Prologue The incident didn’t start with us. But it ended with us. I say us like the mothers were a team in this, that we were all on the same side. At first, I believed that we were. Together, united, one front. We were friends, after all. Deep in these messy, exhausting, rewarding trenches of motherhood. We knew each other, relied upon each other, trusted each other. Or at least, we thought we did. How little we knew each other, or our own children, what they were capable of. How little I understood what I was capable of. Until that night. The night that changed our lives forever.
Chapter One The phone rang, jolting me upright in bed. I fumbled for it in the dark, knocking over a half-empty glass of water in my rush. My heart pounded, my body reacting before my brain could catch up. The screen glowed in the dimness. Whitney Alistair. The phone read 5:40 a.m. A deep and terrible dread coiled in my stomach. Whitney never called me this early. No one did, especially not on a Saturday morning. I swiped to answer. "Whitney? What's wrong?" "Dahlia." Her voice was tight, urgent. "You need to come. Something awful has happened." The words sent a cold spike of fear through my chest. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, rubbing at my gummy eyes with one arm. "What do you mean? What happened? Is it Mia? Is Mia okay?" Whitney hesitated. I could hear movement in the background, muffled voices. Someone was crying. "Mia is…"
I stopped breathing. "Are the girls safe? Did something happen to Mia?" "Just come to Rowan's," she said. "Now." The line went dead. For a second, I sat there, the phone still pressed to my ear, my palms clammy, my throat dry. Then I was moving. I yanked on my jeans, pulled a sweatshirt from the hamper, and raced from my bedroom. I flicked on the hallway light and hesitated at Mia's bedroom door. I pushed it open. Her bed was empty but for our sleeping German Shepherd, curled at the foot of the bed, the sage-green comforter rumpled, the bed unmade. She wasn't here. She was at my friend Rowan's house down the street, at her daughter Chloe's slumber party. Fear formed a hard knot in my stomach. I had to lay eyes on her. I had to know she was okay. That she was safe. I was merely overreacting, again. But then why had it been Whitney, Peyton's mother, who called, rather than Rowan? And what was Whitney doing at Rowan's home before dawn? Fumbling with the phone, I called Mia's number. No answer. No response to my frantic texts, either. Where was she? What had happened? I needed to get there. Fast. I took the stairs two at a time and sprinted down the hall to the living room, stumbling as I shoved my feet into sneakers with shaking hands and fumbled for my keys from the hook by the door.
The house seemed to shift around me. The old floorboards creaked. The wind rattled the loose windowpane above the sink. I raced out the door, slammed it shut, and turned the key, then double-checked the house was locked tight against the possible terrors lurking outside the walls. Panic clawed at my throat. Was she hurt? If so, how badly? I ran down the pitted gravel driveway and turned north onto Wyld Wood Lane. My breath came in short, uneven bursts as the cold April morning air stung my cheeks. The homes of Blackthorn Shores loomed like silent sentinels in the gray half-light of predawn. Their massive windows stared down at me, cold and unblinking, as if they were watching. As though they knew I didn't belong. My pulse roared in my ears. I ran past house after house. My feet thudded against the pavement. Everything was eerily still, quiet but for the dull roar of the wind, the waves crashing against the shoreline far below the bluff. No cleaners arriving, no cars moving, no rumbling lawn mowers, and no joggers on the sidewalks yet. Something awful had happened. I was certain of it. Not again. Not my child. I couldn't endure another tragedy tearing my world asunder. I wouldn't survive the loss of Mia. I couldn't. My brain whirred with all the ways something might have happened to her. A slip in the shower, a sudden heart attack, a fall down the stairs.
