Chapter 1 Address on Morning Glory lane

The taxi driver on Morning Glory Lane looked at the house twice before he let me out, as if checking the address against an eviction notice or a mistake he didn't want traced back to his cab company.

It was a brick colonial that looked like it had been scrubbed with a toothbrush every morning before sunrise. The lawn was the shade of green that only existed when someone spent too much money on automated sprinkler systems and professional fertilizer schedules. There were no toys on the grass, no oil stains on the driveway, and no neighborhood kids cutting across the corner. Everything was locked down, orderly, and aggressively quiet.

"Number forty-two," the driver said, his hand hovering over the meter as if waiting for me to argue the fare. "You sure this is it?"

"Positive," I said, handing him a crumpled twenty and counting out exact change for the tip down to the nickel.

"Suit yourself."

The trunk popped with a pneumatic hiss. I hauled my heavy duffel bag out onto the pristine concrete, and the cab drifted away before the dust from the curb had even settled. I stood there on the sidewalk for three full seconds, adjusting the strap of my shoulder bag, wondering if I could realistically pick up my life, walk back to the Greyhound station four miles away, and forfeit the four-thousand-two-hundred-dollar Vermont Young Writers' Workshop regional scholarship without my mother having a stroke.

The scholarship was supposed to be my ticket out of Northwood. It was supposed to change everything.

Then the front door of number forty-two opened.

A woman with silver-streaked dark hair and a comfortable gray cardigan stood in the frame. She didn't look like an administrator or a charity case worker. She looked like someone who had spent the last twenty minutes trying to remember where she put her car keys and had finally decided it didn't matter anymore.

"Marlowe?" she asked, shielding her eyes against the afternoon glare.

"Yes, ma'am. Hello."

"Celeste," she corrected gently, stepping aside to let me pass through the threshold. "Not ma'am. Not yet, anyway. Come inside before the humidity eats your hair alive."

I stepped over the threshold, dragging my bag behind me. The foyer smelled of lemon polish and floor wax. It was the kind of clean that made you want to take your shoes off three feet outside the front door just to avoid leaving a footprint.

"Here," Celeste said, taking the smaller of my canvas bags without making a face at its weight or the cheap zipper. "The guest room is at the end of the hall, past the kitchen. Let me show you where the coffee is, though honestly, if you don't drink it black, you're on your own. David buys the specific creamer he likes and hides it behind the frozen peas so no one else uses it."

Before I could answer, a small human missile rounded the corner of the dining room table, skidded on the polished hardwood floor with a squeak of rubber soles, and stopped dead in front of my sneakers.

She was about three years old, wearing bright yellow leggings and a sweatshirt that had a drawing of a very angry, fire-breathing dinosaur on the chest. She stared up at me with absolute, unblinking gravity.

"You have big hair," she announced.

"Maisie," Celeste sighed, rubbing her temple with two fingers. "We talked about indoor commentary."

"It's true," I said, crouching down slightly to level with her. "It does what it wants. I stopped arguing with it years ago."

"I have a duck," Maisie said, ignoring her mother entirely and latching onto the most important fact about her universe. "His name is Gerald. He lives by the toaster because he likes the warmth when the bread pops up."

"An excellent location for a duck," I agreed, keeping my face entirely serious.

Maisie nodded once, entirely satisfied with my credentials, and sprinted back down the hall toward the kitchen as fast as her yellow leggings could carry her.

Celeste shot me a dry, sideways look, a faint smile breaking through the corners of her mouth. "Welcome to the Beckett estate. Gerald is generally the most reasonable person in this zip code. Come on, I'll show you your room before David gets back from the firm."

The guest room was small, neat, and aggressively beige. A single twin bed with a quilted spread that looked like it had never actually been slept in sat against one wall. A heavy mahogany dresser—solid, dark, and old-fashioned—anchored the corner. The window looked out over the backyard, where a rectangular swimming pool sat beneath a heavy vinyl winter cover, gray rainwater pooling in its center like a bruise.

"The bathroom is shared," Celeste said, setting my duffel bag on the metal luggage rack near the closet. "If the hot water suddenly runs out mid-shampoo, it means David is taking his forty-minute shower to think about the municipal bond market. Just bang on the wall twice with your palm. He hates it, which makes it remarkably effective."

"Thank you, Celeste."

"Dinner is at six-thirty. Sharp. David likes punctuality almost as much as he likes tax season." She lingered by the door for a second, her hand resting on the white molding. "If you need anything else—extra blankets, a desk lamp that actually works—just tell me. Don't ask David. He thinks teenagers operate best under fifty watts of amber light."

She left the door cracked an inch, giving me a sliver of light from the hallway.

I unpacked in absolute silence, hanging my three nice shirts in the closet with military precision and placing my battered black journal on the bedside table. My journal—black cover, college-ruled, worn at the corners from being carried in my hoodie pocket—was the very first thing I owned that felt entirely mine. On the front flyleaf, I had written my apocalypse list: 1. Fire. 2. Public speaking. 3. Being perceived by men who own golf carts.

I uncapped my pen while sitting on the edge of the guest bed and added a fourth entry: 4. People who sponsor the room you sleep in.

At six-twenty-nine PM, I was standing outside the dining room.

David Beckett sat at the head of the long mahogany table. He was a large man who wore expensive cardigans that smelled faintly of dry cleaning, expensive scotch, and fresh printer toner. He didn't look up when I pulled out the chair at the far end, treating my arrival like background noise.

"Marlowe," he said. It wasn't a question or a greeting. It was a file label being ticked off in his head.

"Good evening, Mr. Beckett."

Celeste appeared from the kitchen carrying a heavy ceramic bowl of roasted broccoli that looked like it had been subjected to thirty minutes of intense heat and zero mercy. "David, she just got here. Give her five minutes to breathe before you start auditing her transcripts."

"I didn't say a word about transcripts," David replied, his voice smooth, unhurried, and completely flat. He picked up his heavy silver fork and sliced into a piece of chicken with clinical precision. "I was merely acknowledging our guest."

"It's fine," I said quietly, keeping my eyes fixed firmly on my cloth napkin.

Maisie sat between us, entirely ignoring the adult friction. She was systematically organizing her green beans into strict military formations along the rim of her plate.

"How was the bus ride, Marlowe?" Celeste asked, passing the basket of dinner rolls down the length of the table. "Long?"

"Four hours from Northwood," I said. "The air conditioning on the Greyhound smelled like wet pennies, but otherwise fine."

"Northwood," David murmured, chewing his chicken slowly before swallowing. "Industrial town, isn't it? Lots of steel fabrication. My firm handled some restructuring for the rail yards there back in ninety-eight."

"Mostly closed down now," I said.

"Pity," he said, though his tone suggested it was an administrative inconvenience rather than a human loss.

The rest of dinner proceeded with the rhythmic, heavy clink of silverware against porcelain. Nobody talked about anything that actually mattered. David asked one more question about my high school GPA—just to confirm the numbers on the scholarship application matched his mental ledger—and then retreated into comfortable silence.

Across the table, Celeste caught my eye once over the rim of her water glass. A tiny, almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of her mouth gave away everything I needed to know about the next four months.

We were going to survive this house. Or at least, we weren't going to let the china break us first.