Writer Carrie Colts hopes a move to Montauk will be a rejuvenating change of pace for her family. The last thing she expects to see is her former college roommate on her doorstep. Newly widowed, and with a daughter of her own, Maya would love to reconnect. As a gesture to an old friend in mourning, Carrie extends an invitation to stay. Just for a few days. After all, there are reasons that Carrie and Maya are estranged.

Carrie soon regrets her impulsive offer. Someone has taken a pair of scissors to her college yearbook. Her herb garden is destroyed. She’s starting to receive sinister texts. And Maya is making herself a little too much at home. What does Maya really want? What is she hiding? Carrie’s afraid to ask. Because Maya knows all her secrets, and exposing them comes with a price Carrie can’t afford to pay.

Excerpt

Monday

The shrill ringing of the landline jolts me from my trance.

I’ve been staring at my open laptop screen, eyes glazing over, mind drifting from place to place, anywhere except for the words on the document in front of me. Like what to have for dinner tonight. What time Pete’s train is arriving back to Montauk from the city. Whether the lunch I made for Kelsey, a cheddar cheese and pickle sandwich, her favorite, made it into her backpack. Whether she would even eat it if it did.

To be honest, the ringing from the phone is a welcome intrusion; it gives me an excuse to get up from my desk, which is piled high with nonsensical notes on post-its and pens without caps. I really ought to get some cute bins and colored file folders to make my new workspace better organized, a little more Pinterest-esque. I need to accept the fact that this is our home now and try to spruce it up. Maybe I’m still slightly in denial about the fact that we moved out here to Montauk. For the time being, anyway.

We came out in a hurry in the late spring, when Pete’s mom, Helen, took a turn for the worse. She passed peacefully a few days after we got here, as if she’d just been waiting to spend a little more quality time with us, watch a few more Jeopardy! episodes with her family by her side. And since Pete’s dad died a few years ago, their retirement home is now ours. After she died, we decided to spend the rest of the summer here; Pete had numerous loose ends to tie up, a lot of work on the house to do, tons of purging. His parents weren’t great about keeping their affairs in order. They weren’t quite hoarders, but let’s just say that dozens of Pete’s Little League trophies were proudly displayed on the guest bedroom’s shelves, despite the fact that his parents moved here from mid-island when he was thirty.

We’d originally planned to clean up the house and put it on the market in the fall. But in July, Pete floated the idea of staying out here for the year.

My first reaction was absolutely not. Montauk is beautiful, but I am unequivocally a city person. I love how you can find everything you need within a block or two of where you’re standing. I love the restaurants, the concerts, the cheap Thai food. I love not driving. I love our apartment and had no interest in moving into Pete’s parents’ dated beach house with its fanned blinds and stucco ceilings and lack of air-conditioning.

But Pete was excited about the idea. He’s the kind of guy who likely would have preferred to live in a big house in the suburbs, spending weekends washing his car while blasting Tim McGraw. He said if we stayed out here, he could mostly work from home and just commute in for a few days every other week or so. And I can write from anywhere, he reminded me. Besides, it was hard to say no to him when he’d just lost his only remaining parent.

The move wasn’t just for him, either. Kelsey had been going through something. It was as if she’d become an entirely different kid overnight. Our sunny little girl had been replaced by a sullen, hostile teenager who skipped classes and smelled like smoke and slammed her bedroom door with brute strength we didn’t know she possessed. We weren’t sure how much of this was “normal,” but we thought a change of scenery might be good for her.

For me, too, if I’m being honest. After all, staying in Montauk would make it easier to avoid some mistakes I’d made-well, one mistake in particular, which our sudden departure had brought a natural and very necessary end to. It was safer here, where I knew I’d never run into said mistake and could just sort of let the dust settle on the whole episode. Midlife crisis, maybe, is what it was. But it’s over now, and being in Montauk makes it easier for it to remain over.

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About the Author

Kathleen M. Willett is the author of Mother of All Secrets. An English teacher who grew up in New Jersey and London, Kathleen lives in New York City with her husband, two daughters, and a cat named Mr. Sparkles.