{"product_id":"haven-lake-isbn-9780451471499","title":"Haven Lake","description":"\u003cb\u003eNew from the author of \u003ci\u003eBeach Plum Island\u003c\/i\u003e... A natural-born storyteller presents a gripping story about grief, anger, and the healing power of love. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eSydney Bishop hasn’t returned to Haven Lake, her idyllic childhood home, since a pair of shocking, tragic deaths shattered her family when she was only sixteen. Now a child psychologist engaged to marry a successful surgeon, Sydney has worked hard to build a relationship with Dylan, her fiancé’s teenage son, so she feels nothing but empathy when he runs away—until she discovers that his hitchhiking journey has led him to Haven Lake and her mother Hannah’s sheep farm.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eSydney returns to Haven Lake for the first time in twenty years to coax the boy home. Against her daughter’s wishes, Hannah offers to take Dylan in until he’s ready to reveal his own troubling secrets. Now, for Dylan’s sake as well as their own, Sydney and Hannah must confront the devastating events that tore them apart and answer the questions that still haunt their family—and the suspicious surrounding community—about what really caused two people to die on their farm those many years ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCONVERSATION GUIDE INCLUDED\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e“Robinson handles numerous plot threads deftly, alternating between her characters with finesse. Fans of Barbara Delinsky and Diane Chamberlain will enjoy this moving family drama.” —\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“A thoughtful, well-written novel that examines the bonds of family and loyalty in the midst of tragedy. . .The relationships in this story are multifaceted and deep, and readers are continually engaged as the layers are revealed. This is a poignant novel that leaves readers thinking. Four Stars.”—\u003ci\u003eRT Book Reviews\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for Holly Robinson’s Novels\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Who and what make us who we really are? In Robinson’s luminous novel of buried secrets, she explores how the past can jump-start the future, how motherhood can be more than genetics, and why finding yourself sometimes depends on discovering the truth in others.”—Caroline Leavitt, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eIs This Tomorrow\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Holly Robinson is a natural-born storyteller and her tale of three mismatched sisters and the lost brother they search for will keep you turning those pages as she quietly but deftly breaks your heart.  I loved every single one of her characters and you will too; here is a novel to savor and share.”—Yona Zeldis McDonough, author of You Were Meant for Me\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A story about love, loss, secrets, and finding out where we’re really supposed to be in our lives.”—Maddie Dawson, Author of \u003ci\u003eThe Stuff That Never Happened\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “[An] absorbing, big-hearted novel.”—Elizabeth Graver, author of \u003ci\u003eThe End of the Point\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Robinson masterfully paints the portrait of a damaged family in the quake of a tragedy...This novel is a thoughtful exploration of the fragility, and the tenacity, of the ties that bind.”—T. Greenwood, author of \u003ci\u003eBodies of Water\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eHolly Robinson \u003c\/b\u003eis an award-winning journalist whose work has frequently appeared in \u003ci\u003eBetter Homes and Gardens\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eFamily Circle\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eHuffington Post\u003c\/i\u003e. She is the author of \u003ci\u003eBeach Plum Island\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Wishing Hill\u003c\/i\u003e, and a memoir, \u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eGerbil Farmer's Daughter.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF HOLLY ROBINSON\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWritten by today’s freshest new talents and selected by New American Library, NAL Accent novels touch on subjects close to a woman’s heart, from friendship to family to finding our place in the world. The Conversation Guides included in each book are intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eVisit us online at penguin.com.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eALSO BY HOLLY ROBINSON\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eFor my husband, Dan, the keeper of my heart. \u003cbr\u003eAnd for our children, Drew, Blaise, Taylor, Maya, and Aidan: \u003cbr\u003eyou make everything I do matter more.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCHAPTER ONE\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHer cell phone buzzed, angry as a wasp in her pocket. Sydney debated whether to answer it. She’d forgotten her headset and Route 1 was crawling with cops. Still, what if it was something urgent?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe’d scheduled only two appointments on Wednesday, because the first was a school visit in Quincy and she knew she’d hit a nightmare of snarled traffic through Boston in both directions. It had been a good visit—the teacher was creative, even compassionate toward Sydney’s third-grade client—but now her nerves were on edge. She hated missing calls. You never knew when a client was going to be in crisis.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe phone stopped, but just as Sydney’s shoulders relaxed, it started vibrating again. That did it. She pulled into the parking lot of the Agawam Diner and glanced at the incoming number. Dylan’s school. Various scenarios played out in her mind: sixteen-year-old Dylan mouthing off in class, an unpaid tuition bill, Dylan throwing up in the nurse’s office.