#Review - Daughter of Mine by Megan Miranda #Thriller #Suspense

Series: Standalone
Format: 368 pages, Hardcover
Release Date: April 9, 2024
Publisher: Scribner 

Source: Library
Genre: Thriller, Suspense

Her father was the town detective. Her mother its most notorious criminal. Now the secrets of Mirror Lake are coming to the surface…and changing everything. 

When Hazel Sharp, daughter of Mirror Lake’s longtime local detective, unexpectedly inherits her childhood home, she’s warily drawn back to the town—and people—she left behind almost a decade earlier. But Hazel’s not the only relic of the past to return: a drought has descended on the region, and as the water level in the lake drops, long-hidden secrets begin to emerge…including evidence that may help finally explain the mystery of her mother’s disappearance.

Daughter of Mine is Megan Miranda at her strongest: small-town claustrophobia, a family that has lived too long with convenient stories, and a landscape that finally refuses to keep those stories underwater. Hazel Sharp left Mirror Lake, North Carolina, almost a decade ago. She built a renovation business in Charlotte and tried to put distance between herself and the town that never quite accepted her. Then her stepfather, Detective Perry Holt—the local cop everyone trusted—dies and leaves her the lakeside house. Not her half-brothers Gage and Caden. Just her. 

At the same time, a drought drops Mirror Lake's water level. A rusted car surfaces. Then another. And the old question that has followed Hazel since she was fourteen comes back with it: what really happened when her mother, Libby, vanished after draining accounts and walking out of the Holt house? The note Libby left—“Daughter of Mine”—has been Hazel’s private inheritance for years. The lake is about to make it public. Miranda structures the book in four parts—Father, Mother, Daughter, Sons—which is more than a gimmick. Each section shifts the emotional center of gravity as Hazel is forced to look at the same family from a different angle.  

Mirror Lake is not a postcard small town. It is a closed system where “everyone knows” is both comfort and threat. Drought is the perfect engine: heat, receding water, things that were supposed to stay buried becoming visible. The house itself behaves like a character—lights, notes, crawl spaces, the sense that Perry is still giving instructions from the other side of the grave. The real subject is not a single corpse in a lake. It is loyalty among people who share a last name and a lot of silence. Gage and Caden are cops like their father. Childhood friend Jamie is now married into the family. 

Neighbor and old flame Nico has his own reasons to stay quiet. Uncle Roy has layers. Hazel is the outsider who was raised inside the house and still doesn’t fully belong. Miranda is sharp about how a town that worships a dead detective will punish the daughter of the woman they decided was a thief. Hazel, as narrator, is not a super-sleuth. She renovates houses for a living and is suddenly asked to renovate the story of her own life. Her isolation feels earned. She wants the truth more than she wants peace, which is both her strength and the reason the book keeps tightening. 

Daughter of Mine is not Miranda’s wildest book, but it may be one of her most controlled. The drought is a strong metaphor that never quite becomes a lecture. Hazel is a better protagonist than many thriller heroines because her stubbornness has a history. The town feels lived-in and slightly poisoned. The twists are plentiful; the best of them are about who people chose to protect, not just who they chose to bury. If you want a tightly coiled, humid, family-first mystery that treats the past as something that can still flood the present, this is a solid, often excellent entry in Miranda’s catalog—and a fair argument for the people who keep calling it one of her best.

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 differently. 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 off-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 fisherman 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 finger 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 off 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 find 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 find 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 officers 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 find them on the long sliver of deck at the side of the building—the only reprieve from the crowd.

I saw Caden first, 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 first 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 fifteen 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 first.

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 finally emerging above water—that first, 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 briefly 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 off 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 feetfirst 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 reflecting off 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 diffe-rent world from Mirror Lake. I was a different 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 finality 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 fighting for the surface.

I kept my head down, weaving through the crowd, a study in evasion. Eyes forward, stride confident, hoping no one stopped me. It didn’t help matters that I was the only one in black amid a sea of khakis and floral. 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 whiff 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 first.” I gestured to my outfit. “No one told me the dress code.” Jamie wore a spring floral 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 offhand 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 off 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 find 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 first 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 flash 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 overflowing, 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 different 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 fingers 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 different type of family, I supposed.

