The boys loved when I read to them, and Libby and Peter had shelves and shelves of children’s books that I’d never seen at the local library. Gus’s favorite was The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, a book about a boy who explores his neighborhood in New York City the day after a big snowstorm. Gus was enamored of the pictures of the snowy city setting—so different from the rural life he knew—and he’d flip through the pages for hours, long after Nate had grown bored of our reading session. Eventually Libby told Gus he could keep The Snowy Day, and his eyes lit up in delight.

Libby adored Gus, but Peter wasn’t around enough to give him much notice. I’d become wildly curious about Libby and Peter’s marriage, especially with Libby’s constant advice about choosing a partner carefully. Peter spent almost all hours of the day working out back in his artist’s studio in the barn. Whenever he did come through the house for lunch or a snack, dried paint smudging his jeans, he’d wrap his arms around Libby lovingly and cover the kids with kisses. But he left his studio so rarely that I couldn’t help but wonder if their marriage wasn’t as perfect as Libby wanted it to seem.

I wondered if they had issues regarding money. As Libby and I had gotten closer, she’d revealed enough for me to confirm that Peter’s art wasn’t the reason for their family’s deep pockets, but the source itself was never specified.

The night I aced my first SAT practice test—thanks to Libby and her SAT prep books—we celebrated with some of her favorite red wine. We were having one of our long, easy chats and had already polished off a full bottle when she mindlessly mentioned not wanting to travel with her parents and the kids to Vail over Presidents’ Day weekend.

She immediately placed a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. You must think I’m an insensitive, privileged fool, being so cavalier about a trip like that. I do realize I’m … lucky.”

I paused before responding, “To be honest, I don’t even know where Vail is.”

Libby hesitated, shifting uncomfortably. “It’s a ski resort in Colorado. I’m sorry, Heather. I must sound like an entitled brat.”

Though I lived in the mountains, I’d never been skiing and didn’t know a thing about it, but flying to a ski resort in Colorado sounded nothing short of glamorous. Nevertheless, I shook my head.

“I don’t think you’re insensitive, Lib.” I touched my nose to the rim of the glass and inhaled the earthy, oaked scent of the wine. “You’re definitely not an entitled brat. You’re generous and you’ve been so kind to me. You’re probably the closest friend I’ve got these days.”

It was true. Burke was out of my life, and with all the extra time I’d been spending on homework and SAT prep and babysitting at Libby’s, I hardly hung out with my girlfriends at all. Kyla was pissed; she told me she was sick of my Pollyanna act and didn’t know who I was anymore and had stopped bothering to invite me to parties.

I knew I was being a bad friend, but I was determined to keep my eye on the prize. More than anything else, I knew I had to get out of Langs Valley. Once Peter was finished with his Adirondack Mountains study, likely in May or June, Libby would move back to the wealthy coastal town where she was born and raised. That, too, was where I imagined myself one day: an affluent suburb of New York City where people drink wine spritzers and play golf, where someone else mows your lawn and there isn’t a trace of crack cocaine for miles.

I didn’t want a career so much as I wanted a vessel toward that life, the life Libby led in which she didn’t have to think about work or money, where the carefree possibilities of each day made her fingertips tingle. Getting into a good college was my ticket to meeting a wealthy man, or a man who would be wealthy, and that was what I needed. Gold diggers aren’t vacuous; they work hard for the life they get. I’d begun to understand that Peter painted all day because Peter could paint all day.

I could smell it on my hands at night, the lingering scent of the blissful freedom money allowed. It worked its way into my bloodstream. It overpowered every choice I made, and I knew, the way I knew the rhythm of my own breath, that now that I had a tangible goal to set my sights on, I could get to where I wanted to go. Burke couldn’t. Kyla couldn’t. But I could, and I would. At the end of senior year, just eighteen months down the line, I was going take Gus and get us far, far away from our sad, doomed little town. Nothing was going to stop me.

I couldn’t have seen what was coming. It was impossible to know then what lurked in the shadows of the unfurling future. Five months later, everything changed.

Chapter Ten

Skye

APRIL 2019

It’s been a month to the day since Burke popped the question, and I want to surprise him with his favorite breakfast—blueberry pancakes. Part of the surprise will also be that I’ve gotten up before him—I’m not a morning person, and Burke loves to give me grief over my never being out of bed first. My alarm sounds at six-thirty—an Adele song that I now can’t stand—and I fight the urge to press the snooze button. Dragging my limbs out from under the warm covers is almost painful, but Burke has an early meeting, and I want to do this for him. I imagine the look on his face when I present him with pancakes in bed, and it propels me forward. I grab my coziest robe and pitter-patter into the kitchen to start cooking.

Ever since we got engaged, it’s the simple moments that floor me. As I mix the Bisquick, I gaze lovingly at my ring. I don’t care about the diamond, not really. I care about what the diamond means. I think of Burke just a few feet away in the other room, still slumbering in our bed, and that he’s picked me—that he waited all these years for a woman like me—feels like a miracle.

The first time Burke slept over I was crazy nervous. I wasn’t in the habit of letting guys stay over until I’d set my boundaries—something I’d been working on with Dr. Salam. Setting my boundaries meant getting to know a guy through dating, and forming a trustworthy bond before letting him stay over at my apartment. This was therapist lingo for Don’t fuck on the first date.

I didn’t particularly enjoy sleeping with a guy and never talking to him again, but that was the clear alternative to the inevitable hurt and excruciating shame that came from trying to start a real relationship. It made me feel as if I had some control and power in my interactions with men, and it gave me a vague sense of social validation—I had something to contribute when I found myself in a circle of girls talking about sex, and casually referencing a “one-night stand” always made me sound braver and hotter than I actually felt.

The problem was, nothing had changed in the many years since Colin Buchanan. On more than one occasion I’d opened up about my OCD (both voluntarily and involuntarily) to men I’d developed feelings for, with the belief that these feelings were mutual and strong enough to withstand the truth. But it didn’t work that way, even with Max LaPointe.

Dr. Salam highlighted my problem: sex. She said that when a woman sleeps with a man, her body produces something called oxytocin, and oxytocin often causes a feeling of attachment. In the past, the men I’d attempted to have relationships with were men I’d been sleeping with, and this was why the failed relationships resulted in emotional injury. But if I didn’t sleep with anyone until I’d set my boundaries—aka, give potential lovers the heads-up that they were dealing with a disordered person—then emotional injury was much less likely. Because if the man rejected me anyway, at least no oxytocin was involved. This was Dr. Salam’s reasoning.

But I pushed her voice aside the night I let Burke Michaels sleep over after our very first date. Well, perhaps it was our second date, if you count Montauk.

It came down to pure physics: my body was simply unable to say no. Burke’s warm, dimpled smile filled me with a lulling ease at the same time it made my insides dip and twirl with lust. He was tall, dark, and handsome, the kind of all-American guy I used to imagine myself with when I was a little girl daydreaming of her prince. And I loved that he was older—he was mature and direct and had a thoughtfulness to him that guys my age just seemed to lack.