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe wasn’t Dylan’s stepmother yet, but she and Gary had been seeing each other for two years and planned to marry in October. She’d grown fond of Dylan, trying to spend time with him without pushing too hard. Since Gary was a surgeon and couldn’t take calls in the OR, she was listed as Dylan’s alternate emergency contact.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOutside, the May morning was chilly and the gray sky was spitting raindrops that pelted her windshield, making Sydney wince even though she wasn’t getting wet. “Hello, this is Dr. Bishop.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Ah, Dr. Bishop,” Gloria said. “I’m just calling to check on Dylan.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Yes? What’s the problem?” Sydney had met the school secretary a few times. She’d hate to be on the woman’s bad side. Gloria had a gladiator’s shoulders and an accountant’s passion for details. Every school should be lucky enough to have someone like that in the front office.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I don’t know.” Gloria sounded peevish. “That’s why I’m calling. Is Dylan sick again? Is that why he went home after first period? You do realize, I hope, that this is his seventh absence in a month. It’s his junior year and he’s in two AP classes. He can’t afford more absences.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSydney was confused. “Wait a second. I dropped Dylan off myself this morning. Are you saying he’s not in school? He \u003ci\u003eleft\u003c\/i\u003e?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Yes. No one has seen him since first period and he never signed out. I did try to call his father,” Gloria added. “Dr. Katz is extremely difficult to reach.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSydney felt her face burn at the rebuke. “I’m sorry. Gary’s probably in surgery.” She hated feeling so defensive, but she was new at this parenting thing and, despite her profession as an educational psychologist, always felt like she was getting it wrong. “I’m sure Dylan’s at home. Let me check. Did you try his cell phone?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“We don’t keep student cell phone numbers on record,” Gloria said. “Students aren’t allowed to use cell phones during the school day.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eRight,\u003c\/i\u003e Sydney thought, thinking of every kid who came into her office texting with the urgency of bomb technicians defusing explosives. “I’m sure that’s a very good policy on paper,” she said before she could stop herself, then rang off.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDylan’s cell phone went straight to voice mail, so Sydney called the house. No answer. She tried Gary’s cell next; of course it went straight to voice mail, too.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat if something was really wrong with Dylan? She left a message and decided to wait a few minutes to see if Gary would return the call. That would at least give her a chance to grab some lunch in the diner to go; her hands were shaking, though whether from nerves or hunger, she couldn’t tell.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHer office was in a historic brick mill building on the Merrimack River that had once housed a family of famous New England silversmiths and was now a beehive of medical specialists. There were five practitioners with Sydney in the Children’s Mental Health practice—a psychiatrist, two other psychologists, and two social workers. And Ella, of course, the secretary who mothered them all. Right now, for instance, Ella was tirelessly helping Sydney plan her wedding.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt her desk, Sydney wolfed down the turkey club, chips, cookie, and soda she’d hastily picked up at the Agawam—bad, \u003ci\u003ebad\u003c\/i\u003e girl, inhaling carbs and sweets instead of slimming with salads—then paced her office. Five more minutes. Then she’d phone Gary’s secretary and ask her to page him in the OR.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom the window of her second-floor office, the Merrimack River looked oddly flattened out, like a sheet of metal beneath the heavy gray sky. She loved working here because the view made her remember the history of this area, and how manufactured goods had once been transported from factories in Lowell and Haverhill up this river to Newburyport. Everything from combs to carriages had then sailed across the ocean to Europe on clipper ships built right here.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe magnolia trees along the riverbank were in bloom. The pink blossoms reminded Sydney of how her mother once convinced her as a child that fairies used them as teacups. This wasn’t an entirely happy memory, so Sydney shook it off as tension pushed like a fist against the back of her neck. She was having trouble taking a full breath.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSydney recognized the onset of a panic attack and began talking herself down from the proverbial ledge. She’d learned to do this in therapy years ago: \u003ci\u003eYou’re happy,\u003c\/i\u003e she reminded herself. \u003ci\u003eWhat’s past is past. You’re beyond all that now.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis positive self-talk helped ease her breathing, but Sydney couldn’t banish her immediate worries. Why had Dylan left school without telling anyone? Some of the other kids at school had cars, licenses. What if he’d gone off in somebody’s car, and even now the car was nose-first in a tree?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnother possibility: Dylan could really be sick. Feverish. Even unconscious. There had been a meningitis outbreak at one of the universities recently.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA more likely explanation: Dylan was just ditching classes. But that idea led her down a dark mental corridor to her fear that Dylan’s increasing disinterest in school, his lack of engagement in anything beyond computer games, was related to Gary marrying her.