Daughter of Mine PDF

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 Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook. Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox. For my family  PROLOGUE The drought started in the West. We watched on the news as the waters dropped in the reservoirs and lakes, and their secrets and ghosts slowly emerged. The Great Salt Lake was suddenly in danger of disappearing, threatening to release the toxic dust hidden at the bottom. Skeletons surfaced from the edges of a shrinking Lake Mead—in barrels, in boats, bare bones scattered on a dried-out shoreline. Missing persons, nally found. Unknown crimes, suddenly uncovered. We watched from the safety of our enclave on the East Coast, where freshwater rivers cut down the mountain, sustaining our lake, our community. We watched from our living room couches, with lush forests of trees right outside the windows, the promise of the green North Carolina landscape. We thought ourselves protected, immune. It came here on a delay, like everything else—the latest fashions, high-speed internet. And then slowly, the rotted wood beneath the docks became visible, soft and black. Boats were raised up into dock houses, or anchored farther out, where they drifted back and forth like ghost ships in the night. We were told not to water the grass, not to launch a boat onto the lake from Gemma’s Creek, not to worry. Even as more things slowly started appearing: branches and trunks, reaching out from the surface; sunken beer bottles wedged into the newly ex-posed mud. In the West, there were the bodies. But here, we were less ashy, less prone to drama and sensation. We preferred our crimes quiet, our cases closed—that was my father’s motto. He was the last of a dying breed, I thought. A detective who got no shot of adrenaline from either the chase or the justice. So very di erent from the craving of my youth: Give me a wrong, so that I may punish. So when the drought nally arrived, I supposed it was tting that the rst thing to attract attention was not a body or a barrel or a bone. It was something quieter—something we didn’t understand at rst. Quieter, but no less dangerous. PART 1 FATHER  CHAPTER 1 62 Days without Rain Wednesday, May 15 5:30 p.m. Precipitation: Zero They raised the car from the lake on the same day as my father’s memorial, two unrelated but equally newsworthy events: Something lost. Something found. My father had been gone for over three weeks, and in the days since, I’d found myself measuring time di erently. A recalibration. A new reality. I listened to the weather reports each morning on the radio in Charlotte— sixty-two days without rain—and thought, instead, Twenty-three days without him. It seemed like half the town had come out for the celebration of life— crowding the deck of his favorite restaurant, raising a glass (or two, or three) to the portrait of Detective Perry Holt—while the other half was gathered around an inlet on the opposite side of Mirror Lake, watching as the salvage company hooked a crane to the car that had been spotted below the surface a few days earlier. All I could think was: Of course this is happening now. I’d always suspected that my father alone had held things together by sheer force of will—not only in our family but in the entire town. And without his careful gaze, his steady oversight, everything had shifted o -kilter. Even for this, he had left us his guidance. A cremation instead of a burial. A party instead of a funeral. Food covered by the department. Drinks on him. But the discovery of the car was big news in a small town, and no one had seemed sure what to do, with the outside world watching. It had made headlines all the way in Charlotte, even: the water level of Mirror Lake had dropped to the lowest it had been in decades, and a sherman had practically run up on top of the sunken vehicle. There was no evidence of a crash—no bent metal or crushed vegetation at the curve of road above the inlet—so the rumor spreading through the crowd was that the old rusted sedan must’ve been there for years, before the addition of the new guardrail. Apparently, a dive crew had been out to inspect the car the day it was found, but saw nothing inside. And yet, it had the air of something I couldn’t quite put my nger on: a sign of things emerging, changing. A warning, that things were beginning here too. There was something in the air, keeping everyone on edge: a buzzing of insects in the muddy puddles beneath the deck; the setting sun glaring sharply o the surface of the water, so we had to squint just to look at one another; leaves, dry and brittle and churned up in the wind, falling to earth at the wrong time of year. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. There were supposed to be stories on the mic set up beside the bar, for anyone who felt moved to speak. We were supposed to nd solace in the liquor, and the laughter—a release, an acceptance. Perry Holt was gone too soon, and it wasn’t fair, but my god, what a life he had lived. So many people here attributed their lives to him. Whether he’d pulled them out of danger, or pushed them toward the help he knew they needed—today, we were supposed to remember it all. But now news of the car was splitting everyone’s attention and sense of responsibility and propriety. For every comment of He was such a good man, a good leader, a good role model booming from the sound system, there was a quieter whisper carried in the crowd around me. It’s coming up. No license plate. No VIN. Stolen and dumped, probably. While the youngest Murphy girl—now a few years out of high school—told the story of how my father found her drifting in the middle of the lake as a kid, her tube cut loose from the dock, I heard the group to my side taking bets on what they’d nd inside the trunk. A body. Stolen goods. A gun. I turned to stare, hoping to shame them into silence, but they were looking toward the entrance instead, where a group of uniformed o cers had gathered in the doorway. It didn’t help that a lot of the people here were presently or formerly connected to law enforcement, either by profession or family ties. Or that men and women in uniform kept rotating in, alternating between paying their respects and relaying updates to my brothers. Both of whom had suddenly disappeared again. I didn’t blame them. I was pretty sure I’d nd them on the long sliver of deck at the side of the building—the only reprieve from the crowd. I saw Caden rst, pacing back and forth, all frenetic energy. He paused periodically to hold his phone out over the water, trying to catch a signal. Any other day, he’d be out there himself. He’d been the very rst on scene; the call about the car came in while he was working his normal shift on lake patrol. Gage, meanwhile, remained perfectly still, arms resting on the wooden railing as he stared out at the water. From a distance, he looked so much like our father it stopped my heart: sharp nose, prominent jaw, dark cropped hair. Heavy slanted eyebrows that gave everything he said an air of gravity. I slid up beside him, mirroring his posture. How many years had I mimicked him, idolized him, revered him as the hero of my youth? He let me follow him around far longer than most older brothers might, and I relished his praise: Hazel can climb that tree; and Hazel will jump from that bridge; and Hazel can beat you in a race. All I’d had to do was show up, and prove him right. Now I tried to mirror not only his position but his emotions. Find the balance. Rise to the moment. Like our father, Gage was always the responsible one—and now he found himself in a new role not only in the department but in our family. Maybe that was the curse of being the oldest. “Are we hiding out?” I asked, as Caden’s footsteps retreated down the deck.  Gage tilted his head to the side, squinting. “We’re hiding out.” Then I could feel Caden’s footsteps getting closer again—a metronome, keeping time. He stopped pacing behind us. “Mel’s trying to send pictures. They’re not coming through.” I could see the pent-up energy in his stance, though his expression remained calm, controlled. The things he could hide under his cherub-shaped face, even at twenty-seven, with the dimpled cheek, and his brown hair swooped to the side, like he was still on the cusp of adulthood. “What’s going on out there?” I asked. If anyone would be able to distinguish the facts from the rumors, it was my brothers—both of them had proudly followed our father onto the force. Though Gage would probably be the only one to tell me. Caden and I got along best when I remembered to bite my tongue, and he remembered to ignore me. Today, we were both mostly doing our part. Gage was tall and lean-muscled, where Caden was more broad-shouldered and stocky. The only discernible features they shared were the color of their deep blue eyes and the low tenor of their voices. The Holt voice, my dad had called it, though his had turned more gravelly as he aged. “Probably some insurance scam,” Gage said, dark eyebrows knitted together. “The guardrail was installed fteen years ago. The car must’ve been there for a while.” I knew that stretch of road, right before the narrow, single-lane bridge. “It’s easy to lose control there,” I said. I remembered the warning myself, from when I was learning to drive. My father’s echo: Careful. Slow it down, Hazel. It had always been a dangerous bend, especially in the night. The township of Mirror Lake didn’t believe in streetlights or painted center lines or regular pothole maintenance, it seemed. It did believe in respecting the natural geography that had existed before, which was why the roads forked sharply, banked unevenly, rose steeply. The side roads were generally only wide enough for one vehicle at a time. Growing up here, we had learned to be both cautious and aggressive, to maneuver through tight spaces, to step on the gas before someone else did rst.  So driving was a dangerous activity, especially for someone from out of town. I imagined someone speeding around the bend, unfamiliar with the dark mountain curves, the dark mountain roads, tires losing traction—how quickly something could sink below the surface, unnoticed. “There was no one inside the car, Hazel,” Gage answered. “They checked.” “Could’ve escaped,” I said. I closed my eyes and saw it: someone clawing their way out of the vehicle as it sank. Their head nally emerging above water —that rst, primal gasp. “Yeah, well, no one called it in, if so. And the plates were removed. Seems more likely it was dumped there on purpose. It’s a convenient spot.” Gage was logical, pragmatic, levelheaded. All things that made him a good detective now. It was always so easy to believe him. It made sense: here was a place no one would go looking. Caden glanced up brie y from his phone. “I can’t believe it’s been there that long. I used to jump from that spot in high school.” Gage rubbed the side of his chin. “Me too,” he said. I shuddered. We had all jumped o the rocks at the edge of that curve, when the summer sun got too hot, and we were desperate for something to happen, despite the warnings from the adults. I could still feel the cold shock of that pocket of water, always in the shade no matter the time of day, the feet rst plunge, and how the bottom seemed so endlessly far away. How close had we come? How many of us had brushed up against a strip of metal and thought boulder or branch. How many of us had imagined something else instead? “Jesus,” Caden said, holding his cell closer to his face. He stopped breathing for a moment, his only tell. And then his eyes narrowed. “Someone really needs to help with the crowd control over there.” I tried to peer over his shoulder at the screen, but