“Well,” I said, “good to finally 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 fishing 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 file 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 flush 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 fifteen 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 off. “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 find 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 traffic 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 traffic past the site.

When I finally 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 flattened, 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 off 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 first 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 off 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 find 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.”

Amazon | Audible | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

#Review - You Belong Here by Megan Miranda #Thriller #Suspense

Series: Standalone
Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Release Date: July 29, 2025
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thriller / Suspense

Memories fade, but on this campus, legacies are never forgotten…or forgiven. A new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Megan Miranda.

Beckett Bowery never thought she’d return to Wyatt Valley, a picturesque college town in the Virginia mountains steeped in tradition. Her roots there were strong: Beckett’s parents taught at the college, and she never even imagined studying anywhere else—until a tragedy her senior year ended with two local men dead, and her roommate on the run, never to be seen again…

For the last two decades, Beckett has done her best to keep her distance. Then her daughter, Delilah, secretly applies to Wyatt College and earns a full scholarship, and Beckett can only hope that her lingering fears are unfounded. But deep down she knows that Wyatt Valley has a long memory, and that the past isn’t the only dangerous thing in town…

Megan Miranda’s You Belong Here is a gripping psychological thriller that weaves together themes of memory, guilt, and the inescapable pull of the past. Set against the backdrop of Wyatt Valley, a picturesque yet insular college town in the Virginia mountains. The story itself takes place in the present, as well as 20 years ago. The story centers on Beckett Bowery, a ghostwriter who has spent two decades avoiding Wyatt Valley, where she attended college and where her parents were professors. 

Her senior year was marred by a tragedy known as “the Howling,” a hazing ritual gone wrong that left two local men dead and Beckett’s roommate, Adalyn, on the run. Though never convicted, Beckett was implicated as an accomplice and sent to finish her degree at a sister college in London, where she met Trevor and ended up with Delilah before a peaceful separation. Now, her daughter Delilah has secretly applied to Wyatt College and earned a full scholarship, pulling Beckett back to the town she swore never to revisit. 

When Delilah goes missing after a cryptic, dropped phone call, Beckett must unravel the secrets of her past and the town’s hidden traditions to find her daughter. The narrative alternates between the present and flashbacks to Beckett’s college years, gradually revealing the truth behind the tragedy and its lingering impact. When the body of an older woman is found during the return of the Howling, ghosts from the past come back to haunt not only Beckett, but Delilah as well. The alternating timelines are seamlessly woven, with past and present converging to deepen the mystery. 

Flashbacks to Beckett’s college days provide context for her guilt and paranoia, while the present-day search for Delilah keeps the stakes high. Miranda’s precision in revealing just enough to keep readers guessing is masterful, making the dual narrative a highlight. The relationship between Beckett and Delilah is an emotional core of the novel. Beckett’s overprotective instincts, born from her own traumatic past, clash with Delilah’s teenage desire for independence, creating a realistic and relatable dynamic. 

As the protagonist, Beckett is a flawed, relatable character whose guilt and protective instincts drive the narrative. Her status as a potentially unreliable narrator adds tension, as readers question whether her fears are justified or paranoid. Delilah is a realistic teenager, balancing independence with vulnerability. Her decision to attend Wyatt College without her mother’s knowledge sets the plot in motion, and her disappearance fuels the suspense. Trevor seems like a good guy who was only in the story because he's Delilah's father. Let's also understand that if you live in a small town, people have long memories, and they won't let you forget the past no matter how far you run away. 

Prologue

PROLOGUE
I knew how easily a story could shift. How quickly the public could turn. I’d seen it happen, twenty years earlier. A game sliding into a crime. A tradition twisting into a nightmare.

I watched as an arc slowly emerged from the series of headlines and police bulletins, until the story had a shape, the truth a sharp end point.

Structure Fire at Perimeter of Wyatt College Burns Through Night

Two Local Men Deceased in Steam Tunnels Under Campus

Police Seek Public’s Assistance in Locating Missing Student, Adalyn Vale

Person of Interest Named in Fire Deaths of Two Men

Wanted for questioning: Adalyn Vale

Wanted for murder: Adalyn Vale

In the days that followed, I’d felt a shift happening inside of me, too.

