The second they hear about Birchwood, they will come to you smiling. They will call it family. They will call it concern. They will call it safety.

They will call it anything except what it is. So I made arrangements.

Her second letter was hidden in the bait shop, taped beneath the lid of an old minnow cooler, exactly where the first one said it would be. That one held more than reassurance.

It held information.

Eleven months before her death, Eleanor had quietly hired someone to look into Rebecca and Trent’s finances. She wrote that she needed to know what kind of hands might reach toward me once she was no longer alive to knock them away.

The elegant life they showed the world rested on unstable ground. Trent’s real estate company hadn’t closed a significant sale in months. Their home carried a first mortgage and then a second.