he was already on his way. He quickly rounded the corner back toward the guests. Apparently by someone, he meant himself. I couldn’t believe he was leaving like this. “Seriously?” I began. “Dad would—”  “Dad would be out there himself,” Gage cut in, squinting at the water, the surrounding mountains re ecting o the hazy surface. “And you know it.” I did. Over the years, I’d watched our father leave the dinner table for a break-in; a birthday party for an overdose; a soccer game for a high-speed chase. He made no excuses or apologies. We all understood that his responsibilities stretched beyond the boundaries of our family. “You should head home too, Hazel,” Gage said, turning back to face me. “This is only going to get worse. Everyone knows you’ve got a long trip back.” Two hours, really. But Charlotte might as well have been a di e-rent world from Mirror Lake. I was a di erent person out there, without the anchor of history. “You sure?” I asked. “I feel like I should stay to help clean up….” But Gage shook his head, releasing me. “Drive safe,” he said, like my father would do. “And, Hazel?” He looked at me with wide-open eyes, a wide-open expression. “Don’t be a stranger, okay? He wouldn’t want that.” I forced a small smile, even as a wave of panic gripped me from nowhere. I felt, then, the nality of this moment; I wasn’t ready. “You should be so lucky,” I said before turning away, eyes burning. Even as I joked, I wondered what would next bring me back. Thanksgiving? My niece’s birthday in the summer, maybe, if Caden invited me? I felt untethered, ungrounded. All the emotions I’d fought to contain today suddenly ghting for the surface. I kept my head down, weaving through the crowd, a study in evasion. Eyes forward, stride con dent, hoping no one stopped me. It didn’t help matters that I was the only one in black amid a sea of khakis and oral. Or that I looked like I was dressed for a business meeting—tailored A-line dress, blazer, stacked heels— while the rest of the guests had arrived in what I could only call Lake Casual. I grabbed the bag I’d stowed behind the counter and slipped into the restroom. I wanted to change before the drive home—I had plans to swing by our latest renovation project on the way, which was still an active construction site. I needed to focus on something else, to let my work consume me again. The bathroom was down a dimly lit, wood-paneled hall, and my vision was still adjusting to the change as I pushed through the door and nearly collided with the person on the way out. “Oh.” A hand on my shoulder, to brace herself. A whi of coconut. A curtain of hair. Even in the dark, I would know: Jamie. She slowly removed her hand from the front of my shoulder, then ran it through the ends of her long, honey-colored hair, an old nervous habit. “Hazel,” she said, locking eyes with mine. Her voice was like something sharp and piercing, straight to the heart. Maybe it was because my guard was already down, or my nerves too exposed, or because I was already hovering so close to the edge. Her attention shifted to the bag in my hands. “Are you leaving?” “Yeah. Just changing rst.” I gestured to my out t. “No one told me the dress code.” Jamie wore a spring oral dress and beige sandals. A twitch of her lip—an almost smile. A portal to another time, before her gaze slid away again. She stepped to the side, closer to the exit. And then, because I didn’t know where to go from here: “Is Skyler around?” My six-year-old niece was always a welcome distraction. “She’s outside with some of the department kids.” She cleared her throat. “Are you coming back this weekend?” “For what?” I asked. She frowned, peering at the door. “Caden said they’re cleaning out the house. I thought you knew.” This was what happened when you were the only one who left home. I had to hear about things secondhand, default to my brothers’ preferences, concede to their decisions. I shook my head, grief giving way to anger—a familiar and welcome slide. “When?” I asked, louder than necessary. “Sunday.” I did my best not to look surprised. Maybe Gage forgot to tell me in the chaos of the day. Sometimes Jamie mentioned things in a way that sounded o hand but seemed almost intentional instead. As if she was still trying to bridge the gap between me and Caden.  Or maybe I was being too generous, blinded by nostalgia and the years of friendship that had once sustained us. Back when we were in high school, Jamie used to say I had an A-plus asshole radar—warning her of the boys who would let us down; the teacher who would not give second chances; the classmates who would take particular pleasure in our missteps. But I felt my instincts went to something deeper than that, like I could see what was underneath—less action, more intention. Unfortunately, it never rubbed o on Jamie, considering she married my brother Caden. “Thanks,” I called as she opened the door. “I’ll be there.” After changing, I thought about going out to nd Gage, tell him I’d be back Sunday—but there was currently a straight shot to the exit, the sun was setting, and this celebration was quickly becoming something else. I had started to get that subtle, creeping feeling—like the walls were closing in, and I needed to escape. A reminder of why I’d left in the rst place. Stay too long, and you became exactly what Mirror Lake decided you would be. Out front, the department kids were playing a game of hide-and-seek in the trees. One of their mothers leaned against the wooden railing, keeping tabs on them, like mine had once done. I caught a ash of Skyler’s blond hair rushing past, and saw, instead, a group of us racing through these woods, a generation before. I kept moving. How quickly the past could grasp on to you here, and pull. The dirt parking lot was over owing, and several vehicles were combing the area, looking for free space. I raised a hand to the nearest car as I walked to my SUV, gestured I was heading out. I had gotten the last viable spot at the edge of the lot, half my car fully in the woods, tucked under the branches of a large oak.  The driver’s side window lowered as the bright blue car slowly pulled up behind mine. “Hi,” he said. A familiar voice, a familiar face. I froze, shoulders tensing. Last I saw Nico Pritchard, he was driving away in a di erent car, and doing his best not to make eye contact. I paused, one hand on my car door. “Hi,” I repeated. “Sorry I’m late, I got held up,” he said. And then, when I didn’t respond: “Been a while, Hazel.” Two years and two months, but who was counting? “Yeah, guess it has,” I said, like I hadn’t just done the math. “Lucky timing on the parking spot, though.” He drummed his long ngers on the steering wheel, as if debating his next words. “Seems like I keep just missing you,” he said. I nodded. We’d been just missing each other for over two years, at holidays and family visits and birthday parties; I just wasn’t sure which of us was the more active player. It was a feat, considering he was Gage’s oldest friend, and he still owned the house on the same inlet as my dad, bordering our property. The pattern of evasion was broken only with the message he’d sent me the night my father had died: Hazel, I’m so sorry. He’d been away on vacation when it happened. Even then we’d missed each other. There was a time that Nico was anywhere Gage went, and was nearly as much a part of my childhood. Our fathers had been partners on the force—a di erent type of family, I supposed. “Well,” I said, “good to nally run into you.” It was, and it wasn’t. For years growing up, I had been singularly focused on Nico Pritchard. Attuned to the careful way he did everything, from baiting a shing line to saying my name. The way he pronounced each syllable carefully, not letting the second half get swallowed up, like everyone else. The innocent look of his wide brown eyes, like he was always trying to take everything in, quietly and carefully, to le away for later. The shape of his down-turned mouth, so that his sudden smile was both a surprise and a game changer. My infatuation was obvious in a way that bordered on embarrassing. As we grew older, the fact that it had been reciprocated by him was not nearly as evident. “Sorry it has to be under these circumstances,” he said. Even his words were carefully chosen. He’d managed to apologize twice in as many minutes. “Me too,” I said. I opened my car door, before it was too late. “Hazel, hold on,” he said. I held on, hand tightening on the top of the door. To my horror, Nico stepped out of his idling car: long, tailored pants; white button-down, tucked in; a silver watch that I knew had once belonged to his father; a ush along the top of his high cheekbones. It didn’t matter how much time had passed, or how badly we’d left things the last time—whenever I saw him, I pictured him at fteen on our swim platform; at seventeen, leaning against my bedroom door; at twenty-one, home from college, eyes slowly scanning the room, before landing on me. “I wanted to call,” he continued, taking a step closer. “I’ve been meaning to. I just didn’t know—” “Nico,” I said, cutting him o. “I’m sorry, but I really do need to go.” I needed to leave before he did something terrible—like resting a hand on my shoulder; placing a thumb under my chin. I slid into the driver’s seat, did my best at smiling. “If you can’t nd Gage, he’s hiding out around the corner of the deck.” I started the car and didn’t look back. I had learned long ago that this was the only way to truly leave. Since Mirror Highway was a loop, there were technically two ways out of town. Going to the right would be faster, but turning left would take me by the scene of the salvaged car. Sorry, Dad. It was human instinct. I wanted to see it too.  There was a slowdown before the curve, a line of cars steadily crawling forward, inch by inch. Most of the tra c seemed to be due to the line of emergency vehicles along the side of the road, and the fact that only one lane could move at a time. I could just make out a man in the distance, directing tra c past the site. When I nally approached, I realized that it was Caden in the road, guiding us on. He was still in his khaki pants and light-blue polo. There was mud on the side of his pant leg, like he’d been pressed up against the car, checking inside. Curiosity, before crowd control. I paused for a beat, like all the rest before me, taking in the scene beside the lake. The guardrail had been removed and now lay curved and crooked against the trees. The old vehicle rested at a slight angle on the side of the road, tires attened, rubber disintegrating. I felt myself holding my breath, like I did whenever driving past a graveyard. The car was coated in a layer of mud, like something alive, sliding o the surface, dripping onto the asphalt. I couldn’t tell the color underneath anymore, but the body was boxy and long, like something a grandparent would drive. The windows were either down or broken, and the inside was piled high with mud and grime. The trunk had been pried open, and it remained that way, like the mouth of an animal. Goose bumps rose across my arms, the back of my neck. The car seemed like it had become something else under the surface. Something more visceral. A part of the landscape, swallowed up by it, pulsating with the place it had just been. Caden’s face didn’t change as he waved me past. But when I glanced in the rearview mirror, he had turned in my direction, watching me drive away. My phone chimed once I had exited the town, on the weaving road toward the main highway that would bring me back to Charlotte. I thought it was probably Keira or Luke—my business partners and closest friends—checking in, updating me on the day’s progress. Making sure I was doing okay. I peered down at the phone, and saw a message from my uncle: Did you leave? I ignored it, but then my phone rang, the name ROY HOLT on the display. Since I’d left Mirror Lake, he’d rarely reached out. But in the years before, he’d sometimes step in for my father when work called him away. I answered on speaker. “Hello?” I said. A question, more than a greeting. At rst his voice was choppy, as if he was still in a dead zone himself. “Hazel?” he said, like he’d just repeated himself. “Are you still here?” “No, I’m on the road already. I have a project I have to check in on.” If he was calling with a lecture, I wasn’t interested. Though he’d often seemed proud that I’d set o on my own—building a business, charting my own course—he’d always had a closer relationship with my brothers. Caden left already too, was what I wanted to say. “I was hoping to catch you before you left.” A beat of silence, as he searched for what to say next. “I’m the executor of the estate, Hazel,” he said, voice low, as if he was trying to nd someplace quiet to have this conversation. It made sense, since he was the only lawyer in the family. He’d begun his career as a prosecutor—he and my dad used to tell stories of the old days, when the cases would pass directly from one Holt to the next. He’d since settled into family law, so of course my father would entrust this part to him. I braced myself for whatever he was about to say. “Look,” he began, voice even lower. “There’s something in the will you should know about.”  