Confusion. She’d been my roommate for nearly four years—had been my closest friend in those earliest years of adulthood.

Denial. Thinking that the witnesses were mistaken. That she hadn’t meant to do it. It must’ve been an accident—flames in the wind, catching and spreading.

Anger. Because she had fled without a word. And in her absence, I was the only one left to answer for her.

And finally: Fear.

Fear that she’d done exactly what they claimed and I hadn’t known her at all.

Fear because the police thought I was protecting her. And now they kept coming back to me.

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

Wednesday, August 13

5:00 p.m.

For the moment, nothing outside moved. Not the tall grass lining the highway, encroaching on the edges of the asphalt; not the haze in the sky, hovering over the mountains; and not the sinuous curve of brake lights disappearing into the landscape in front of us.

Only Delilah fidgeting in the seat beside me, checking the time on her phone yet again.

“We’re going to be late,” she said, her leg bouncing from either nerves or excitement. With her, sometimes, it was hard to tell. She was a theater kid, functioning at all extremes, with conviction. But the nuances were harder to discern.

“It’s just dinner,” I said. Which was only partially true. Tonight it was dinner at my parents’ house in town. But tomorrow it was dorm move-in. It was the start of my daughter’s first semester. It was time to say goodbye.

I didn’t understand how we had gotten here so quickly. The previous eighteen years had stretched into a lifetime, and suddenly time was catapulting, leapfrogging.

Over the past year, I’d often been caught off guard by the race of time, missing deadlines, receiving follow-up emails from the high school’s commencement coordinator: Did you order the graduation regalia? Reserve your tickets? It seemed I wasn’t quite ready to face it, so some primitive part of my brain was blocking out key facts.

You’ll be ready when it’s time, my friends who had crossed this milestone before me would say. Trust me, they’d say with a secret look, a knowing grin. Wait until you see what an eighteen-year-old brings into your home.

But she’d turned eighteen in the spring, and I still wasn’t ready.

I was never ready.

Not for the first high fever or the first broken bone—my first failure to keep her safe. I wasn’t ready for the first time I lost her in a store, calling her name frantically down the aisles. The first time she slammed her bedroom door (I’d never felt an echo in my heart like that before). The first secret.

I’d been trying to prepare myself for the feeling of an empty house. A new rhythm, a new routine—but I couldn’t slip it into focus. I felt stranded somewhere in time, with no anchor.

It’s not that Delilah never left. On the contrary, she was fiercely independent—a particular point of pride for both of us. She spent a month with her father each summer. A long weekend here and there with my parents. She went on trips with the school and had sleepovers with friends, got home late (she was always late), made plans and forgot to share them, intentional or not.

But these things were all so temporary, bookended by her presence.

Now she rested her forehead against the window and groaned—as if I could do anything about the standstill traffic on the single route through the Virginia mountains.

I wanted to say: We can turn around. It’s not too late.

I wanted to say: We shouldn’t even be here.

Up until the spring, I’d thought we had a different plan: Two acceptances to in-state schools. A partial scholarship tilting the balance toward one. Easy driving distances.

But somehow we were here instead, on this winding mountain road, driving the four—now six—hours back to the one place I’d tried so hard to leave behind.

I could still feel that jolt of surprise and betrayal when the decision letter arrived—the familiar W of the emblem, sharp as a knife. The realization that she’d applied without telling me.

There were other people I’d tried to blame first: my parents, for still living in Wyatt Valley, just beyond the edge of campus, even after retiring from the faculty. I imagined the stories they must’ve told my daughter, poisoning her with promise. Not to mention the view I knew Delilah had out my old bedroom window on her visits, of the gray stone buildings climbing up the hillside in the distance, like a secret idyll.

The admissions committee, for accepting her in the first place and then making it impossible to say no by offering her a fully covered Presidential Scholarship. If they cared—if they really cared—they would’ve rejected her, in a disguised act of kindness.

I found myself blaming Delilah, even, who had probably marked on the application that she was a legacy, even though that wasn’t technically true. I’d left midway through my senior year, transferred my credits, and finished abroad at a sister school, so my diploma carried the name of a different college.

