Page 69 of Trust No One

The note had been attached to a plastic key chain shaped like a rottweiler. He’d always said I was “tenacious,” and when he saw it, he’d thought of me. Calm, controlled Judson never gushed or made wild declarations of love, his words trapped inside him.

I reached for my high school senior yearbook, sitting on a bookshelf under the large window overlooking the front of the property. I searched first for Judson. He was always clean shaven and kept his hair military short. Even then he looked older, no traces of a teen’s baby face. I flipped to Maria’s picture. Her vibrant smile leaped off the page. Gabe looked slightly bewildered. Ken grinned. Amy didn’t have a class picture.

On my phone, I searched Amy’s name. She was a real estate agent, and the agency’s site featured a blond, smiling woman who in many ways still mirrored me. I looked closer at a necklace she was wearing. Small, delicate, heart shaped. It had been mine. She’d taken it from Hale House and kept it.

Maria’s voice echoed out from the past.

“What’s it with you and strays?” Maria was yelling as I walked toward her.

“What’s that mean?”

She followed me into her bedroom. “You always adopt the underdog,” Maria said. “Cats, dogs, random teen girls. Amy.”

I sat on the floor on a beanbag pillow. There was a Coldplay poster on the wall. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Sometimes people don’t want help. They don’t want to be reminded that they can’t make it alone.”

“I don’t do it for that reason.” I thought about the red dress I’d lent Amy for prom. Designer and expensive, it hadn’t quite fit her as well as it had me. The bodice squeezed her fuller bosom, and the fabric had rubbed a red spot under her arm. “Do you think I do that to you?”

“No. Not really.” She grinned. “But some people will take advantage.”

“Amy’s working for me. I now have weekends away from the house because of her.”

“I don’t trust her.”

“Okay. She takes good care of Mom. And Mom would complain if she didn’t like her.”

“Why can’t you move your mother to assisted living?”

“Money.”

And Hale House gave Mom relevance. The house and lands made her feel special. Big fish in a little pond. If Mom hadn’t had Hale House, she’d have had nothing. So I’d kept her in her bed for as long as she physically could stay here. Even if it meant I was trapped.

And now, seventeen years later, I was ensnared again by a legacy, house, and land that didn’t care if I lived or died.

I thumbed through the yearbook. A Polaroid of Amy fell out. She was grinning, lips puckered and looking over the shoulder of a guy who faced away from the camera. His dark hoodie made it impossible to identify him. A selfie taken by Amy. Who was the guy?

As I stared at the picture, unease crawled up my throat.

Amy had secrets. But we all did.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Raine

Tuesday, October 20, 2026, 7:00 a.m.

The rising sun woke me—rare. I was an early riser, usually up by five, gym bag packed, heading out the door to a boot camp class.

I had no daily agenda beyond visiting Maria at the hospital and convincing Edith that I should see Molly. The unexpected compulsion fit the Hale motto: “Blood is blood.”

I scooped up my phone. No work emails. Medical leave was driving a wedge between my old life and me. Grief pressed in, sharp annoyance.

I yanked on sweats and a tee and hurried downstairs. Coffee on. Newsfeed scrolling. Rituals from Alexandria clung, but the real world felt more distant, slipping away.

The front doorbell rang. I glanced toward the door, but the sidelight revealed no one. Judson’s car, though, sat parked behind mine.

I smoothed my hair into a ponytail as I opened the door. “This is early.”