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe had a client coming at two o’clock. It was nearly one now. Did she have time to drive home to check on Dylan?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhatever she did, she’d better let Gary know what was going on. Maybe he’d take charge. Dylan was his son, after all. That’s the way it should be. Sydney had vowed she wasn’t going to be one of those stepmothers who took over. She’d seen too many of those in her practice.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe phoned Gary’s office again. To her relief, the receptionist said Gary was out of the OR and put him on the phone.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Hey, sweetie. I was just about to call you back,” Gary said. “What’s up?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe sound of his deep voice, slow and with a hint of Virginia, calmed her. Gary would know what to do. She heard him chewing and smiled. Probably wolfing down one of his cardboard-tasting fiber bars for lunch. There was a reason Gary still weighed the same at forty-six that he had in college.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSydney wished she could say the same, but no. She was ten years younger than he was, but her curves kept getting curvier. “Sorry to bother you,” she said, “but Dylan’s school called and he’s not there. Have you heard anything from him?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I don’t think so. Hang on.” Gary put her on hold, then came back on the line. “Nope. No missed calls on my cell, and Amber says he hasn’t tried the office. When did he leave school?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“After first period. He’s not picking up his phone. I think one of us should go home and look for him.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“He’s probably just playing hooky. It’s a perfect rainy day for computer games, right?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I don’t know. It does seem like he’s been sick a lot lately. And you know he’s not eating enough.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Yeah, well, if he’d play sports and get off the damn computer, he’d have a better appetite and a healthier immune system.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAn old argument. Gary could be right. At the same time, Sydney secretly sympathized with Dylan, who was clearly irritated whenever his father brought up his own stellar sports records. Gary had been a Division I pitcher and had a trophy case in the den to prove it. He’d been drafted by a major-league team senior year, but had chosen to go to medical school instead.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Do you want to check on him, or should I?” she asked.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSydney could hear Gary tapping something into his computer, probably checking his schedule. He was the king of multitasking. She admired this quality, though less when she was only one of his many tasks.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I hate to ask, but could you possibly do it?” he said. “I’ve got two more surgeries this afternoon and the patients are already prepped and waiting.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Sure, no problem.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey exchanged a quick note about dinner—salmon, Gary’s turn to cook, thank God—and hung up. Sydney glanced at her watch. She’d drive home, have a quick word with Dylan, then call the school on her way back to the office, reassuring them that everything was under control.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTonight, though, they’d have to sit down for a family meeting, find out what was really going on. Gloria was right: this was junior year. Dylan couldn’t afford to blow his final exams.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe went out to the reception area, where Marco Baez was talking with Ella and flipping through his mail, making Ella laugh. Sydney had joined the practice eight years ago after earning her doctorate in educational psychology; her specialty was assessing school performance problems and evaluating children for learning disabilities. Marco was the clinical psychologist in the group. He had joined the practice last year; she had already referred several of her most troubled clients to him with positive results.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe had also seen the effect he had on women. Marco—with his soccer player’s wiry build and curly black hair—turned heads whenever mothers were in the waiting room. Even the older teachers sat up straighter to adjust their sweaters during school meetings he attended.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSydney was amused by him, but nothing more. Marco was fun to have around and good eye candy, but he was a player socially as well as on the soccer field, judging by the various attractive women she saw accompanying him to office parties. She’d been there and done that. She didn’t need any more players in her life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Hey, Ella, I’ve got to run home,” she said, “but I should be back before my two o’clock.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Okay,” Ella said. “Want an umbrella? It’s nasty out there.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“No, I’m fine. The car’s close.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“All right. See you later.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnnoyingly, Marco dogged her out of the office and into the hallway, where he stood too close as she waited for the elevator. “You okay?” he asked.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSydney sighed. It was often a drag working with other mental health professionals. Nothing went unnoticed and they were always checking in with one another. It was like being screened at an airport, only this was an empathy check; she’d prefer a quick X-ray anytime. She’d gone into educational testing precisely because it was the most analytical field of psychology.