CHAPTER 2 65 Days without Rain Saturday, May 18 8:00 p.m. Precipitation: Zero The house is yours. With every day that passed, the tension in my shoulders only grew. My uncle’s words had echoed in my head for the rest of the week—at work, at the gym pool, at Friday-night drinks. The house is yours. Just yours. Of all the things I could’ve imagined—this was the last on the list. Do they know? I’d asked, once I’d gotten my bearings again. As if that was the place to begin. Instead of: Are you sure? Why? I haven’t talked to them yet, he’d said. But they might. Perry’s will was discovered in his office at work last week. I wanted to tell you first—in person. But three days had passed, and he must’ve told my brothers we had talked by now. And yet neither had said a word. Not a call, not a text. I hadn’t expected to hear from Caden, but Gage… I thought he might reach out, to put me at ease. To say, Of course he wanted you to have it, Hazel—he always wanted you to come back. To still be on my side. But no one had been in contact. Jamie had said they were meeting tomorrow to clean out the house. No one had even told me the time. I didn’t know what I’d be stepping into. Which was why, as soon as I had nished walking through our latest open construction site at close of day Saturday, I packed an overnight bag and decided to go.  I wanted the time alone in the old house rst, before my brothers arrived in the morning with their questions and their judg-ment. I wanted the opportunity to take it all in, to savor the memories one last time, before we stripped them from the walls, pulled them from the shelves, boxed them into the attic. I thought a night alone would help brace me. To understand why he’d done it. And if I was being honest with myself, I wondered if I might nd something in the house that was meant just for me. A letter, maybe, tucked under my childhood pillow—like my mother had done, before she left. Or if, like her, he’d given no reasonable explanation for his decision. As I veered o the highway, I was reminded why I didn’t often make this trip at night. It was the way the trees closed up the view behind you with every mountain curve. And the way the streetlights turned sporadic, and then nonexistent, after the welcome sign for Mirror Lake. The lake was nestled at the heart of a mountain valley, like the center of a bowl, and every street, every house, the entire town, was crafted with that rmly in mind. The main highway split as you approached the lake, winding up and around the border in either direction, tracing every nger, every outlet, rising and falling along with the terrain. Narrow mountain roads branched outward from the perimeter, sloping up the curves of the bowl. Houses were built into the landscape, their lower levels half buried in the earth, colors blending into the woods. Sometimes, the wind rushing through the trees sounded like a river. During high school, after hours of lectures from my father on the dangers of driving in the dark here, I’d made it my mission to know every bend of Mirror Highway by heart, the same way I could map the lake by memory. But it was still too easy to become disoriented in the night. The moon re ected o the surface of the lake, and without streetlights to ground me as I rounded a curve by the water, for a moment I couldn’t tell whether I was heading down or up. I felt a ash of panic, of vertigo, before the trees blocked the view of the lake again. I pictured that car, pulled out from the depths. How long had it been there, with no one noticing? Something glowed faintly orange in the distance, and I wondered if this was a new safety feature, after all. But the dim bulbs of a construction sign slowly came into focus, a hazy warning: NO GUARDRAIL AHEAD. I tapped my brakes on instinct—out of curiosity, as much as caution. As if I might see something new in the glow of my high beams. But there was just a series of orange cones in the place the guardrail should have been, and remnants of mud that hadn’t yet been washed away by a rainfall in the place the car had once rested. The mountain wind shuddered against the side of my car, the tires threatening to drift, and I held the steering wheel a little tighter. Careful. One more curve, and the road slanted down over the narrower, single-lane bridge. I felt myself list sideways, from muscle memory. No matter where you were driving in Mirror Lake, you were always circling the basin, bending toward it, like a galaxy spiraling closer to a black hole. For years, that sensation had felt like home. Like coming back to something —to someone. Only now I was circling an absence. An abyss. Like I was traversing time instead of space, and it would be impossible to ever go back. Like crossing an event horizon. My wheels churned on the loose rock and gravel as I descended the uneven slope of our driveway. We lived at the bottom of the bowl, along the far edge of the lake, on a quiet, private inlet, sheltered from view. I rode the brakes down, gravity pulling me closer. The high beams of my SUV illuminated the at circle of drive, the two-car garage on one side, and the structure of the main house beside it. From the front, it was a quaint ranch home, but there was another level visible only from the back, built into the slope above the lake. Everything appeared dark. The glare from my headlights re ected in the single garage window, sharp and garish. The last time I’d been here was a blur, rushing over as soon as I got the call from Gage, voice cracking—It’s Dad. It had taken me a long moment to register what he was trying to say: He didn’t show up to work, wasn’t answering his phone. Caden went by the house and found him. Heart attack. I was already in the car by the time he nished speaking. I hadn’t stayed over then; had driven straight back to Charlotte, terri ed of the silence. Our place had always been a hub of activity, a home base for our friends, with an open-door policy that extended to half the community. It wasn’t meant to be this quiet. I turned o the engine and let my eyes adjust to the night before I stepped outside. The glow of the moon, its re ection rippling along the surface of the lake. Stars gaining clarity in the clear sky. And something else. I was wrong about the house being completely dark. There was a light somewhere on the main level. Stepping out of the car, I could see the faint yellow glow through the gauzy curtains of the den. My steps echoed in the night, rocks skittering in my wake. I approached the entrance, squinting into the window. The house is yours. Time snapped tightly, so that suddenly I could remember both the moment I rst walked through that front door at the age of seven and the moment that I exited after my last visit home, twenty years later. A cool breeze kicked up from the lake, the familiar scent carrying, evergreen and moss. And something faintly chemical. The exhaust from a boat; the remnants of gasoline in an emptied container. No one had been keeping an eye on things, and I was suddenly nervous about what I’d nd inside. I used the ashlight on my phone to see the keypad beside the garage. I didn’t have a key to get inside the front door. The irony: that this house should be left to me, and I had no o cial way to claim it.  But my father never locked the door inside the garage: Who would ever attempt to sneak into the home of respected Detective Perry Holt? He had been a permanent xture of town, from community events to school functions. I was convinced he knew the names of every resident in town. The numbers of the keypad lit up as I pressed the code, gears churning to lift the double doors. The dim overhead light barely illuminated the tools on the walls and crates of canned food and bottled water stacked on the oor in the corner. I’d teased him over Christmas, asked if he was becoming a prepper, but he’d laughed and said he was just preparing for the pleasure of our company. In his defense, when we were growing up, you never knew how many people would end up here for dinner. I returned to my car and pulled into the empty spot beside my father’s truck. Safe, now, from the threat of wind through the night, snapped branches and twigs already littering the surrounding area—an unpredictable landscape. The drought had also brought re warnings to the region, due to a deadly combination of low humidity and gusty winds. How quickly a spark could catch, and spread, if you weren’t careful. I stared out the garage window into the dark, watching as the branches arced against the sky. I had a moment of panic that the inner door to the house would be locked. That Gage had been through, securing the premises. Or Caden had dropped by and turned that dead bolt, knowing I had no way inside otherwise. But when I tried the handle, the door creaked open, like always. Every house has a story, and every renovation, a mystery—something the prior owners are trying to x, or cover up. Something they hoped you wouldn’t notice. An old leak, drywall patched over and painted in a slightly o -color shade. A shitty electrical job, wiring not up to code. An unpermitted addition. A secret. I’d learned as much from my job, but I’d discovered it for myself, long ago. In the week after Nico’s father died, when we were helping him organize, we found a hidden room. I found a hidden room, I should say, tagging along with Gage, like always.  