"A good neighbor is someone who smiles at you over the fence and never asks what you buried under the patio."Avery Shaw returns to the quiet, affluent suburb of Hollow Brook with one goal: clean out her recently deceased mother's house, sell it, and leave. As a professional home stager, Avery makes a living hiding flaws and presenting perfect facades. But the perfectly staged life of Maple Street shatters when the girl next door-Corinne Vale, who vanished without a trace twelve years ago-suddenly reappears on her front porch.
The neighborhood rejoices, welcoming the traumatized survivor back with casseroles and open arms. But Avery notices the cracks in the story. The returned woman drinks black coffee instead of Corinne's favorite hot chocolate. She has a scar on her left wrist instead of her right. And most damning of all: the real Corinne was completely left-handed. The woman living next door is right-handed. This woman is an imposter.
But who sent her?When Avery discovers a hidden shoebox containing twelve unmailed letters from her own mother, begging Corinne for forgiveness, she realizes her family is implicated in the original disappearance. Her mother spent over a decade painting over locks and hiding evidence for a man she was terrified of. Now, to expose the fake Corinne, Avery must go toe-to-toe with Corinne's grieving father, Gerald Vale-a man desperately trying to stop anyone from digging up the pristine herringbone brick patio in his backyard.
Avery must untangle a decades-old web of coercive control, gaslighting, and twisted family secrets before the wrong woman inherits a life built on a grave.
"A good neighbor is someone who smiles at you over the fence and never asks what you buried under the patio."Avery Shaw returns to the quiet, affluent suburb of Hollow Brook with one goal: clean out her recently deceased mother's house, sell it, and leave. As a professional home stager, Avery makes a living hiding flaws and presenting perfect facades. But the perfectly staged life of Maple Street shatters when the girl next door-Corinne Vale, who vanished without a trace twelve years ago-suddenly reappears on her front porch.
The neighborhood rejoices, welcoming the traumatized survivor back with casseroles and open arms. But Avery notices the cracks in the story. The returned woman drinks black coffee instead of Corinne's favorite hot chocolate. She has a scar on her left wrist instead of her right. And most damning of all: the real Corinne was completely left-handed. The woman living next door is right-handed. This woman is an imposter.
But who sent her?When Avery discovers a hidden shoebox containing twelve unmailed letters from her own mother, begging Corinne for forgiveness, she realizes her family is implicated in the original disappearance. Her mother spent over a decade painting over locks and hiding evidence for a man she was terrified of. Now, to expose the fake Corinne, Avery must go toe-to-toe with Corinne's grieving father, Gerald Vale-a man desperately trying to stop anyone from digging up the pristine herringbone brick patio in his backyard.
Avery must untangle a decades-old web of coercive control, gaslighting, and twisted family secrets before the wrong woman inherits a life built on a grave.