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just Gary’s son, Dylan. He left school and we don’t know where he is. I’m going home to see if he’s there.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I’m sure he is,” Marco said.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“You don’t know one thing about him.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe surprised her with a grin. “You’re right. I apologize. I only said that because I want it to be true for your sake.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Me, too.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Nobody could be a better friend to him than you are, Sydney.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I’m not trying to be his friend. I’m trying to be his stepmother.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“To a teenager grieving his mom like Dylan is, a good friend might be more important.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSydney jabbed at the elevator button. “Gary says I baby him.” She hadn’t meant to confide this to Marco, or to anyone, but the hallway was empty and here he was, Dr. Sympathy with his spaniel eyes. “He says Dylan needs to man up and play sports, get off the computer.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Depends on what he’s doing on the computer,” Marco suggested. “For some kids, that’s a social lifeline. Or a future career. I’m sure Bill Gates spent plenty of time on the computer in high school.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eInteresting. Sydney would have pegged Marco as one of those ban-the-computer types, with all of his big talk around the office about building good family communication skills. But there was no time to get into that now. The elevator arrived and Sydney stepped into it, ready to face whatever waited for her at home.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e•   •   •\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe hadn’t expected it to be such a freakin’ drag to hitchhike. Dylan had caught a ride with one of the seniors from his school in Hamilton to the center of Newburyport. From there he’d walked up Route 1 to Route 110 in Amesbury, where he’d stood for two hours in the rain by the on-ramp to Route 495 with his cardboard sign reading “Seattle” in dripping Magic Marker. Finally a guy in a battered pickup truck pulled over.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDylan hesitated before getting into the truck. He’d seen plenty of those movies where the idiot kids get sliced and diced by some masked guy with a chain saw. But the driver of this truck wasn’t evil looking. Just some old dude with paint-spattered work boots.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Don’t see many hitchhikers these days,” the guy said as they rattled up the highway ramp.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Yeah, well, school’s out for summer and I’m headed out west to see my girlfriend.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLies and more lies today. But Dylan liked the vague sound of “out west” and the old guy didn’t seem to care. He just nodded like \u003ci\u003eof course\u003c\/i\u003e that’s what a sixteen-year-old kid would be doing on a Wednesday morning in May, then merged onto the highway without bothering to glance at the oncoming traffic.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe truck lurched as the old man shifted the clutch, but Dylan wouldn’t let himself cling to the dashboard like some pussy as they took the corner on two wheels. He wouldn’t let himself worry about the stink of booze on the guy’s breath, either. How drunk could somebody be at eleven in the morning?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“So what about you?” Dylan asked. He’d read somewhere that you should make conversation with potential sociopaths so they’d bond with you and not want to slit your throat. “What are you doing with all that stuff in the back?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Selling shit for scrap.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDylan glanced over his shoulder at the truck bed. It was piled high with enough metal parts to build a submarine. Maybe this was a line of work he could check out once he got to Seattle, if Typhoon Entertainment wouldn’t hire him as a beta tester. That was his dream: to test video games for a living and design them himself one day. He had a couple of apps he was working on now.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe driver talked about his own hitchhiking experiences as they rattled west. Dylan could hardly make out the words over the bum muffler, but most of the stories involved bloody bar fights or getting “some great pussy like you wouldn’t believe.” Dylan mostly tuned him out, nodding and saying, “Wow, cool,” or whatever, to keep him talking. The farther west they drove, the more distance there was between Dylan and his so-called life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe wouldn’t let himself turn on his phone. He was done with phones. Nobody could track him down and that was exactly the way he wanted it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe driver—who at some point said his name was “Mack,” like that was a real name—eventually dumped Dylan off in Fitchburg, where Mack said he needed to gas up before heading north to New Hampshire, to whoever in the universe bought scrap metal and probably paid Mack in beer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMack pointed toward the entrance ramp to 495. “You’re gonna want to wait there, like you did for me. Don’t hitch on the actual highway or the cops will snatch you up.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike Dylan didn’t know that already. But he thanked the guy and even offered him money for gas. Mack waved him off. “You need it more than I do, kid,” he said. “Seattle’s far. Might as well fly to the moon.