A closet tucked inside another, crudely hollowed out in the interior of the house. Hidden behind the closet in the guest room, where, I’d learned, Nico’s father had been staying before the divorce. Hanging uniform pants covered the hidden alcove—a rectangular hole in the drywall, just wide enough for one person. We led into the darkness. I could still see it in ashes. A red ashlight on an empty le box. Crime scene photos taped up on the wooden beams, seared into memory: pale twisted limbs, hair splayed in the dirt, blood on a broken charm bracelet, dangling from a lifeless wrist—cases the elder Nicholas Pritchard had presumably never solved, before he’d moved his family here from Raleigh, for a safer, quieter life. A murder room, Nico had called it. We’d been kids then—me, fteen; Gage and Nico, seventeen—and drawn to it, standing there speechless, our hitched breathing echoing against the silence. Back then I wasn’t afraid. I felt how consumed this man had become by the need for justice, but I was at the age where I wanted to consume, to be consumed. To fall deeper into everything, as if there were something honorable, beautiful even, in the commitment. Nico was the rst to act. He pulled a photo o the wall, tore it in half as he did, pieces scattering onto the un nished oor. I pulled down the next, and the next. Until we were in a frenzy, desperately scratching at the walls, before someone else saw them. We didn’t speak. Gage stu ed the pieces into a trash bag before Nico’s mother got home, and we dumped it outside. A gift. A promise. It had cemented something between us all right then. We’d walked home in silence. Until Gage nally broke it. Hazel, he said—was all he said. We had always communicated like this, with an easy understanding. A look, behind a word. I know, I said. I understood. It was our rst secret. I stood in the dark hall of my father’s home now, feeling along the wall for the light switch. It buzzed for a moment before catching, a delayed icker before the series of three overhead lights guided the way, one dimmer than the rest. I started a list in my head, an instinct that was hard to shake: paint; light xtures; add a window maybe— I could sense the potential in a building just like I could see it in a person. Better yet, I could convince others to see it as well. A wood oorboard popped beneath my steps, as if it had settled with the changing season. As if the house had started to shift on me. I tapped at the hardwood, checking for signs of hollowness underneath—from water damage or time. I was nervous what I’d nd if I pulled up the ooring. If the issues with the house were more than just cosmetic. Everything felt o. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer, like it was moving too slowly. A staleness to the air, like the space was reverting back to its essence, wood and brick, drywall and plaster. Cold and impersonal. At the end of the hall, I could nally see the source of the inside light. It was my father’s reading lamp, set up narrow and snakelike over his recliner, a worn brown leather with a bookshelf behind it, stacked with equally worn mass-market mystery books. The light was glowing over his empty seat. Like a taunt, after years of him calling after me, Hazel, the lights! whenever I left a room. He always said if I ever went missing, all he’d need to do was follow the trail of lights I left behind. Standing in this empty room now, it was almost enough to make me believe in ghosts. I icked another switch as I passed—Old habits, Dad—and moved deeper into the house. The living room on one side, versions of us frozen in time in the pictures on the mantel: My dad in uniform, with his class from the police academy; I could still name most of them, had grown up thinking of them as my uncles and aunts and cousins. My college graduation photo. Gage’s swearing-in ceremony, my father beside him, both of them with that same dark military-style haircut—so alike, both in mannerisms and appearance. And then Caden’s, a handful of years later. He’d taken a wilder path, but he had gotten there, all the same.  The only baby pictures now were of my niece, who had the same rounded cherub face as Caden’s, the same coy smile that let him get away with everything growing up. When I got to the kitchen, it was obvious that someone had started without me. There was a pile of loose pictures on the rounded kitchen table, already split into sections. Organized, deliberate, and at rst I thought, Gage. The box with my father’s medal was open in front of his customary seat, bronze catching the gleam of the chandelier. He’d received it many years earlier, when he saw the smoke from the Woolworth house re and arrived before the re trucks, barging straight in. He’d come out with a young boy in each arm and damaged lungs, a perpetually lingering cough that had become background noise, a familiarity of home. He didn’t need to display any medal for people to know who he was, what he’d done—he’d worn his heroism across his body. Now his badge was positioned beside the medal on the table, like a centerpiece. And there was a small wooden box I didn’t recognize, with a silver key wedged into the lock. I opened the top, and a compact handgun rested on a bed of maroon velvet inside. “Jesus,” I muttered, letting the lid fall shut again. This wasn’t my father’s familiar service weapon. No, this was something else. I had no idea he’d owned another gun. This shouldn’t be left out, unsecured. This shouldn’t be left out at all. My brothers both would’ve known how to deal with this. The fact that this was left out felt like someone making a point, instead. Here, it’s yours. You handle it. Caden, then. I secured the lock, and looked for a safe place to store it. I settled on the china cabinet, which held no china, and never had. Instead, there was a collection of liquors and various specialty cups and shot glasses brought back from vacations, or gifted by others. I slid the box out of sight on the lower level, then dropped the key into a pewter beer stein with a shamrock on the upper shelf. The wind blew outside, whistling through the weatherworn window seals. The deck seemed to shudder against the house, and a sharp clang came from somewhere out back—like something had come loose in the yard. A piece of the grill maybe, or one of the staked solar lights that lined the curving path down to the old dock but no longer worked. I turned on the deck lights that hung over the glass doors and stared out into the night. The deck glowed almost white in the halo, but the ground disappeared below, into the shadows. I opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the deck, peering over the edge, where the stairs descended to the lower level. There was no furniture visible, nothing that looked like it had come loose or fallen over. The yard slanted downward toward the lake, and it seemed somehow bigger, deeper—the dark of the water even farther away. The wind whipped through the trees, and then my hair—another clang, a little farther than I’d rst thought. Someone out in the water, maybe. I leaned an arm onto the splintered wood of the deck railing, straining to see. Shadows, slowly coming into focus in the moonlight. Things reaching out from the surface of the lake—branches, roots. And the rectangle of the swim platform, which now appeared closer than I remembered. We used to race out there as kids, launching from the backyard, high- stepping through the muddy, silted water, before diving in. A mad-dash, gasping race that left me out of breath by the time my hand slapped onto the algae-coated edge, in triumph. The swim platform drifted to the left in the next breeze, and the sound of metal on metal resounded once more. That’s what it was, then. The chains underneath that anchored the platform were no longer pulled taut, given the lower level of water. They twisted against one another and pulled at the connections as the platform drifted back and forth in the current. I rubbed my upper arms, chilled by the night wind, then retreated inside and locked the slider behind me. My father used to say you have to keep an eye on things, or they’d change on you. When I was younger, I had thought he was talking about other people, a quick bait and switch, like a magic trick. I’d thought it was a warning to stay alert, to be exacting, to not let anyone fool you. I’d thought he was talking about my mother. But now I understood. The way the edges of the lake kept shrinking, the yard expanding in response, roots and mud and rock emerging. A landscape re ected in a funhouse mirror, proportions o. Like it was someplace di erent from the one I’d once known. I understood now that it wasn’t just the watching but the caring. How quickly everything had gone and changed on me. I hadn’t been watching him—had missed the signs of his weakening heart, obvious only in retrospect, like so much else. And now he, too, was gone. I brought my luggage inside—a single backpack, a small weekender bag—and wondered what else my brothers had already tackled. My dad’s room was the rst door o the hall, and I ipped the light switch. His closet had already been cleaned out, everything pulled o hangers, dumped into piles. Boxes from the high-up shelves were now tossed onto the oor, contents emptied. The other two bedrooms on the main level had once belonged to Gage and Caden, though Gage’s had long been turned into a home o ce. Nothing appeared disturbed in either. The ooring creaked below me as I moved—eerie in the emptiness. Back in the living room, I opened the china cabinet once more, picked up a metallic shot glass I’d brought back from a trip to New York. There was a skyline etched into the surface. I heard the echo of my father, opening a bottle for a crowd in the living room. What’s the best way to knock out a criminal? A shot. Two to be safe. I opened the whiskey beside the box with the gun, balanced it carefully as I poured. I followed my father’s advice: I took one shot, and then two to be safe. I icked the switch for the deck lights, darkness falling, and then hit every other light as I passed.  See? I wanted to say. I listen. I was paying attention. I stopped at his chair in the den, reaching for the reading lamp, last of all. The only light left on was the one leading to the basement. The air was cooler in the stairwell, and I knew it would drop another few degrees at the bottom step. My bedroom was on the lower level, with doors that opened directly to the outside. It was my mother’s idea—Hazel can take that room, she’s not afraid of anything. Which was not at all true when I was seven. For years, I’d stare at those sliding doors until I fell asleep each night, imagining all the things that might happen. But that claim of fearlessness became a state I tried to inhabit, an identity I eventually made my own. My mother was always very persuasive. I’d grown accustomed to the vulnerability down here, and when I got older, those doors worked in my favor instead. My room was the smallest one—I wasn’t even sure it counted as a bedroom, since there wasn’t a closet. Over time, my things had steadily encroached throughout the lower level: a dresser in the hall with a mirror over the top, my desk in the rec space. Until I’d claimed it all, painting it, even, without asking. It was still that same leafy green shade, which gave the impression that the space was larger than it was, even though it was dark, moody. There was a second set of sliding doors in the rec space, and the walls blended with the green outside, like there was no separation between outside and in. Even then I had a vision. Saw the way to optimize a place, turn a space into a home. It sounded like a fan was running, and it took me a moment to realize it was the old desktop computer, on the desk pressed against the far wall of the rec space. I moved the mouse, and the monitor came to life. System Crash, the message read. I held the power button until the computer shut down, and the room fell fully to silence. It was like a time warp, with the walls and the desktop and a cordless landline phone beside the television. The sheer, gauzy curtains hanging at the sides of the glass doors swayed gently as I passed. The dimensions of the room felt o , somehow, like the ceiling was pushing lower. There was a growing collection of mismatched mirrors clustered together on the back wall, across from the glass doors, adding to the disorientation. There had been only two at Christmas—Dad said they lightened up the room in the daylight—but now there were ve, eating up the majority of the wall space. They re ected di erent slices of me as I passed, distorting the whole. The whiskey was catching up with me, or maybe it was the house. I brought my bag into the bedroom, slipped into my old daybed, and turned to my side, watching the sliding glass doors, like always. I’d spent so many years like this, feeling prepared, instead of wary. Just waiting for something to happen. Craving the mystery, the danger, the adventure. Back then I had naively believed they were all the same thing. I knew much better now.  