Chapter 1 Chloe
CHLOE
PRESENT DAY
Iknow I’ve arrived when I see a big, painted sign on the side of the road, sticking up from a patch of cleared trees. Welcome to Verity Hollow! it announces in red, vintage-looking script. Lakeside living at its best!
I turn into the subdivision’s entrance—a winding, serpentine road covered in dappled light from the surrounding trees, which have somehow been left untouched by the construction. Eventually, the road turns into a residential street, and the houses emerge out of the woods like huge mushrooms.
“Wow,” I breathe, peering over my steering wheel.
I’ve never seen the house in person, just photographs, which were impressive enough.
But these houses are so much bigger than I was expecting, with their tiered roofs and big picture windows.
Half of them aren’t fully completed yet; one I pass lacks any siding, and another is just the wood frame with a half-finished roof.
But as I reach the end of the block, the street numbers growing smaller and smaller, they become more fully formed.
One has a big Range Rover parked in its circular driveway; another has pretty rose-themed landscaping.
Between them is 12 Hanging Lake Road, my new home.
My grandparents bought this house five years ago, one of the first in the subdivision.
They used it in the summers until my grandfather passed away, and my grandmother decided she’d rather not have to take care of a glittering lakeside mansion.
And then she died, too, suddenly and abruptly from a stroke, and I was as stunned as anyone to learn the house had come to me, with no attached mortgage, although I do have to take care of the $1,200 a month in property taxes and house insurance.
Still cheaper than my shitty apartment, though.
I pull into the driveway and stare up at the house, sprawling its way through the surrounding trees.
My mom used to call it a cottage, which is laughable.
This is a mansion, the kind of house designed to host family gatherings—not that my grandparents ever got around to doing anything like that.
Five bedrooms, six baths, and a pier that stretches all the way to Hanging Lake.
I step out into the warm, breezy air. I can smell the lake immediately: a soft, steely scent that reminds me a little of rainwater. I can smell the pine, too, and the cinnamon-y scent of sassafras, and a kind of crispness that reminds me I’m up in the mountains and not in the bustle of the city.
A bang echoes through the woods, startling me until voices trail up on the wind.
A woman’s voice, specifically, stern and chiding.
When I glance in her direction, I see the first glimpse of what I assume are the neighbors with the Range Rover, since the woman and two children are currently marching away from the house’s porch.
One is a teenager, already towering over his petite, blonde mother, his hair turning shaggy for the summer.
The other is a little boy, around ten. He’s the one who sees me first.
He stops in the middle of the sidewalk and stares at me. I smile and give him a friendly little wave. Good first impressions and all that.
He mimics my movements.
“What are you—” The mother follows the boy’s gaze until she lands on me. “Oh!” she cries, correcting herself. “Oh, I didn’t realize the Monroes were renting out their property.”
I’m not sure she meant for me to hear that, given that the older boy grunts an acknowledgement. Still, I figure I ought to introduce myself. “Hi!” I call out across the gap of our yards. “I’m Chloe. I’m actually moving in.”
The woman purses her lips, studying me, eyes sweeping up and down my body, like she’s scanning me before deciding what to make of me. I plaster on my nicest smile and cut across the grass toward the family. The woman finally gives me a smile, although it feels fake.
“Blaire Jenkins,” she says as I approach, holding out her hand for a limp, awkward handshake.
“These are my boys, Owen—” She beams at the teenager, who stares dolefully out at me from under the fringe of his brown hair.
“—and Oliver.” She nods at the little boy, who blinks up at me with shy, round eyes.
“It’s nice to meet you, Oliver,” I say to him, and I’m rewarded with a flash of a smile. Then he brushes his palms together and brings his index fingers together like two toy soldiers.
It’s the last thing I expect out here, seeing someone speak in ASL. But it’s also a bit like seeing an old friend.
“How are you doing today?” I sign back, the movements clumsy.
I haven’t had many opportunities to practice since I was working as an interpreter, right out of college.
The work was too stressful for not enough pay, which I learned quickly enough is pretty much all jobs.
At least with the one I have now, I don’t really have to talk to anyone.
Still, I’ve always loved the language, and it feels good to use it again. Especially when the little boy’s face lights up in excitement.
“You know sign language,” Blaire says, surprise clear in her voice.
Oliver is signing back at me, his hands moving too quickly for me to catch it all. But I get something about the lake, and rowing a boat, and having to do something he doesn’t want to.
“Yeah, I studied it in college.” I sign the words out as I speak them.
“You don’t have to do that,” Blaire says sharply. “He hears just fine.”
Immediately, I’m struck with a vague sense of unease. Oliver drops his hands to his sides and looks down at the grass.
The older boy, Owen, gives an exasperated sigh. “Can we go? We’re gonna be late.”
“We’re not going to be late.” Blaire, however, does give me another fake-looking smile. “Although we should be heading out. It’s a bit of a hike into Pinella from here.”
Oliver tugs on his mother’s sleeve until she looks at him. Then he signs, “Can I stay here? Chloe can watch me.”
“No,” Blaire says immediately, not bothering to sign the word. “No, I can’t just foist you off on our new neighbor.” She gives me another one of those fake smiles. Every single one makes my skin crawl. “I’m sorry about this. Oliver’s always trying to get out of his BJJ class. Aren’t you, Ollie?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“But it’s good for him,” she continues, pressing her hand down on Oliver’s back. “Being around... other kids.”
The way she stresses other gives me that discomfiting feeling again.
I shift my weight, already kind of regretting coming over here.
