter on a Friday. It came to the
Montessori school where she taught, the very one she and
Josh had attended as children. Came to her door in the
middle of reading time, borne on the hands of Linda
Pierce, the schoolβs long-standing principal, who looked
as if someone had died.
Which, in a way, they had.
He had.
Or so the State of Tennessee had officially declared.
Aubrey had been against the declaration-of-death petition
from the beginning. She didnβt want Joshβs estate
settled. Didnβt want a date engraved on that stupid
family stone obelisk that loomed over the graves of his
ancestors at Mount Olivet Cemetery. Didnβt want to say
good-bye forever.
But Joshβs mother had insisted. She wanted closure. She
wanted to move on with her life. She wanted Aubrey to
move on with hers, too. Sheβd petitioned the court for
the early ruling, and clearly the courts agreed.
Everyone was ready to move on. Everyone but Aubrey.
Sheβd felt poorly this morning when she woke, almost a
portent of the day to come, but today was the last day of
school before spring break, so she had to show, and be
cheery, and help the kids with their party, and give them
their extra-credit reading assignments.
From the second they arrived, her students buzzed around
her. It didnβt take long for Aubrey to catch the
childrenβs enthusiasm and drop her previous malaise. It
was a beautiful day: the sun glowed in the sky, dropping
beams through the windows, creating slats of light on the
multihued carpet. The kids spun through the light,
whirling dervishes against a yellow backdrop. She didnβt
even try to contain them; watching them, she felt exactly
the same way. Breaks signaled many things to her, freedom
most of all. Freedom to go her own way for a bit, to
explore, to read, to gather herself.
But when her classroom door opened unexpectedly, and
Principal Pierce came into the room, the nausea returned
with a vengeance, and her head started to pound. Aubrey
watched her coming closer and closer. Her old friendβs
face was strained, the furrows carved into her upper lip
collapsed in on each other, her yellowed forefinger
tapping against the pristine white-and-blue envelope. She
needed to file her nails.
What was it about moments, the ones that start with a
capital M, that made you notice each and every detail?
Aubrey reminded herself of her situation. The children
were watching. Trying to ignore the stares of the more
precocious ones scattered about the classroom, gifted
youngsters whose sensitivity to the emotions of others
was finely honed, Aubrey took the letter from Linda,
handed off the class into the womanβs very capable,
nicotine-stained hands, and went to the ladiesβ room in
the staff lounge to read the contents.
The letter was from her mother-in-law. Aubrey knew
exactly what it contained.
She tried to pretend her hands werenβt shaking.
She flipped the lid down on the toilet, locked the door,
then sat and ripped open the envelope. Inside was a piece
of paper folded into thirds, topped with a handwritten
note on a cheery yellow, daisy-covered Post-it. Aubrey
felt that added just the right touch. Her mother-in-law
always had been wildly incapable of any form of tact.
There was no denying it now; her hands trembled violently
as she unfolded the page. She looked to the handwritten
note first. The words were carefully formed, a
schoolgirlβs roundness to the old-fashioned cursive.
Aubrey,
For your records.
Daisy Hamilton
Scribbled in print beneath the painstakingly properly
written note were the words:
Joshuaβs Mother
Well, no kidding, Daisy. Like I could forget.
The sticky note was attached to a printout of an email.
It was from Daisyβs lawyer, the one whoβd helped put this
vehicle in motion last year, when Daisy decided to
petition the courts to have Josh declared legally dead.
Aubrey fingered the scar on her lip as she read.
Dear Daisy,
Per our earlier conversation, attached please find a copy
of the Order entered from the civil court today by Judge
Robinson. As I explained to you on the phone, this Order
directs the Department of Vital Statistics to issue a
death certificate for your son, Joshua David Hamilton, as
of April 19 of this year.
Now that this Order has been officially entered, we
should take another look at the estate plan. Joshβs life
insurance policy will be fulfilled as soon as the
declaration is received, and Iβd like you to be fully
prepared if you plan to contest the contents. I will be
forwarding you a final bill for my services on this
matter in the next couple of days.
Best personal regards,
Rick Saeger
And now it was official.
In the eyes of the law, Joshua David Hamilton was no
longer of this earth. No longer Aubreyβs husband. No
longer Daisyβs son.
No longer.
Aubrey was suddenly unable to breathe. Even though sheβd
been expecting it, seeing the words in black-and-white,
adorned by Daisyβs snippy little missive, killed her.
Tears slid down her face, and she crumpled the letter
against her thigh.
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