CHAPTER 3 66 Days without Rain Sunday, May 19 9:00 a.m. Precipitation: Zero There was someone inside the house. After a childhood spent within these walls, this awareness came from a feeling as much as evidence. But there was that too. A uttering of something overhead when I exited the shower, like an animal had found its way inside a vent. Or as if something was sliding across the oor. I stared up at the ceiling, remained perfectly still, held my breath. I was used to listening to houses, deciphering their nuances. Nothing. And then: A deeper creak, like the pop of a oorboard. A footstep. A person. “Hello?” I called, though my voice came out hoarse. I nished pulling on my clothes, then went to the base of the steps, expecting Gage to poke his head into the stairwell at any minute. There was no response, but if he had gone into one of the bedrooms, he probably wouldn’t have heard me. He might not have noticed my car in the garage either. I crept up the stairs, not wanting to startle him. At the top of the steps, there was no sign of anyone else inside. Just the slanting sunlight coming in through the back windows that lined the kitchen and living room. Through the foyer, I could see the dead bolt was still engaged on the front door. I frowned, then peered out the gauzy curtains of the den: no car.  A chill worked its way down my spine. I listened carefully: the old grandfather clock in the foyer; the drone of a boat engine somewhere out back. Maybe it was just the settling house, left unattended for too long. But then I heard it: the creak of a door, coming from somewhere inside— and then silence again. My heartbeat picked up and the room hollowed out. I took three quick steps backward, toward the front door, my hand already reaching for it. How many empty houses ended up with people squatting inside, believing them abandoned? I ipped the lock, opened the door, heard the rustling of leaves blowing across the drive. “Who’s in here?” I called, bolder than I felt. I already had one foot outside, ready to run. The door creaked loudly this time, rapid footsteps rounded the corner, and I had about half a second to prepare myself for the surprised smile of my niece, before she launched herself into my arms. “Skyler,” I said, practically laughing in relief. I held her tight, smoothing the blond hair on the back of her head, my hand still faintly shaking from the surprise. “I didn’t know it was you,” she said, burying her face into my neck. I felt the tremble in her arms, the rapid- re heartbeat in her ribs. “Hello, favorite girl. I didn’t mean to scare you,” I said, laughing again, trying to shake the nerves loose. “You didn’t scare me,” she said, wide blue eyes peering out from under her overlong bangs. She slid down from my hip, brushed the hair back from her shoulders, crossed her arms. I couldn’t help grinning. Skyler might’ve inherited her father’s features, but she had de nitely gotten the de ance and attitude from her mother. “Well, you scared me,” I said. “Where’s your dad?” They didn’t live too far— on the other side of Mirror Highway, partway up the slope of the bowl— though I couldn’t imagine he’d let a six-year-old hike down here alone, crossing the road just before a blind curve. “On the way. They’re carrying the boxes,” she said.  “How did you get inside?” I asked. The garage door was still closed. The front door had been locked. Her eyes drifted toward the front of the house. “Grandpa showed me a trick,” she said, smile coy. “Did he, now?” She leaned closer, as if preparing to tell me a secret. “The garage window,” she whispered. I pictured a lock that didn’t latch. Another project to add to the list. A shadow appeared in the doorway, and then Caden stepped inside, wearing brown work boots and jeans, a gray shirt with the logo of our local brewery. “Look who’s here,” Skyler said, as if presenting a magni cent discovery. “I can see that,” he said with a tight smile. “Lucky us.” Caden’s face gave nothing away. The tops of his cheeks were red, and he brushed his brown hair o his forehead, like he’d been playing a game of pickup basketball, instead of trudging a stack of boxes down the hill. “I thought she was a monster,” Skyler said, which made her father let out a real belly laugh, easing the tension. “She surprised me.” “This one is always full of surprises,” he said, dropping the pile of attened boxes just inside the foyer, letting them slide to the oor, as if searching for the most inconvenient spot. “Speaking of, what are the rules now, Hazel? Do I have to knock rst?” I ignored him, even as he reached into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out a single key. He held it between us, like an o ering, or a dare. Jamie appeared suddenly from behind. “Hi, Hazel,” she said absently. And then, to her daughter, “I told you to wait.” She swept into the room, all business this time. Jamie’s long hair brushed against my neck as she air-kissed my cheek, a pretense of a ection. I didn’t know whether I’d misinterpreted her intentions at the memorial, to have me here. I couldn’t read her the way I used to. Jamie used to have choppy bleached-blond hair, cut razor-sharp to her shoulders. She used to have a stronger edge, a slicker style. In school, she’d sold fortunes, before moving on to cigarettes, and occasionally whatever else she could dig up in her mother’s medicine cabinet. She’d worn bold patterns, mismatched styles, Goodwill vintage layered with boutique-sale nds, a combination that somehow worked on her. She used to say exactly what was on her mind, no matter the audience or situation. She used to be my best friend. We’d been drawn together since middle school—a spark to a recracker, my dad used to say. I never knew which of us was which. But motherhood had softened her, curving her edges, tempering her voice, as if she was accustomed, always, to a baby sleeping in the next room. Her hair fell in gentle waves now. Even her expression was cautious. Today she wore casual jeans and a soft T-shirt, pink lip gloss that matched her small cross-body bag, and sneakers that I’d seen on half the population this week alone. She hadn’t told me anything real about herself in nearly a decade. I could see her taking me in as well, and I wondered if she was thinking the same about me. I was dressed the same as I’d be for a home renovation: loose worn jeans, torn at the knees, fraying at the hems. A black T-shirt, athletic sneakers. Dark hair pulled up high into a tight ponytail. “Sky, help me bring the boxes in,” she said, leaving me and Caden awkwardly in the hall together. “Well,” he said, placing the house key on the foyer table with dramatic ceremony. “He always was trying to get you to come home.” “I’m home all the time,” I said, because I could never let a comment go. It was the rhythm of our youth. Even now I couldn’t be the bigger person. But he was right—I hadn’t been here to see our dad since Christmas, and he’d died in April. Four months I could never get back. “The gun’s in the bottom of the china cabinet, by the way,” I said, changing the topic, shifting the accusations. Caden stared back, mouth caught half-open, like that was the dumbest thing he could imagine, before suddenly looking over his shoulder. The sound of tires on the gravel out front was a relief. Things with Caden could go one of two ways: either he was in a good mood and generally ignored my existence; or he was in a combative mood and took every dig he could manage.  Growing up, my mom said our tension was because Caden and I were too close in age—too directly competitive. But she always was more willing to give him the bene t of the doubt. “Gage is here!” Skyler shouted, weaving past her father. Skyler was at the age where anything could be exciting, every arrival an event. Gage still lived in Mirror Lake; she probably saw him often, and regularly. I followed her outside to greet him. The morning was warmer than I’d been expecting, like the wind had blown in a new front overnight. Gage parked his Jeep directly in front of the entrance, sunlight re ecting o the windshield, making me squint. I raised a hand in greeting, while Skyler ran to the driver’s side door. I couldn’t get a read on his expression. Couldn’t tell if my presence was a surprise for him. And if so, whether it was a welcome one. “Hey,” I said, as Gage scooped up Skyler for a bear hug that made her laugh in delight. “Hi,” he said blinking twice, like he was making sure I wasn’t a gment of his imagination. My heart contracted, waiting. “I didn’t know you were coming. I didn’t want to put this on you. I know you’re busy. And you were just here.” A series of excuses. Three of them. God, how I wanted to believe him. If every house has its aws, Perry Holt tried to keep his small and obvious. The house showed its signs of age visibly, on the surface. There was a list, in fact, on the side of the fridge, of projects he needed to tackle: Check basement. Check garage. Check crawl space. But wasn’t that just like my father. He’d even itemized his valuables and left a detailed document of where to nd his nances. “He left this with the will,” Gage said, holding the list, while the rest of us stood scattered around the living room. “He said everything’s in the house. There’s not too much of value left, after…” He trailed o , eyes icking around the room brie y. He didn’t need to say any more. We all knew. After my mom left. After she took everything with her.  “But,” he continued, “there’s a safe, and we have the code, and of course we should go through the o ce carefully, make sure there’s nothing from work….” He drifted o again. Then he cleared his throat. “I think we should start there.” I could picture Gage then in front of a room of his colleagues, or standing over a scene—taking charge. Bringing a sense of order to the chaos. I knew he would have a plan, that the rest of us would fall in line, wanting to follow him. This was how he’d gotten promoted so quickly—making detective before he’d turned thirty. Caden trailed after him, but I was suddenly too hot, too worried about what they would say when we were crammed in that room together, alone. I opened the fridge, took a can of orange soda—Dad’s favorite—and held it to the back of my neck, before cracking the top open. Skyler was sitting at the kitchen table beside her mother, moving photos around. I was glad I’d relocated the gun. Skyler held a photo out to me. “Is this you?” “It is,” I said, grinning. I had been twelve or thirteen, standing beside my father, both of us with gold medals around our necks, the lake in the background. “We won the swim relay in the Lake Games that year,” I told her. He’d called me his secret weapon. My dark hair was wet, hanging tangled down my back. His arm rested around my shoulders. His smile beamed. I still thought of that day when swimming laps at the gym pool. “Who’s this?” she asked, moving on to the next. Jamie leaned closer, the only tell a twitch at the side of her mouth. “Me.” Skyler looked to her mother, then back to the picture, and I couldn’t help but smile too. It was from BC—Before Caden—and she’d been doing a cartwheel in our backyard, white-blond hair in front of her face, so that all you could see was her wild, unrestrained smile. “I took that picture, you know,” I said. “Your mother was quite the gymnast.” Now Skyler looked particularly incredulous. She sorted through the stack, one by one. “There’s a lot of pictures of you, Mom,” she said. “You and Hazel.”  “She was here all the time,” I said. Like I was still trying to lay claim to something, years later. Mine first. Jamie leaned over Skyler, frowning. “Okay, come on, help me pack up the clothes, Sky.” She stacked the photos again, tapped the edge against the table, and turned them facedown. As if she was saying, in response: You ruined it. I did not handle the news of Jamie and Caden well. I’d left for college, and by the time I came home rst semester, she had something to tell me. I was shocked, blindsided. The fact that Caden and I didn’t get along should’ve told her everything she needed to know. I tried to warn her. Asshole meter? I was sure he was one hundred percent sociopath, and the very worst kind to prove. Nothing so obvious, no actions to call forth as evidence. Just a centering of himself in every interaction, and every decision. Generally harmless to all but those who loved him. And so I impulsively told Jamie that Caden’s interest in her was just part of his ongoing attempt to piss me off. I’ll be the rst to admit that I was wrong. But it turns out it’s hard to recover from calling someone’s boyfriend a sociopath, once they go and marry them. Jamie and Skyler disappeared into my father’s bedroom to tackle the mess of clothes and boxes from the closet. I headed for the room at the end of the hall— Gage’s old bedroom, which Dad had converted into his home o ce. Caden was sitting in Dad’s chair behind the wide oak desk, feet up, head back, eyes closed, like he was lost in thought. Like he was putting himself in his father’s shoes. I was momentarily taken aback by this display of vulnerability. A memory rolled through me then: my father at his desk, his booming voice calling my name as I passed the room. So that suddenly I could feel him here, a shadow in the corner of my eye, something I could almost grab on to— “This is how I found him, Hazel,” Caden said, without opening his eyes. As if he could sense me, like a disturbance in the room. “Just. Like. This.” His eyes shot open and he dropped his feet abruptly to the oor, making me jump. “Legitimately thought he was asleep.” He ran a hand across his chin. “Good thing one of us checked in on him.” The memory was gone, and in its place, the horror Caden must’ve seen. I stood at the threshold of the room, unable to move forward or back. Unable to breathe, to shake the image from my brain. He stared back at me, as if daring me to say something. I nally had my answer about what I’d be walking into here: hostility. De nitely, one hundred percent, hostility. “I think I’ve got it,” Gage said, louder than necessary from his position inside the closet. He was crouched down in front of the safe, eyes on the spinning dial. I heard the click of the lock just before he pulled the door open. “Here we go. The essential stu.” He removed the stack of documents, balancing it on two hands, before depositing it all onto the surface of the desk. “Are you going to help?” he asked me. An invitation. A welcome. Always the mediator between me and Caden. I joined them behind the desk. We combed through the documents, checking them o of his itemized list. Birth certi cate, passport, deeds to the house and the truck in the garage. A checkbook. Once we started, it was easier to continue. Caden and I started emptying the drawers, sorting the contents into piles of trash or keep. “Jesus,” Caden said, pulling out a bound package of envelopes, the ghost of a smile forming. “I think these are our report cards.” Gage returned from the closet with a large white envelope, edges crushed. “What’s that?” I asked. “I think it’s a copy of the will,” he said. “It was at the bottom of the safe.” Even Caden paused, the momentary smile sliding o his face. I watched as Gage’s eyes trailed down the document, as if he were checking it for accuracy. As if he were con rming it was as we’d all been told. A line formed between his eyes, and he abruptly ipped the pages back to the start. His expression told me everything I needed to know: yes, it was; no, he didn’t like what he was seeing. “It matches the one they found at the station,” Gage said as a loose sheet of paper fell from the bottom. Caden scooped it o the pilled area rug. “Passwords,” he said. “Banks, credit cards…”  “God,” Gage said, peering over his shoulder. “It’s a miracle he wasn’t hacked.” I had to agree. It seemed every password was a variation of Mirror Lake and his birthday, in di erent orders. But then, he still preferred using the old family desktop computer instead of his work laptop—he had never been the most tech savvy. The pitter-patter of Skyler’s feet racing down the hall breached the silence, jarring us back to the task at hand. The only thing our father had kept on the surface of this desk was half of the fancy pen set I’d gotten him for Father’s Day one year—wood base with his name positioned at the edge of the blotter, gold pen engraved with the letter H currently missing. I couldn’t bear to move it now. The narrow top drawer contained just one thing: a gold wedding band. I hadn’t seen him wear it in years. I held it in my open palm, the light from the window glinting o the metal. Gage frowned. His throat moved, and he raised his eyes to mine. “Can I have it?” he asked quietly. I nodded. I didn’t know why he was asking me, when it was currently extended in my outstretched hand. This was probably the only personal item of value remaining, and I didn’t want to be responsible for it. He took it from my palm, turned it side to side, as if looking for some clue. “I didn’t know he kept this. It wasn’t on the list.” “Probably not worth much,” Caden said. When my mother left, she took everything she could—jewelry, cash—in a whirlwind of chaos. She probably only missed this because he’d been wearing it. I stepped out of the room, needing air. At the kitchen table, Jamie was poring over the photos again. “Hey,” I said, startling her. She dropped whatever she was holding, then turned around, hand to heart. “Find any good ones?” She smiled tightly. “This house,” she said, “feels like it’s full of ghosts.” “Mom,” Skyler said, bounding into the room. “Can I go swimming?” Jamie looked out the window, frowning. As if it wasn’t the lake she knew anymore either. “Not right now.”  “Dad said—” “Not now,” Jamie snapped. “What’s going on?” Caden asked, joining us in the kitchen. “Dad, you said I could go swimming today. You promised. You said Mom wouldn’t want to be here anyway.” Jamie’s shoulders sti ened, and I felt the tension in the silence that followed. “I’ll take her,” I said. “It’s ne.” Like Skyler, I needed to get out. Jamie pushed a small purple backpack into my hands without making eye contact. “She has to wear swimmies,” she said. “Well,” Caden said, one side of his mouth rising, “it is your house. Guess you’re in charge now.”  CHAPTER 4 66 Days without Rain Sunday, May 19 11:15 a.m. Precipitation: Zero “I don’t need these. Grandpa let me, but I’m not supposed to say,” Skyler said, as I started in ating her bright pink swimmies. I smiled tightly. “I follow your mother’s orders,” I said. Skyler looked toward the edge of the lake. “Grandpa said you can’t be scared of your own backyard,” she said. “That sounds like him,” I said. “I’m still listening to your mother.” When we were younger and charged into the lake to race out to the platform, Caden would always start swimming long before me. To anyone else, it probably seemed like he wanted to win, to get a head start. Only I knew he hated the feel of his feet on the bottom of the lake. That he was afraid of what might be down there. It was actually faster to keep running until the water got too deep. Fear only slowed you down. Now the earth was parched and thirsty, and I could feel the chunks of grass, brittle under my soles. “My dad says you’re not really my aunt,” she said, watching me intently. “Really,” I said. A pause. “What does your mom say?” Skyler put her hand on her hip, did the perfect impersonation of her mother’s eye roll. “Caden, please.” I laughed. “That mother of yours.” “Well,” she said, “are you?” “Of course,” I said. “That’s what I said.”  I slipped the swimmies onto her arms and nished blowing them up, gave them each a pat even as she rolled her eyes again, this time directed at me. “Okay, all set,” I said. She walked sure-footed down the sloping path, and didn’t even inch at the temperature of the water, which I knew would still carry a spring chill. As she kept going, the water level remained just over her knees. For a moment I thought she might be able to walk the entire inlet. But then, in a gasp, she sank fully up to her neck, bright pink swimmies bobbing in the water. She turned around once and giggled. I heard someone walking down the incline behind me, leaves crunching and sticks snapping. It was impossible to sneak up on anyone here. My uncle sidestepped carefully down the slope, ice jostling in the tumbler he carried. “Hi, Roy,” I said. Dad’s brother was a year younger than him, but had always seemed older to me. Maybe it was his lawyerly way of speaking, or his predictability—the tumbler, I knew, would be full of Diet Coke, his vice of choice—or the fact that he was always dressed for business, even now, in a button-down and khaki pants and brown loafers, thick graying hair slicked to the side. “That water must be freezing,” he said, eyes trailing after Skyler, who was making her way slowly, arm over arm, to the swim platform. “You don’t feel it when you’re a kid. It’s like magic,” I said. “Guess so,” Roy said, taking a sip. He wasn’t one for sentimentality, or pleasantries. “Hazel, listen,” he said now, with a quick glance over his shoulder, up to the sliding glass doors, where the rest of them were presumably still sorting through Dad’s things. “I want you to be prepared. Caden already came by, saying he wants to challenge the will.” I shouldn’t have been surprised. But still—Caden was contesting the will? The tension I felt in that house wasn’t my imagination. I wondered if Gage knew. If he approved, even. I felt a jolt of betrayal. “What did he say?” I asked, voice monotone, ears ringing.  “That it must’ve been a misunderstanding. That maybe he just meant for you to x up the house to sell it and split the proceeds with them.” It made sense. My father knew I’d be capable of getting us all the best value. But Roy shook his head. “That’s not what the will says. If Perry meant that, he would’ve said it.” Roy stepped closer, lowered his voice. “I’m sure Caden had his own ideas. I think he was planning to make this place his own, even if he had to buy your shares out. I’ll tell you the same thing I told him. He can do what he wants, but he’s not going to win. It’s just going to drag things out.” I’d thought, if anyone, Roy might be able to navigate the nuances of the will —see us through to the other side. Roy and Dad weren’t particularly close on a day-to-day basis, but they showed up for each other when it counted. Maybe Roy understood what my father had been thinking. I heard a splash behind me, saw the lake rippling around Skyler, who had just jumped from the swim platform. Now I was the one to lower my voice. “I don’t know why he left it to me,” I said. Saying, nally, the thing I was sure Caden and Gage were wondering. “Why not?” Roy said. “You always were his favorite.” “Ha.” I rolled my eyes, but smiled. “What do you think he wanted me to do with it?” I asked. It was too big a responsibility. I wished there had been more details, an expectation, an explanation for me, another itemized list he’d left behind. Roy shifted on his feet, frowning at the dirt on his loafers. “Whatever you want, I’m guessing. Fix it up and sell it, or don’t. Turn it into a vacation rental. When the water levels rise again, with a little work, this place could bring in a nice side income.” I stared at the house, and then at him. It needed more than just a little work. Roy lived on the other side of the lake, in a property he’d chosen to rehab slowly over time, instead of moving someplace new. It had taken years, but I’d watched the drab landscaping slowly transform into a peaceful haven—gazebo, hot tub, and all. He must’ve known what it would take around here. “Whatever his reasons, he meant for you to have it,” he reiterated.  