I don’t like how Blaire talks about Oliver.
I don’t like the way Owen keeps glaring at me.
And I don’t really like that this is my first interaction with my new neighbors.
Although it does warm my heart a bit when Oliver signs up to me, “It was nice to meet you. Can I show you my rock collection when I get back?”
“Oliver,” Blaire says warningly, but I respond with a quick, “Of course you can.” I glance over at Blaire before adding, “If your mother says it’s okay.”
Oliver beams at me.
“We need to go,” Blaire says, corralling Oliver along the sidewalk as Oliver lopes behind them. She bends down to hiss something in Oliver’s ear. There’s just enough distance between us that I can’t make out what she says—
Although not so much that I don’t see the way his little shoulders knot up like an old and practiced reflex.
I spend the rest of the afternoon unpacking the boxes of essentials I brought with me in my car.
The rest of my stuff is scheduled to arrive in a week or two, not that there’s a ton of it.
My grandma didn’t exactly leave the house fully furnished—one of the bedrooms is literally just storage boxes full of holiday decorations, old clothes, ancient paperbacks, and other assorted grandparent-type treasures, and two of the bedrooms are completely empty.
But the essentials are all there. A big king-size bed in the master bedroom, a nicely appointed living room and kitchen.
There’s even a huge roll-top mahogany desk in the smallest of the bedrooms, which, according to family lore, belonged to my great-great-grandfather.
It definitely puts my shitty IKEA desk to shame, which is why my IKEA desk is currently in a dumpster back in Boston.
Still, it’s vaguely unsettling to be in a sprawling, sun-filled lakeside McMansion instead of a cramped apartment.
As I hang my clothes up in the big walk-in closet, the same thought keeps speeding through my head: This is mine now.
This closet, which is roughly the same size as my old galley kitchen.
This bedroom, with its big French doors that open to a Juliet balcony that has a view of Hanging Lake, the water glittering like diamonds in the afternoon sun.
The seemingly endless supply of bathrooms. The big living room with its high vaulted ceiling and enormous wall-sized window, which also has a view of the lake.
The porch. The dining room. The massive kitchen with its convection oven. The two-car garage.
All of it. Mine.
I keep thinking there has to be a catch, although I also pretty much know what it is: I’m in the middle of nowhere.
I work remotely, so that’s not an issue.
But if I want to go anywhere but the lake, I’ll have to hop in my beat-up old car and drive.
Pinella is twenty-five minutes away, and it didn’t have much when I stopped there on my way in.
A Food Lion, a Dollar General, a vape shop, a cell phone repair place.
Apparently a BJJ studio, too. Asheville, the closest city, is about an hour and a half drive on the back roads.
I know it’ll take some getting used to. My parents certainly tried to talk me out of moving into the house; Mom would get this sour, pinched expression whenever I talked about my plans for moving.
Are you sure you want to live out there? she said when I first told her I wasn’t going to sell. It’s a summer home, Chloe. It’s not a place you live.
Summer homes are absurd, I shot back. Why have a house if you’re not going to live in it?
She and my dad both had a two-pronged attack to try to get me to stay in Boston, the two of them alternating calling me over the last few months.
Mom wanted me to sell the house to my Aunt Lydia: It’ll stay in the family that way, she said.
And you can visit when you like. Dad tried to convince me to sign up for one of those short-term rental sites.
But I didn’t want to do either. When my grandma left the house to me, she left a message, too: Think of it as a place to call your own.
And I have every intention of doing just that.
It takes me the better part of the afternoon to finish unpacking my things, and when I’m done, it’s nearly dinner time.
Fortunately, I’m prepared with some frozen butter chicken from the Food Lion.
It’s not exactly the sambar I used to get from the south Indian takeout place by my apartment, but it still fills my kitchen with the earthy, fragrant scent of coriander and turmeric.
I dump it in one of the nice ceramic bowls that were stacked in the cupboard, pour myself a glass of Riesling, and go out on the patio to eat.
The house, like all the houses in the subdivision, juts right up against the lake, with the big wooden patio narrowing to a short pier that stretches over the water.
I walk down to the edge and sit there, my feet dangling off the side so the cold, steely water splashes around my ankles as I eat.
It’s golden hour, the sun just starting to sink into the treeline, and the lake looks like something off a postcard.
I can almost picture Visit Scenic North Carolina!
hanging above the golden-glimmering waterline in the same cheery red font that was on the Verity Hollow welcome sign.
On the other side of the lake is a wild tangle of trees and overgrowth that suggests we’re more isolated than we are.
Because I may be in the middle of nowhere, but my house isn’t exactly isolated.
There are mirrored piers on either side of me; the one to the left, the one that belongs to the Jenkins family, is only about fifty feet away.
There’s a little wooden boat tied to the pier, and it bobs on the water and clacks against the post, soft and rhythmic.
Didn’t Oliver say something about wanting to be out on his boat?
I can’t imagine letting a ten-year-old row around on the lake by himself.
The thought gives me a tightness in my chest, remembering how his mom talked about him. You don’t have to do that. He can hear just fine.
I tell myself it’s none of my business. He’s not my kid. The idea of having kids at all actually fills me with a vague sense of existential terror. All that responsibility on your shoulders, to make sure they turn out decent.
I put the thought of kids out of my mind and focus on the lake, the golden sunlight, the pretty scenery.
Still, though, as I finish my meal and the wind picks up, blowing through the uninviting thicket of pine trees on the opposite side of the lake, the boat bangs harder against the pier, and a tight, chilly uneasiness creeps over my skin.