PROLOGUE
BETH- JANUARY 2, 2002
I should’ve knownsomething was wrong the second my phone buzzed with Sage’s name.
Sunday afternoon. Snow slashing sideways in violent sheets, rattling the windows of my mother’s house in Peabody like it wanted in. The radio murmured from the kitchen—weather alerts, static, a man calmly describing disaster. I was folding warm laundry on the couch, still damp from the dryer, when my screen lit up.
Sage.
My stomach tightened—thrill and dread braided together. It was always like that with her. Like waiting for lightning to strike and hoping it would hit close.
I answered.
“Guess where I am right now?”
Her voice was too bright. Too fast. Electric in that familiar, terrifying way—like she was vibrating out of her own skin.
I forced a laugh. “Mall? Getting those nails redone again?”
Silence.
Then—
a wet inhale.
Not a sniffle.
Not a sigh.
Something dragged. Something wrong.
“No,” she whispered. A soft giggle slipped out, intimate and secretive. “I’m inside his house. In Vermont.”
The room tilted.
The laundry basket slipped from my hands and hit the floor. Socks scattered across the rug like dropped bones.
“What?” My voice cracked. “Sage—he’s in Whistler. He’s out of the country.”
“I know.” Her laugh turned breathless, triumphant. “That’s why it’s perfect. Did he think I wouldn’t find out?”
My pulse roared in my ears. Ethan—steady, patient, careful. Sage—the storm who burned through lives and called it love.
“Sage,” I said slowly, carefully, like speaking to a cornered animal. “You’re broken up. For good this time.”
She snorted. Light. Dismissive. “He always says that.”
Something hissed through the phone.
At first I thought it was wind.
Then it got louder.
Relentless.
Water.
“I started in the basement,” she purred. “Every towel. Every sheet. Stuffed them into the washer sink. Turned the faucets all the way on.”
