I had convinced myself it was enough. That Mia and I could carve out a new life here in the safe enclave of Blackthorn Shores, a gated lakefront community nestled in the coastal town of St. Joseph, Michigan, where Marcus had grown up.
I had no family anywhere else. My mother had died of breast cancer when I was in my early twenties, and my father had abdicated his role long before that, abandoning my mother and me to start a new family in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. We saw him and my two grown half-brothers once or twice a year for holidays.
They weren't my family. Marcus had been my heart, my everything, together since we'd met our freshman year at DePaul University in college algebra, which I’d nearly failed. He’d offered to tutor me, and the rest was history.
After his death, I was desperate for a place where we could belong. That we would be safe.
These women had barely known me, yet Rowan had organized meal trains, Whitney had driven Mia to school some mornings, and Brooke had shared the juiciest neighborhood gossip to distract me.
My aching heart longed for Whitney's dry humor, for Camille's steady capableness, for Brooke's boisterous laughter, for Vivienne's soft encouragement, even for Rowan's Type A volunteer-for-everything, everywhere, all at once personality, always dragging us along with her.
They wouldn't exclude me. Not now. Not when I needed them most.
I forced myself forward. I wound Apollo's leash around one of the porch's cedar beams so he and Percival could sniff each other. Their tails wagged in curious enthusiasm.
The voices inside went quiet.
A shadow moved behind the frosted glass panel beside the door.
My heart hammered against my ribs. For a moment, I considered running, turning tail and fleeing before anyone saw me, before I had to face the humiliation of the cool girls meeting in secret without me.
But I was being ridiculous. These were my friends. I wasn't in middle school anymore, and I no longer needed to fret about being excluded from the popular lunch table.
Pushing down my sense of disquiet, I raised my fist and knocked. Three sharp raps that echoed louder than I'd intended.
Footsteps approached. Rowan opened the door with a wide dazzling smile. "Dahlia! We were just talking about you."
Chapter Six
"Come in, Come in." Rowan beckoned me inside with an elegant wave of her hand. "Oh, honey, you look wrecked. You could use a break."
I managed a smile. In her presence, I felt myself straightening, smoothing my frumpy jeans, desperately wanting her approval. "That’s one way to put it."
Effortlessly commanding and gracious, Rowan wore a soft taupe turtleneck, black cigarette pants, and leather loafers. She moved with the confidence of someone who'd never doubted her place in the world.
At 41, she was beautiful, with pale ice-blue eyes that could shift from warm to glacial in a heartbeat, high aristocratic cheekbones, a defined jawline, and that luminous porcelain skin she shared with her daughter Chloe.
There was steel beneath her beauty, though. Rowan was a woman who knew what she wanted and how to charm and cajole others into getting it.
While her husband Gregory worked as a hedge fund manager for Blue Star Capital, a financial firm based in St. Joseph, Rowan volunteered constantly, as the PTA president at Lakeshore Prep and the HOA president of Blackthorn Shores, as well as serving on the boardof directors at the Krasl Art Center, the Humane Society, and the Boys and Girls Club in Benton Harbor.
I stepped inside. The warmth of the house enveloped me as she led me through the formal living room, past the cream sofas and oil paintings that cost more than my car, and into the gleaming all-white kitchen.
Whitney and Brooke were in the glassed-in breakfast nook off the kitchen, bathed in late-morning sunlight. Lake Michigan glittered through every pane of glass. They both smiled when they saw me.
"Hey, Dahlia." Whitney stood, one hand braced against the table's edge, doing a calf stretch. She wore athleisure wear, rose-pink leggings with a matching jacket zipped to her throat and bright white sneakers.
Her sleek white-blonde ponytail swung as she switched legs, her cobalt blue eyes tracking the movement with the same precision she brought to everything else.
A former college athlete and tennis state champion, she was obsessed with optimization: her fitness regimen, her ketogenic diet, her alkaline water intake, and her daughter's rigid academic and athletic schedule.
"For heaven's sake, Whit, sit down," Rowan said, her tone light but firm. "You're practically cleaning my floor. I have a cleaning service for that."
"I'm almost done." Whitney reached for her pearl-white Stanley and gulped water. At 43, her intense energy filled every room she entered. Her strong jawline was set in perpetual determination, her straight nose and thin lips giving her face a lean, hungry quality, as if she were always measuring, calculating, ardently pushing toward the next goal.
"Whitney," Rowan said. "For all our sakes, please."
With a sigh, Whitney sank into her chair but kept tapping her foot. "I need to keep moving. It's the only thing that distracts me."
