Chapter One

"I need you, Vienna," Francesca says through the phone. "You owe me this."

I don't owe her a thing, but my older sister will never accept that argument, even if I laid out the facts like a hardened police detective who spent the last forty-eight hours on a stakeout.

Francesca perceives the world through her lens. She'd never accept my photographic proof.

She says, "What's that sound?"

What's that smell ?

"Shit!" I squeal, hurrying into my tiny kitchen. "Oh, no, no, no!"

Wrapped in a blanket scarf, an old UGA shirt skirting bare knees, my sock-covered feet slide to a stop. I toss the phone on the counter and open the oven, coughing and batting away the grayish smoke that rises from burnt banana bread.

I never burn anything .

This is a sign.

Setting the pitiful loaf on the stovetop, I put the phone on speaker and growl, "Fran, I just burned my first ever baked good because I couldn't hear the oven timer over the loudness of my thoughts."

"Maybe you need to get your hearing checked," she says.

I counter, "Maybe I need to spend my Thanksgiving break relaxing at home, like I intended."

"Don't be so selfish," she snaps. A door closes somewhere in her house and Francesca calls out, "Grayson, it is 10:00 at night! Go. To. Sleep."

To me, she groans, "These kids already think they're on vacation. It's going to be the longest fucking week of my life and if you don't come to the lake with us, I'll always hold you a little bit responsible for whatever they complain to their therapists about in twenty years."

Well, I've got some grievances to air out myself. I think I'll crash their appointments.

Since I baked this banana bread for my three-year-old niece and five-year-old nephew, I consider the ways in which the universe is holding me back from a weekend at the lake.

Could I use this as an excuse?

Sorry, Fran, I can't make it. I don't have a loaf of Mom's famous banana bread for the kids. They will riot.

I can't go out – cough, cough – I'm sick.

Francesca doesn't wait for me to say a word. She continues, "Don't make me do this alone, Vee."

"Fran –"

"I don't know what your problem is with Captain's Lake, but it's beautiful in the Fall. You won't have to do anything but drink coffee on the dock, look out at the crystal clear lake and the mountains, feel the cool breeze drift damp red leaves onto your lap…"

Her voice trails off romantically, as if romance will wrap me in her lasso and pull me into the image she just described.

Romance is the opposite of what I want.

Romance is the problem.

Leaving the charred edges of my sacrifice, I return to the scene of the distraction: in my bedroom, Netflix on the TV, an empty suitcase on the bed. I pick up a half-full wine glass from the dresser.

I start, "It's just that –"

She interrupts, "Dave will do all of the cooking. Well, he'll do most of the cooking, he's not as good as you, but you'll barely have to lift a single finger."

She doesn't even know she's lying.

It'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.

She adds, "We just had the house cleaned last weekend."

"I know, but –"

"And David's sisters are coming. I'm sure Kate needs content for her Instagram or OnlyFans account, so I apologize if she asks you to take a picture of her feet."

I don't even try to speak again. It's not worth it. Instead, I drink my wine, glance at the Netflix logo as it booms, and watch the unnecessary Love Is Blind recap roll.

Francesca continues her speech, but she's not begging or demanding or threatening anymore, it's just mindless jibber jabber, no different from the other random nightly phone calls I've endured for eleven months. Without her husband to talk to, I became her earpiece.

Before last week, I had planned to spend Thanksgiving break on the couch, but my sister had a different idea. Our absentee father will be on a business trip somewhere and our godmother, Heddy, is busy with her witchy New Age shop, so Francesca, David and their kids decided to trek back to Captain's Lake for Thanksgiving.

The number of calls and text messages I received last week is obscene. Practically stalking.

But, she and David did just get back together a month ago. How is this grown woman supposed to navigate the trials and tribulations of a formerly estranged family? How is my older sister supposed to do anything alone?

I drink a sip of wine and watch the girl on my screen, crying alone in her pod, when Francesca's voice crawls its way into my consciousness with a specific set of words.

She says, "I think Adam's parents still own the house next door. Maybe we'll finally run into him again."

Wine spurts out of my mouth.

"What was that sound? Are you gagging?" she asks.

Yes .

Dying a little, maybe.