Roy reached a hand out, let it rest on my shoulder, in reassurance. A promise that he was on my side. He looked up toward the porch again. “Besides, I’m sure those boys have access to his accounts. His nances will probably roll over to them automatically. Maybe this was his way of making sure you had something.” He patted my shoulder, then dropped his arm and looked up at the deck. “They up there?” I nodded, swallowed the lump in my throat. “Yes,” I said. “Thanks, Roy,” I added, as he started up the stairs. It made sense. Gage and Caden would probably inherit everything that wasn’t speci ed in the will, by default, as the next of kin. Caden might be a sociopath, but he also didn’t lie. Caden wasn’t lying when he told Skyler I wasn’t really her aunt. The men inside that house were not really my brothers. The man who owned this house was not really my father. Not in any legal sense. My mother had grifted her way into the Holts’ lives when Caden and I were both almost eight, and Gage was ten. A little more than six years later, she’d grifted her way out, but left me behind. I was fourteen. In place of everything she’d taken, all she’d left me was a letter she’d slipped under the pillow of my bed, inside a single envelope addressed to Daughter of Mine. It was what she’d whisper in the night, when she used to tuck me into bed. So that, when I pulled out the letter, I could see the shape of her mouth, feel the way her whisper brushed against my cheek. Sleep tight, daughter of mine— I’d thought her letter would say she’d be back, or that it would tell me how to meet her later, but there was only a single line inside: I hope one day you can forgive me. It was not the rst time she’d abandoned someplace in the middle of the night, with no warning. It was just the rst time I’d been left behind. The most generous interpretation of events was that she found me a good family, wanted something better for me, and didn’t leave until she was sure. The least generous interpretation was that she was happy to keep me around when I was of use, which became less so as I aged. That she played a long game, saw a big take, and found a way to get the contents of two sizable bank accounts and a houseful of valuables all at once, and make o with one less responsibility —freed from the anchor of me. Or maybe it wasn’t a game at all, but an opportunity she couldn’t pass up. We’d lived our lives that way—so much of chance was really just opportunity taken. I remembered the moment Perry Holt came into our lives—we’d all met together. We were renting the detached unit on the property across the street, a fully furnished two-bedroom carriage house, and had just arrived in town a few days earlier, with nothing but our two matching royal-blue suitcases—the same ones that we’d wheeled behind us on every move, year after year. My mother believed in traveling light. That you’d nd what you needed when you arrived. He’d knocked on the door, still in his uniform. There were two boys behind him, both taller than me, wearing stoic expressions. My mother had rst tightened her grip on the doorframe. Can I help you, Officer? But he’d just come to o er a neighborly welcome. Perry, he’d said, though we’d soon learned everyone else called him Holt, last name rst. Only my mother called him Perry, like a secret code. But we’d met him together, me at her side. He had crouched down, eyes crinkling, hand held out in an o ering. He’d clasped both of his around mine, said, Pleasure to meet you, Hazel. I heard there would be a new student in Caden’s grade. And so I liked to believe he had fallen for both of us as a unit, and at the same time. A widower with two sons, a single mother of a daughter. Perry Holt didn’t believe in God, but he did believe in fate. Plus: my mother had a way of telling stories, just slightly exaggerated, still on this side of believable. And she had a can-do attitude, nding herself jobs she lacked quali cations for, but promising her ability, if only you’d give her a chance. And people did. She played on their sympathy, or maybe their weakness, or maybe she didn’t see it as a play at all, but a way of survival. She believed she could do it, if only you’d give her a chance. She made deals: You don’t have to pay until you believe it too. And always, they did.  She leaned on connections. In Mirror Lake, Perry Holt was the biggest source of trust you could ask for. When we rst arrived, the restaurants were desperate for summer help—we always landed in a vacation spot for this reason. But it wasn’t long after she met my father that she heard Roy’s company was hiring, and she shoved her foot in that door. And then she kept proving herself until she managed his accounts there too. The last time I saw her, she was standing at the kitchen window overlooking the lake before I left for school, long green peasant dress brushing her ankles, feet bare. Blond hair straight down her back. I think of it often, the things she was debating at that moment, staring out the window. How she would justify it to herself. Take the money and go. The girl gets a better life. Other than the trail of destruction she’d left in her wake, it was true—this was the nicest place we’d ever been. Perry Holt was the nicest man I’d ever known. She’d left me in a good place, with good people, and the truth was, I’d had a good life since. Look at what I had. Look at what she’d left me. This family, this place, this life— I turned slowly to the lake now, pulled by something—a feeling, an intuition. A at expanse of water, nothing moving, nothing splashing. No shock of color bobbing on the surface. Even the wind was still. I took a step, twig snapping. “Skyler?” I called. I was already slipping out of my sneakers, parched earth against my soles, walking closer. I called her name again, my voice tight with panic. Roy paused at the top step, leaning over the deck rail. “I don’t see her,” he said, voice wavering, but he sounded so far away, and I was already stepping into the water. “Skyler!” I called, waiting for the bob of her head, the wave of her arm. Nothing but the still surface of the water, the swim platform eerily empty. A ringing in my ears, and a fear—a true bone-aching, breathtaking fear—that I hadn’t felt in a very long time. “Skyler!” I screamed. I was already striding into the lake, calling her name again and again, so I could barely hear Roy calling for Caden, for Gage, panic rising. I started to run. I high-stepped it through the silted water, like I’d done long ago. Begging for this to be a game, a joke, nothing but the terrifying prank of a six-year-old. The temperature of the water, the muddy bottom, the sticks and rocks— none of it registered at rst. I couldn’t move fast enough, couldn’t take in the entirety of the lake all at once. I whipped my head side to side, scanning for movement, for anything. The steep drop-o came before I was ready for it, my muscles seizing for just a moment while a wave of cold crept up my neck—and then suddenly I was swimming, arm over arm, to the platform. Hands slapping on top of the wood, elbows digging in, launching myself one leg at a time onto the surface, to the best vantage point. Hoping to see her there, hiding against the far edge, or oating in the deeper water. Now I scanned the entire inlet from edge to edge. Nothing but water from here to where the inlet fed out to the rest of the lake. The main channel had a current, an unexpected pull, but I couldn’t imagine she’d made it that far in such a short amount of time. Still, I hoped. I begged. Please please please— “Skyler!” I screamed, my voice echoing. “Oh my god,” I heard, coming from behind me. “Sky?” I peered back over my shoulder, saw Jamie sprinting across the yard, blond hair wild. I jumped into the deep side of the lake, then traced the perimeter of the platform, as if I’d merely missed her. Nothing. There was one more place, one more hope— I held my breath and dove underneath the edge of the platform, coming up in the hollow space underneath. And there, two bright pink swimmies, a girl visible between. She oated facedown, hair spread out in a halo.  I grabbed her by the arm, shook her as I pulled her toward me desperately. She ailed, ghting against me. Her head popped up from the surface, and her eyes looked extra wide inside the goggles. “Oh my god,” I said, taking one big gasp in relief. I nally felt the burn in my muscles, the cold in my bones. Her mouth hung open. I must have shocked her as much as she’d shocked me. But she was alive. She was ne. “It’s me, I’ve got you,” I said. “Skyler, I’ve got you.” I could hear Jamie still calling in the distance, her voice mu ed by water and the edge of the platform. Under here, it smelled distinctly of lake and wood rot, everything exacerbated by the small enclosed space. Even our breathing echoed, everything cocooned and private. “Hold your breath,” I said. Her arms hooked around my neck as I counted to three and ducked under the platform ledge, popping up on the house side this time. “I have her!” I called, seeing Jamie already knee deep in the water. “She’s okay!” Jamie’s hand went to her heart, but she didn’t wait. She kept coming closer, meeting us halfway, just where the bottom of the lake angled sharply upward. As I emerged, I felt the weight of the water in my clothes, and Skyler in my grip. “I’m sorry,” I said, passing her to Jamie’s outstretched arms. “She was hiding under the platform. I couldn’t see her—” “I wasn’t hiding,” Skyler said, as Jamie carried her the rest of the way to shore. Everyone was waiting, standing in various degrees of shock. Gage, sneakers o beside him. Roy, phone in his hand—ready to call for help. Caden stared at Jamie and Skyler walking toward him, the blood fully drained from his face. He reached for his daughter, pulling her tightly into his grip, two arms rmly around her back, his eyes wild with relief. Until nally he turned to me. “Jesus,” he said, lip curling. “Can’t even watch a kid for ve minutes without losing them, Hazel?”  Not a false accusation. “I’m sorry—” I said, because what else was there to say? I hadn’t been watching. It was the simplest thing, and he was right. “Everything okay?” Nico emerged from the woods where our properties met. He was half-dressed, in gym clothes, barefoot, like he’d still been in bed when he heard the commotion and rushed over. I didn’t know he was living there again. “We’re okay,” Roy said, speaking for the group. Jamie grabbed my arm, just for a second, a quick comforting squeeze. “She’s ne. Okay? She’s ne.” And then, to Skyler, “What did I tell you about staying where a grown-up can see you?” Skyler pulled the goggles from her eyes, marks still ringing the skin. “There’s a shipwreck down there,” she said. Caden frowned. “A what?” he asked, pulling back to look at his daughter. “A shipwreck,” she repeated, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Jamie laughed, like her nerves were nally unspooling. But the sound died out in the silence that followed. My eyes locked onto Gage’s. A boat? I mouthed. Dad used to have an old canoe that had either been stolen or cut loose from the dock in a storm, years ago. But shipwreck didn’t sound like a canoe. And now I was worrying that something had crashed, sunk, with no one noticing. If there was an accident called in, I was sure at least Caden would’ve heard. “I thought I smelled gasoline last night,” I said. “And I de nitely heard a motor this morning.” “You were here last night?” Caden interjected, latching on to the wrong point. “We should check,” I said. Gage started unbuttoning his annel, stripping down to his white T-shirt underneath. Nico stepped closer to the edge, ready to go in as is, it seemed. “I’m already wet,” I said. My soaked jeans were weighing me down, uncomfortable and sti with water. “Sky, can I borrow those?” I asked, reaching for the goggles.  “This seems like it can wait,” Caden said, pulling a towel from the purple backpack, wrapping his daughter inside. “It’s probably nothing.” “You’re probably right,” Gage said, appeasing Caden, even as he opposed him. It didn’t matter that I had already volunteered, Gage and Nico were beside me when I stepped into the water again. We walked slowly, no longer in a panic. I felt the rocks this time, my sole catching on a sharper edge, ankle rolling in response. Nico reached out on instinct, to right me. “Thanks,” I said, pulling away just as quickly as he dropped his arm. “You’re shaking,” he said, frowning, as if he’d just noticed. But I had been shivering since I stepped out of the water, my black T-shirt clinging, water dripping from my hair, a grime coating my exposed skin. All I could think of was the hot shower waiting for me after this. Gage reached the drop-o rst, suddenly disappearing up to his neck. I eased in after him, swimming before the ground gave way beneath me. We made our way slowly and silently to the platform, then ducked under the ledge, all at once, like someone had given a silent count. I peered down under the surface, and the water in my ears dulled the sounds around me. The water was murky, and dark, and at rst I could see only Gage’s legs moving beside me. But then, over to the side, I saw a shadowed shape in the distance, caught in a beam of sunlight. I popped my head up again, taking a breath. “It’s hard to see. But I think something’s at the bottom.” “Could just be a rock, or a tree trunk?” Gage said, frowning. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m gonna go down to check.” “I can do it,” Nico said, hand reaching out for the goggles. But I ignored him —he may have been the one who ran a dive center in the summer, but I’d gone down to the bottom here plenty of times when I was young. When the waters were higher, you couldn’t touch the bottom when you jumped o the back end of the swim platform. It was always a dare, to see who could make it down, and I was the only one who could. They’d make me prove it by bringing a rock up from the bottom.  I had gured out the trick. Jump in, but catch your breath under the platform. Then grip the chain at the corner and follow it down, down, down. Pull yourself arm over arm, until you reach the cinder-block anchor. Stretch your hands into the mud and muck, nd your prize. Then propel yourself o the bottom, break through the surface, st rst, victorious. They never understood how I could stay underwater so long, and I never told. Now I gave myself away. I moved over to the corner, where I knew the chain would be hooked, secured to the weightings below. I felt around until I had the familiar metal in my grip. “Be right back,” I said. Then I took a long breath and dropped under the surface. There was low visibility in the deep, silty water. It had always been best to keep your eyes closed underneath. If not for Skyler’s goggles, I would have. At rst I couldn’t see anything through the murk—just shadows and debris swirling up in my path. I followed the chain down, pulling myself hand over hand, until the shadow came into view again. My hands brushed against the sloped shape of rusted metal. Dirt swirled up as I moved along it. The bottom of the canoe, maybe? I was running out of breath, about to propel myself to the surface. But then my hands reached a gap—a hollow, an absence. I traced the opening. A window. My lungs were burning. I reached inside. Felt the curve of a wheel— I pushed o the object suddenly with my feet and broke through the surface. I sucked in air, pulling the goggles from my face. Both men stared back in the dim alcove. I gripped the top of the chain again, worried I’d sink without it. I tipped my head back, trying to catch my breath. “What?” Gage said. “What did you see?” His eyes were as wide as mine must’ve been. “Hazel?” Nico asked, my name a question, a command. You can’t be scared of your own backyard. I tried to cling to my father’s words. And so I kept my voice low, another secret, just for us. “A car,” I said between breaths. “I think there’s a car down there.”  CHAPTER 5 66 Days without Rain Sunday, May 19 12:00 p.m. Precipitation: Zero I could feel my teeth chattering, and I didn’t know if it was from the cold of the water or the nerves. “Let me see,” Gage said, hand held out for the goggles. “We should wait,” Nico said, like he believed me and needed no con rmation. But I wasn’t sure Gage heard. He disappeared under the surface, and I moved to the other side of the platform, giving him space. I drifted through a cold patch—spirits, I used to say, to scare Caden. But now I could only picture what might be down there. A skeleton buckled into a seat. Snakes taking up space in the hollows. I stared down into the dark water, counting the seconds, as if I might be able to catch sight of Gage in the depths. But I could barely see the lower half of my own body. Had it been too long? I couldn’t tell. Time had become distorted, same as the geography of the lake. I was about to say something, anything, when Gage broke through the surface with a sudden gasp. “Holy shit,” he said, all but con rming what I’d seen. “I don’t think we should touch it,” Nico said carefully, cautiously choosing his words. There was a time, when we were growing up, when we would have thought nothing of trying to solve this on our own. Keeping it to ourselves. For ourselves.  I remembered standing inside that hidden closet, taking matters into our own hands, ripping the pictures o the wall—the three of us still the only ones who knew about what we’d found. “Let’s go,” Gage said. “I gotta call this in.” We stood close together at the edge of the lake. My hands shook as I wrung my hair out over my shoulder. I could still feel the cool brush of steel under my palm, the sharp edge as I pushed o with my foot. “Well?” Caden asked. In response, Gage indicated the phone in his hand. “This is Detective Gage Holt,” he said to whoever picked up on the other end. “I’m at my father’s house. I just got out of the lake. Listen. We found another one.” It wasn’t long before the cops arrived. I heard them coming, voices low, rounding the corner of the house, walking carefully down the slope. Gage, wrapped in a towel now, beside Serena Flores, followed by two young men I didn’t recognize. I hadn’t seen either of them at any department family gathering before. They looked so young—like they must still be in training. Serena slowed, coming to a stop beside me, hands on curved hips, peering out at the water. “I didn’t know you were back in town, Hazel,” she said. I’d seen her brie y at the celebration of life earlier in the week, still in uniform. She’d wrapped an arm around my shoulders then, too choked up to o er any words of condolence. “Just for the weekend,” I said, my voice tight. “Who found it?” she asked, her dark eyes landing on Gage. “My niece. Skyler,” he said, thumb jutting back toward the house. “She thought it was a shipwreck,” Caden added, monotone.  “It’s pretty much right under the platform. The anchor chain is caught on it,” I explained. I felt unsteady under Serena’s gaze, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of what was happening now, or the fact that she’d always seemed slightly suspicious of me. It was a familiar feeling, being back in Mirror Lake. This was a di erent kind of reunion, a di erent kind of family. A generation of department kids who had come up at the same time. My brothers and me. Nico. Serena Flores, with her sleek dark ponytail and bow-shaped lips. She had been in Gage’s grade at school, and dated him on and o since they were in the academy. Both of them were solid and stoic, with similar interests, a shared moral compass. Mirror Lake was a place steeped in tradition, where multiple generations were born in the same hospital, and possibly under the oversight of the same doctor. Half left the world in the same manner as those who had come before— my father was not the rst Holt to succumb to a heart attack in his sixties. Even then, we’d all missed the signs, assumed the fact he’d been cutting back on his shifts meant he was testing out the idea of retire-ment. This was a place where sons were named for their fathers. Where daughters wore their mothers’ baptism gowns. The department here was just the same—a path was paved for all who would follow. I’d heard Caden referred to as Little Holt behind the scenes, and not in a positive way. Like he had pressed someone’s nerves the wrong way. We’d been recruited long before we knew it, in a way. Accompanying our parents to the barbecues, riding in their patrol cars, trying on their uniforms. Hearing the stories they told; hearing the stories others told about them. I had almost continued that path myself, but it was hard to exist in a role like this when your mother was a known criminal. I instead found that same sense of belonging in the business I’d built with my two college roommates, felt the shared purpose in the investments we made and that shot of adrenaline in the risks we’d taken—the times when we’d taken an old house down to the bones, to the point of no return, and had to nd our way back up. I loved the challenge of a project that no one else thought they could turn a pro t on: hazards defused, order restored, vision made manifest. It’s where we had found our niche. “You con rmed it?” Serena asked, addressing Gage once again. “Yeah, I went down to check. Hazel too.” Her eyes skimmed over me, unreadable, before moving on to Nico. “And no one’s inside?” she continued. “No,” Gage said. But it was nearly impossible to see down there, in the murky water. “I don’t know,” I said, and Gage frowned, like I’d somehow brought his honor into question. “I just mean, I could barely see anything. It’s so dark down there.” I feared that Gage was seeing what he wanted. He hadn’t seen a body, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. Serena checked her watch. “The dive team is on the way, but the salvage company is closed today. They won’t be able to get here until tomorrow to pull it out,” she said. “Tomorrow? What if someone’s in there?” I asked. She turned her gaze on me again. “Then I don’t think another day is going to make a di erence, Hazel.” Nico shifted on his bare feet. “Do you need an extra set of eyes again?” he asked. “I can go get my gear.” She checked her watch for a second time, like she wasn’t sure of the decision. Without my father, there had been a change in the chain of command. I wondered who had stepped into his role, and how the rest of the department shook out. I wondered if she was waiting for her own father, Detective Flores. But Mirror Lake was a small department; you had to be ready to do it all. “Should be pretty simple today. But another set of eyes never hurt,” she said. “What?” I asked, his words nally registering. Again? “Nico trained our dive team,” Serena said. “He was a volunteer before we got an o cial group together.” Now I understood why he said he?