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIf there was a way to leave the planet entirely, Dylan would do that. Instead, he hefted his backpack onto his shoulders and started walking slowly up the road in the rain, wondering if he looked as pathetic as he felt: a skinny, no-ass kid in a \u003ci\u003eDoctor Who\u003c\/i\u003e T-shirt and expensive soggy sneakers traveling alone to a destination that really did seem as far as the moon.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt was raining hard enough that Dylan wished he’d brought that stupid raincoat Sydney was always nagging him to carry to school “just in case.” It was a North Face jacket—she knew most of the kids at his prep school wore that brand—but Dylan refused to wear it for exactly that reason, even though he did feel kind of bad about her spending all that money for nothing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHaving Sydney around was okay most of the time, but Dylan didn’t need her nosy questions. She couldn’t fool him. That mom act she put on was totally for Dad’s benefit. Other women had tried getting on Dad’s good side, too, hoping to trap him. Who didn’t want a rich surgeon for a husband?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBesides, with Sydney around, he could feel the memories of his mother wavering, like some kind of fading hologram. He didn’t want that. Especially since Dad showed no signs of wanting to remember Mom at all.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEven before Sydney, Dad had trashed Mom’s clothes and stuff. Pictures, too. Or maybe he’d burned them. What did Dylan know? Anyway, every family photo except the one Dylan kept hidden in his dresser drawer was gone. That one was of Dylan sitting on Mom’s lap and blowing out the candle on his first birthday cake. You could tell from the picture that she was going to help him blow out the candle and get his wish.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNot that he did. Whatever wishes he’d made as a one-year-old couldn’t have included a dead mother splattered on the highway the month he turned twelve. Happy birthday to him: a mother mangled in a car that looked like an accordion after it flipped over in a ditch.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDad tried to keep Dylan from seeing the pictures in the newspaper, but of course they were all around the Web. His mom had been driving her friend’s cheap shitbox Kia; her friend hadn’t died, only Mom at the wheel. Dad hadn’t let Mom take her BMW. He’d hidden her keys because he didn’t want her driving home drunk. Irony alert: Mom would have probably lived if she’d been driving her own car.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAn hour later, he finally caught his second ride. A boxy Subaru. Parental hand-me-down, Dylan guessed, since the driver was in his twenties and wore a striped skater hat and jeans. A skateboard was belted into place in the backseat like a kid. Next to it sat a duffel bag, unzipped and vomiting clothes. The car reeked of pot and the kid was smiling and shaggy. If this guy were a dog, he’d be jumping on Dylan and wagging his feathery tail.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Hey, bro, I can take you to Greenfield,” he said. “Not far, but it’ll get you out of the rain for an hour.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Cool.” Dylan dropped his backpack on the floor and climbed in, hoping the guy wouldn’t mind a puddle on his passenger seat.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe driver, Brooks, seemed oblivious. “Seattle, huh? From Greenfield you should go south on Ninety-one and hit the Pike. If I were you, I’d stop in Amherst and sleep at UMass. Somebody there would let you into one of the dorms. You could sleep in a lounge, start again in the morning. Trust me. You do \u003ci\u003enot\u003c\/i\u003e want to be thumbing rides in the dark, man. Nobody will pick you up. Or, if they do, it won’t be the kind of person you want to ride with.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSo far, Dylan had avoided toll highways, not wanting cameras to capture his image on film. But he pretended to go along. He could figure out an alternate route later. Right now he just needed to dry off.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBrooks was a senior at Worcester Polytech studying chemical engineering. He was on his way to visit his girlfriend at UVM, he said. “You should totally head north with me and see Vermont before you hit Seattle. Vermont’s got it all going on: mountains, green pastures, waterfalls. It’s a fucking paradise.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Sounds sick.” Dylan didn’t want to admit that his father had a ski chalet in Vermont and was always bugging Dylan to go up there. Skiing was the very last thing Dylan was good at, right after any sport involving a ball or a stick. “But I’ve got business to take care of in Seattle, you know? I’m applying for jobs in the gaming industry.” He hoped he sounded older than he looked.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt didn’t matter. Brooks was all over \u003ci\u003ethat\u003c\/i\u003e answer. He slapped the steering wheel. “Good for you, dude! Fucking too true! That’s what all the great ones did: Dell, Zuckerberg, Gates. They didn’t bother slogging through pointless college classes, did they? They just fucking dropped out and made their fortunes. That takes \u003ci\u003ecojones\u003c\/i\u003e.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBrooks lit a blunt, offered it to Dylan, who shook his head. “My girlfriend, man, she’d skin me if I didn’t finish my degree,” Brooks said. “She already thinks I’m a slacker. Women, man. You know what I’m talking about, right?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDylan nodded. He didn’t understand much about girls, but he knew this: Brooks was right. If you were stupid enough to fall in love, that girl had you by the balls.