But I knew the fault was mostly mine. I’d wanted to keep the past from her, pretend it never existed. And in doing so, I had only managed to push her closer, like a magnet. Shouldn’t I have known better by now? It was the singular truth of the teenage years, binding us all across time—a yearning for the forbidden.

Even as she’d sent back her acceptance, I’d imagined all the things I could’ve done to prevent this moment, tracing my missteps all the way back to the start.

I shouldn’t have been so determined to give her my last name instead of her father’s—which would have provided her a layer of removal, making her surname unrecognizable to the town. Delilah Bowery… daughter of Beckett? Granddaughter of the professors Bowery? I should’ve invited my parents to visit us in Charlotte more often so they wouldn’t insist on having Delilah in Wyatt Valley, so close to campus. I should’ve paid more attention during her senior year, asked the obvious question: Are you planning to apply anywhere else? So I could say: Don’t you know what happened there? Don’t you know why I left? Why I had to?

Two men had died. My roommate, the prime suspect, had fled without a trace. And in her absence, I had briefly become a person of interest. Someone the police thought might have more answers than I gave them. Someone the town thought might have been complicit, might have helped the guilty party disappear.

But that was twenty years ago now. Delilah had no fears, and that was purely my fault.

Because I should have told her the truth. Or at least the parts that mattered. The reasons I’d spent so many years avoiding this place.

The town has a long memory.

Not everyone has forgiven.

I should have begged: Please, I can’t go back.

The distance had turned me dangerously complacent. Foolishly confident.

I’d thought I knew my daughter better. I’d thought I knew how best to keep her safe.

But by the time she opened the acceptance letter, it was already too late.

There was no one left to blame but me.

And now here we were, with a trunk full of luggage, backseat piled high with crates and bedding and decor—though I couldn’t imagine it all fitting in her dorm room. My own move-in day: a cinder-block double with narrow beds and a single closet. The memory was crisp and shimmery, even after all these years.

Time had been working like that recently, with moments from the past coming into sharp clarity from nowhere. But the present skewing out of focus, slipping behind me too fast, like the way the fog swept out of the valley with a sharp gust of wind in the fall.

“Mom,” Delilah said, gesturing to the open space of road in front of us, just as the car behind us laid on the horn.

“Finally,” I said, tightening my grip on the wheel.

I knew we were getting closer by the feeling in my chest: that familiar sense of claustrophobia and the way the mountains seemed visible no matter which way we turned—always in the distance, a blue haze hanging in the summer sky.

If I closed my eyes, I could still picture the campus so clearly: The worn gray steps emerging from the hillside, our footsteps racing the hourly chime of the bell. The curved stone walls of the main building and their cool, gritty texture as I dragged my fingertips across them.

In the silence, I could hear the echo of my name in the long hall, laughter in the dark.

On a deep breath in, I could still smell the smoke.

Now Delilah wore a T-shirt with the school’s insignia, a walking advertisement of all I’d hoped to leave in the past. Her dark wavy hair held back with oversize sunglasses, a sparkling phone case in her hand—her name written in loopy cursive with a neon gel pen—and suddenly I was desperate to hold on to it all. Terrified that this place would strip her of the things that made her.

“Doc says the blue is an illusion…” Delilah said, as if she could feel me watching her from the corner of my vision.

“Is that what she says,” I responded, sounding like my mother now, too. My mother, a professor of psychology, never answered questions directly, just led you to the answer she wanted you to find for yourself.

“I’m sure she’s right,” I added. She’d probably read studies about the importance of being honest with children of all ages, as a way to establish trust.

Delilah turned sideways. Her mouth had stretched wide into that beguiling smile that could throw anyone off kilter—even me.

“You know what else Doc told me?” she asked.

“I have no idea.” The motivations of my mother remained one of life’s great mysteries to me. I pressed my lips together.

“She said that you were a total wild child.”

A bark of laughter escaped. My mother was not a fan of idioms, found them lazy or, worse, more revealing of the person who used them than what they were describing. “I just didn’t turn out like she expected, I think.”

“Apparently, by comparison, I’m a breath of fresh air,” she continued, grinning. “I don’t think this is appreciated enough in our household.”

“She did not use that term,” I said, laughing.

“That might’ve been Hal.”

“Somehow I find that equally unlikely.”