I sprinted past my friend Camille's house, then Whitney's. Rowan's house appeared ahead of me. My breath was ragged, my stomach twisted into knots. There were no police cars in the driveway. Maybe that meant everything was okay. It wasn't as bad as I feared, as Whitney's stricken voice had implied. I was exaggerating. Mia was fine. Everything was fine. I was the overprotective mother, imagining all sorts of horrors when my daughter had only scraped her knee, or come down with the flu, or had a nasty nightmare and wanted her mother again. Something easy. Simple. Safe. I ran through the open wrought-iron gates and up the cobblestone drive, barely registering the grand stone and cedar façade as my focus lasered on the wide front porch. Several women stood huddled together, their heads bent, murmuring intently. As I approached, they fell silent. Their faces were pale and drawn. A sick feeling twisted in my gut. My instincts weren't off. Something was wrong. Very wrong. Whitney's tense gaze flicked to me and then away. Whitney Alistair, the picture of athletic prowess with her lean, yoga-toned body encased in Lululemon leggings and matching jacket, her sleek white-blonde ponytail pulled tight. Her usually tanned skin was ashen. I halted at the bottom of the porch steps. My lungs burned. I felt faint. "What happened?" Rowan Westinghouse stood tall and composed on the top step of her porch, her arms crossed over her chest. Even at this ungodly hour, she wore a charcoal pencil skirt and a cashmere pink sweater, with her honey-blonde hair falling in shining waves around her shoulders. Only her manicured hands trembled slightly. "Where's Mia?" My voice came out too sharp, too raw. Rowan didn't move from the top step. "Dahlia, keep your voice down, please. We don't want to alarm the neighbors." I was plenty alarmed. I started up the steps. "Where is she?" Whitney still didn't make eye contact. "She's inside. She's not hurt, Dahlia. It's not her." Pure relief flooded my body. My legs went weak. I could have collapsed right there on the bluestone slate steps. I forced myself to remain upright. If it wasn't Mia… "Then who—?" Rowan's lips parted. "It's Leah." For a moment, the words barely registered. My stomach dropped. Leah Cho. My daughter's best friend. "Is Leah okay?" No one responded. "What happened?" Rowan gave a mournful shake of her head. Brooke August stared at me with unfocused, reddened eyes. Her glossy brunette hair tumbled down the middle of her back, a matching sweatsuit replacing her usual Instagram-ready polish. Without her heavy makeup, her bare face looked vulnerable—and scared.
"They're fine," Rowan repeated. "Our daughters are fine." "You didn't answer my question. Is Leah okay? Was she hurt?" Brooke made a strangled sound, pressing a hand to her mouth. I turned to Camille. As a top defense attorney for a private law firm, she was the logical, practical one. Camille Hayward stood slightly apart from the other women. Her sharp brown eyes scanned me with quiet intensity. She, too, had been abruptly pulled from bed, still dressed in pajamas with a cobalt blue silk headscarf covering her hair. "The police are on their way," Camille said in a brisk voice. "They'll be here any minute." I glared at them. It was like they were terrified of saying the words aloud, of making it real. "Just tell me." Rowan blinked rapidly, fighting back tears. "Oh, honey, I'm so sorry, but Leah is dead." I felt the world tilt, the ground shifting beneath me. No. Not Leah. "What? How?" "The girls are inside," Camille said. "They're incredibly confused, shaken, and in shock. We're still working out what happened." "It was an accident," Whitney said quickly. "It was a terrible accident." I couldn't wrap my head around it. Leah was dead? How could that be? She was just a child, barely fourteen years old. The shy, timid, kind-hearted girl I saw nearly every day, often in my home, whom I'd cooked for and laughed with, who'd spent countless hours in Mia's room. How could she be gone? My skittering thoughts kept running away from me; I could barely grab onto them. It seemed impossible. A terrible joke that I didn't understand yet. I stared in shock at the somber faces of my neighbors, my friends. Leah’s mother was missing. "Where's Vivienne? She needs to know." Camille glanced warily at Rowan, reproach in her eyes. Brooke sniffled. Whitney pressed her lips together and wouldn't meet my gaze. Rowan raised her chin. "We haven't called her yet. We thought it best that the police arrive first. To know how to handle it." My heart broke for Vivienne, but it was my daughter I thought of now. My living, breathing daughter. Mia must feel devastated. Absolutely gutted. I needed to get to her, to pull my baby into my arms and comfort her, to feel her heartbeat safe against my ribs. "I need to see Mia." My legs moved before I could think. I climbed the porch steps with numb feet, pushed past Rowan, and yanked open the massive front door. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of jasmine and lavender, Rowan's signature scents. The other mothers followed close behind me. The girls were in the high-ceilinged living room. They huddled on the sofas bracketing the floor-to-ceiling ceiling stone fireplace, their hair rumpled, faces tear-stained, several still in pajamas. Mia sat apart from the others, slumped in a linen armchair next to a white oak built-in bookcase. She wore her favorite Hello Kitty pajamas, her white-socked feet crossed at the ankles. The color had drained from her freckled face, her expression blank with shock, a terrible hollowness in her green eyes. Several scratches marred her forearms. Thin, angry red lines. Scratches that she didn't have last night when she left our house, with her sage-green overnight bag slung over her shoulder and her camera on its yellow strap around her neck. I inhaled sharply. Mia looked up. Her gaze met mine. No recognition in her glassy eyes. She looked straight through me, as if she'd forgotten where she was, or even who she was. "Mia," I said. "What happened?" ...
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2026 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