Shit, I just almost spilled wine all over the beautiful autumnal wardrobe I folded and organized on my bedspread. High-waisted jeans, suede boots, chunky sweaters.

What is wrong with me?

"Vienna, are you okay?" Francesca says.

Wiping my mouth and stepping away from dry-clean-only clothes, I reply, "I'm fine. Just…something surprised me."

It shouldn't surprise me, hearing his name, not when he's the reason I haven't been back to the lake since I was eighteen. He was bound to come up in conversation.

He. Him .

The name I can't say out loud.

None the wiser, Francesca continues her assault on my fragile state of mind. "You know, we saw Adam in concert two years ago. Dave tried to get backstage." She snorts a laugh. "He kept telling security, No, I know him. For two months twelve years ago, we were best friends ."

All true things.

Shaking myself back to focus, I sigh, "Fran, look, I'm kind of tired."

Ignoring me, she says, "Adam's probably too famous now for free vacations."

Probably.

Too famous, too handsome, and too busy to remember a lake house in the mountains and the teenage girl he romanced there once upon a time.

I attempt to veer the conversation from Adam Kent because I'll have another episode and choke on my wine. "And maybe I should stay home, Fran. I've got a ton of stuff to catch up on here. Laundry. My dishwasher needs to be unloaded. I've got a bag of clothes to donate in my trunk."

"Don't give me that – you just had a shit-ton of free time," she says.

"What? When ?"

"You had the entire summer off."

"Excuse me? That was months ago, and you know I don't really get a whole summer off. That's an insult," I argue.

At least now she has my full attention, and I'm not thinking about Adam.

Damn. There I go again.

I insist, "I have no free time, you know that. Most of my nights are spent lesson planning, and I spend the summer tutoring, organizing leveled readers and watching your children. You're welcome, by the way."

"Whatever, you know what I mean." She pauses. "So, are you finally going to tell me why you haven't been back to the lake?"

She's probably sitting on her couch, scrolling through Pinterest on her iPad, looking at images of Parisian capsule wardrobe influencers.

I could say anything and get away with it.

"It's no big deal, Fran," I breeze.

"It is, though."

"It's really not."

"Are you wanted for murder in Highland County? Is that it?"

I respond, "Yes. That's it."

"I knew it. You're so predictable."

Unfortunately, I am predictable. For thirty-two years, I've done everything my big sister ever asked of me, something that won't stop today, no matter how many times she mentions him .

That's why I fish my toiletry bag from under the bathroom sink, my hands moving in slow motion while I fill it with toothpaste.

A hairbrush.

Floss.

One black hairband.

Fourteen years ago, I would have dragged my suitcase to the bathroom door and swiped my arm like a windshield wiper across the bathroom counter, taking out children and ruining crops, knocking over everything I own and rolling it into luggage.

Packing for the lake house was my favorite day.

On the last day of the school year, Francesca and I would rush home and clear our closets. She, four years older and four inches taller, would deny me access to the dresses, bathing suits and shorts crumpled on the ground until she had chosen a summer's worth of clothes for herself. We would order pizza and eat candy and heat questionable frozen appetizers our seventy-year-old German nanny hid behind the ice.

Then, Francesca would initiate the trade.

She would ask to use the expensive hair straightener Heddy bought me for my birthday. I'd trade it for one day a week use of her blue bikini that looked better on me anyway.

He loved me in that bikini.

He said it made my green eyes pop.

Also, my boobs.

After Francesca went to college, we still made that night our ritual. Sure, we could keep clothes at Heddy's lake house, in the rooms that had been ours since birth, but it was more fun this way. Soon, the soda became wine and the pizza became gourmet pizza and the candy became homemade opera cake and apple tarte tartin.

Thinking of it makes me nostalgic.

Through the phone, Francesca says, "Heddy put in a new kitchen sink a few summers ago."

"Oh."

"Yeah. I can't believe you haven't seen it. It's beautiful. A big farmhouse sink. It's begging to be covered in cake batter."

"Time just got away from me, okay?" I zip my cosmetic bag closed. "I didn't realize it's been so long since I've been back."

"You absolute liar ," Francesca scoffs. "Dave thinks I must have traumatized you fourteen years ago, but I know you're just holding onto some secret."