Delilah had taken to calling my parents Doc and Hal. I wasn’t sure if it was their idea, but knowing my mother, she would’ve found this charming, delightful. Precocious. A breath of fresh air. Maybe she missed being known as Doc by all her students now that she was retired. When I was growing up, there had been a rotating group of upperclassmen who’d come over for family-style dinners on Friday nights, with a new topic of conversation each week. Even when I was young, I was encouraged to participate. If nothing else, my parents had taught me to develop strong opinions and prepare to defend them. I had learned to hold my own, regardless of my age. I had also honed a stubbornness early; seen conversations as something to win.

“There it is,” Delilah said, just as the sign for Wyatt Valley came into view.

I tried to focus on the things I loved about this place—because once upon a time, I did. I loved this place fiercely. The town was set in the foothills, tucked against the Blue Ridge, where the haze drifted down into the valley and hovered over the trees. It was hard not to appreciate the clarity of the view, the distinct ridgeline in the distance. Something I could trace like my own heartbeat.

I could feel Delilah’s gaze on me instead of the road. I wondered if she had ever clocked the view herself, noticed the way it matched the tattoo on my wrist, hidden under the wide strap of my watch—the number of peaks like a barcode transporting you to this one place, from this one view.

But she was just looking at my grip on the steering wheel, white knuckles and blanched fingertips.

Her fingers drummed against her knee, as if my nerves were transferring to her. As if she could feel it, too—a sense of dread with no apparent cause.

Maybe it was the unnatural stillness of the place. The silence. The way the flags hung down from the front porches and the leaves on the trees seemed eerily static, like you were moving through a movie set.

I lowered the windows, just for a sense of movement, felt the hot rush of humidity pushing in, sensed a wavering of air over the tar-black pavement—an illusion in the stillness.

There are two states of being in Wyatt Valley: the stillness, when the fog settles like a cocoon, and the tree branches hang slack, and nothing stirs; and the howling, when the wind funnels down from the mountain like a cry in the night, first the leaves spiraling, then the snow swirling in eddies up and down the terrain.

In town, we used to await the first howling, welcome it like a ritual. For us, it marked the unofficial turn of the season, ushering in the fall. The stillness always made me antsy, like I was slowly being suffocated. Even the arrival of a new batch of students each year couldn’t shake things up on its own.

There were just over a thousand undergrads on campus, and they stayed largely behind the iron gates up on the hill. When they spilled out, they generally kept to the first perimeter, with the places that had been built and dedicated to them. But the town sprawled downward through the valley.

We drove past the fixtures that hadn’t changed in all the time I’d been gone: the town square, with its maze of streets and restaurants in a grid; and the old sign for Cryer’s Quarry, now with a chain hung across an unpaved access road, though I knew there was a shortcut by foot—a hiking path branching off from the parking lot behind the deli.

Instead of pointing these out to Delilah, I felt the sharpness of twenty years prior.

On the hill in the distance, I saw the campus where I’d spent so much of my youth, and thought: The spot where the smoke rose over the trees, ash falling over fresh snow.

I pulled onto my parents’ street, two blocks from campus, and thought: The corner where Adalyn Vale was last tracked before disappearing, never to be seen again.

I was lost in my own memories, so I hadn’t noticed at first how Delilah had leaned forward until her hands were on the dashboard.

I followed her gaze to the end of the block, where my parents’ street intersected with College Lane—which had once been Fraternity Row, before a series of incidents in the nineties led to their systematic shutdown. The properties had since been annexed back to the town, where they typically housed a rotating assortment of employees and their families.

Now there was a noticeable gap in the row of homes, an empty plot at the T intersection—so that we could see straight through to the edge of campus.

“What happened?” Delilah asked.

“I have no idea,” I said, feeling the unease that came whenever my memory did not line up with reality. “Renovation?” There was always construction happening around campus, and I could see a dumpster beside a heap of wood. But there were people lingering on the other side of the gap, staring.

I pulled up to the curb in front of my parents’ home, half a block from the empty plot. The sun was setting behind the mountains, the sky turning a golden hue, dusk falling.

I heard the distant chime of the bell tower marking the hour, and thought, like I had long ago: Run.

Amazon | Audible | Barnes & Noble | Kobo