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe would have done anything for Kelly. \u003ci\u003eAny fucking thing.\u003c\/i\u003e But it hadn’t mattered. Whatever he’d done, or wanted to do, wasn’t enough. Kelly hadn’t just broken his heart. She’d shredded him, chewed him up, spit him out, and stomped on him with her spike shoes before setting fire to his head.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBrooks left him off at the Route 2 rotary in Greenfield, where headlights and taillights blurred in the rain like streaky yellow and red ribbons. From above, Dylan imagined the rotary would look like a giant dizzying pinwheel, like the one his mom had bought for him at the Topsfield Fair a month before she died. It was still hanging from the curtain rod in his room.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDylan had left the pinwheel behind, proof he was done with grief. He could miss his mom, fine. But he wasn’t going to be the sort of dumb ass who cried—actually \u003ci\u003ecried\u003c\/i\u003e—like he had in front of Kelly. Never again.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKelly had tweeted his pathetic whimpering to the whole world: “Skeleton Boy is leaking in front of me right here on the sidewalk! Ew!”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt wasn’t just raining, now. It was bucketing. Brooks had given Dylan a trash bag to put over his head and backpack to keep him dry. Wearing it made Dylan feel like a homeless meth addict, so he took it off as soon as the Subaru joined the kaleidoscope of lights, leaving its own trail of red and making Dylan wish he’d gone to Vermont after all.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e•   •   •\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSomehow, the lambs had squeezed through the wrong gate instead of following their mothers. Now they were in the upper pasture, separated from the ewes happily grazing in the lower fields and bleating as if their little hearts were broken. Meanwhile, their mothers were enjoying their uninterrupted gorging on tender new green grass.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe noise was shattering Hannah’s concentration. To make matters worse, it was raining hard, the water needling the surface of the pond below the barn that Allen had dubbed “Haven Lake” when they first bought the farm. The rain had already filled the tractor ruts with icy puddles.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHannah suddenly had an idea based on something she’d read in a book: she could try tricking the lambs to follow her through the gate into the lower pasture.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe shed her yellow oilskin jacket, shivering a little as she got down on her hands and knees in the mud in her white T-shirt and jeans, feeling cold and stupid as she began baaing like a sheep. Never mind. Nobody was here to see her. She only needed to fool one lamb into following her through the gap in the fence and the rest would follow.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHannah baaed again, feeling perfectly \u003ci\u003esheepish\u003c\/i\u003e, and suddenly thought of Rory. Her brother-in-law had loved animals. Rory would have helped her find humor and grace in this moment, as he had in everything. Well, almost everything.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Forget your perfect offering,” Rory used to say. “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt was a quote from one of the folk songs Rory used to sing in high school. Funny how often she’d been thinking about him today. And Allen, too. Then again, it was a rainy day in May. Even after twenty years, Hannah still felt a piercing grief when spring brought the rain like this, when everything reminded her about Theo and Allen being gone. After Theo died, everything fell apart, as if the boy had been holding their community together.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe cops—the whole town, really—had blamed the adults on the farm for Theo’s death. Not only Lucy, Theo’s mom, but Hannah and Allen, too. “With ownership comes responsibility,” one cop said. As if she didn’t know that already. Life on Haven Lake was one chore after another, until every night she went to bed and was afraid to let herself lie flat, knowing the ache would crawl up the sore muscles of her back and shoulders like a live, gnawing animal.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA lot of outsiders viewed the farm as a commune where drifters and druggies congregated. “It’s because those people are heathens,” Hannah had heard one woman say in Shelburne Falls a few days after Theo died. “They had it coming, living the way they did. Nobody was watching those children.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat was untrue, especially where her own daughter was concerned. Hannah had carried Sydney in a cloth sling for months, like she was still part of her own body instead of a separate creature, the baby’s white-blond curls tickling Hannah’s chin as she cupped Sydney’s hard, hot head in her hand to protect it as she worked, pulling weeds or taking bread out of the oven. She’d taught Sydney how to read and write, how to swim and ride a horse. She’d watched Sydney fall in love with Theo and then nearly die of grief.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHer daughter’s decision to leave the farm after Theo and Allen were gone still set off a noisy, percussive symphony of sorrow, anger, and hurt. Once triggered, those emotions reverberated up Hannah’s spine like an orchestra out of tune.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe gave herself a mental shake. \u003ci\u003eNo sense living a life of\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Berkley","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302609965285,"sku":"NP9780451471499","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780451471499.jpg?v=1767728782","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/haven-lake-isbn-9780451471499","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}