That last summer did traumatize me, but not because of anything that she did. It was something else – someone else – entirely, and Francesca doesn't know the smallest detail about it.

It would be easy to claim that I didn't want to go back without Amber, my golden retriever who passed last year. Or, I could say that it never felt the same to visit the house as adults, burdened with responsibility we never had as children.

I'll never tell her that I'm haunted by the summer love of a charming young musician. Him and me. Us. A love that began in June and didn't make it past the second week in August, broken by the spell of my eighteenth birthday and the burnt smell of impending adulthood.

Francesca can't know.

She'll judge me for the secret I withheld, and I can't stomach her face if she learned the truth. It would be so patronizing, and she wouldn't believe me anyway.

Who would believe that Adam Kent, the hot, successful musician that he is today, would have once been in love with me?

Me .

A six-year-old spilled milk on my shoes today. I unknowingly stabbed myself with a pen. I almost lost control of my entire kindergarten class to a bout of TikTok dancing. It was like a silent disco, but they were all moving in synchronization, watching their leader. Maeve commands attention, and that child knows how to move.

Francesca says, "Just promise me you're going to be there sometime on Saturday. The kids are so excited about it."

"Okay," I answer distantly, running my hand along a red scarf. "I told you I'd be there. I promise."

"Thank God. I really thought you were going to pull out at the last minute."

"That's what she said," I mutter.

Francesca ignores me – what's new – and says, "You'd better get some sleep. I can tell you from experience that kindergarteners are excited about vacation."

"I've got crafts and a movie planned." I continue, "I'll talk to you tomorrow, Fran."

I throw my phone on the bed and take a gulp of wine.

I'm going back to the lake house. I'm officially doing it. Hauntings be damned, I'm going to take back my power and forget about being eighteen years old, full of promise and collagen, with nothing to distract me from the oven timer but the boy next door.

That year began with Francesca, yet again, snapping her fingers and demanding I cancel my plans and uproot my life for her.

"You're not coming to the lake this summer?" she had demanded on trade night. "You have to!"

I'd just graduated high school. I had my dream job working at my favorite local Italian bakery, friends who I might never see again, and a ten-day Caribbean cruise planned.

I told her, "No. I'm not going this year. I'll come up when I can, but this is my last summer at home. I want to have fun with my friends."

"You'll be all alone," she said pointedly.

"I'm always alone," I challenged.

Our father worked in Boston and came home once a month, if that, a blip in time during which we saw each other in passing.

He would ask about my grades, grill me about my future plans – to make sure they were acceptable to him – and toss money my way like I was a cartoon beggar mouse collecting cheese scraps.

Once I turned sixteen, he fired the live-in nannies and I lived on my own sense of responsibility, allowance, and grief. Francesca had already gone to college by then. She'd never had to live in the house alone. I'd been doing it for years at that point.

That night, fourteen years ago, she pulled my suitcase out and began cramming clothes inside. She argued, "This is our last summer together. Dave and I go to Boston in two months, he's already got a job lined up with Dad, and everything's going to change."

I watched her pack my things, as helpless to stop my demanding big sister as I've ever been. My clothes weren't cute then, they were functional. It didn't take her long.

"You have David," I tried.

"I'll have David for the rest of my life," she said. "I only have one more month with my sister."

"What exactly does that mean, Fran?" I remember asking.

She thought about it. "No boys. No distractions. I'll kick Dave out every chance I get, he's bored of me anyway."

Her blue eyes met my green ones, and I knew I wouldn't deny her. I only ever saw those blue eyes on a crying twelve-year-old, a blur of black clothing, begging my smaller body to comfort her. A car accident killed our mother and our nonexistent father moved so far out of reach that we'd need NASA's assistance to communicate with him.

Francesca needed me, and my undying compliance changed my life.

That summer will hang over me forever, a dark cloud dampening otherwise happy memories. A moment in time begging to be fixed. It's the reason I can't stomach this suitcase, why I haven't been back to the lake house in years, and why I don't listen to the radio. I'm afraid of random songs on the airwaves and Spotify recommendations. The singer-songwriter genre is ruined for me.

Adam Kent did that.