The irony was that the Jacksons, once the finest family in town, the reason for the town’s existence in the first place, lost all their money when the logging stopped. The memory of who they used to be, and the money they used to have, sustained them for a while. But then they couldn’t pay their taxes and had been forced to move out of the Madam. Most who had the last name of Jackson left town. But one stayed, a teenager named Georgie Jackson—Willa’s grandmother. She was seventeen, unmarried, and pregnant. She became, of all things, a maid to the Osgood family, who were once great friends to the Jacksons.

Willa pulled to the side of the road just before the turn to the driveway up to the Madam. She always timed it so that she got here after the crew had left for the day. She got out of her Wrangler and climbed onto the hood, leaning back against the windshield. It was late July, the hottest, thickest part of summer, alive with the drone of lovesick insects. She put on her sunglasses against the setting sun and stared up at the house.

The only thing left to the renovation was the landscaping, which apparently had gotten under way just that day. That excited Willa. New things to study. She could see that there were wooden stakes and string markers making a patchwork of squares across the front yard, and there were different-colored dashes painted on the grass, indicating where the underground utility lines were so workers wouldn’t dig there. Most of the activity, however, seemed centered on the area around the only tree on the flat top of the hill, where the house sat.

The tree was right at the precipice of the left slope. Its leaves grew in long, thin bunches, and its limbs were stretched wide. When light hit the tree at just the right time in the evening, it actually looked like someone on the edge of a cliff, about to dive into the ocean. A backhoe was parked next to the tree, and plastic strings were tied around the branches.

They were going to take it down?

She wondered why. It seemed perfectly healthy.

Well, whatever they did, it was guaranteed to be for the better. The Osgoods were known for their good taste. The Blue Ridge Madam was going to be a show-place again.

As much as Willa didn’t want to admit it, Rachel was right. She would love to see what the inside looked like. She just didn’t think she had any right to. The house hadn’t been in her family since the 1930s. Even getting this close felt like trespassing … which, if she was honest with herself, was one of the reasons she did it. But she’d never even had the nerve to get close enough to look in when she was a teenager, and it had been a right of passage to break into the decaying house. In her youth, she’d pulled every prank known to man, and had been so good at it that no one had known it was her until the very end. She’d been a legend her graduating class had called the Walls of Water High School Joker. But this place was different. It’d had a mysterious push-pull effect on her, and still did. Every teenager who had ever broken into the house had come away with stories of mysterious footsteps and slamming doors and a dark fedora that floated through the air, as if worn by an invisible man. Maybe that was what had always kept her from getting too close. Ghosts scared her, thanks to her grandmother.

Willa sat up and reached into the back pocket of her jeans. She brought out the invitation and read it again. It said to RSVP with the enclosed card, so Willa looked in the envelope for the card and brought it out.

She was surprised to find a Post-it attached to it that read:

Willa:

Your grandmother and my grandmother are the only two surviving members of the original club, and I’d like to plan something special for them at the party. Call me and let’s try to work something out.

Pax

Her handwriting was pretty, of course. Willa remembered that from high school. She had once taken a note that Paxton had accidentally dropped in the hallway and kept it for months—a strange list about characteristics Paxton wanted her future husband to have. She’d read it over and over, studying Paxton’s sloping y’s and jaunty x’s. She’d studied it so much, she found she could replicate it. And once she’d had that skill, it had been impossible not to use it, which had resulted in a very embarrassing encounter between uppity Paxton Osgood and Robbie Roberts, the school’s own redneck lothario, who’d thought Paxton had sent him a love letter.

The Walls of Water High School Joker had struck again.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Willa jumped at the voice, her heart giving a sudden kick in her chest. She dropped the invitation, and it flew on the wind to the owner of the voice, standing a few feet to the right of her Wrangler.

He had on dark trousers with a blue paisley tie sticking out of one of his pockets. His white dress shirt was translucent with sweat, and his dark hair was sticking to his forehead and neck. Mirrored sunglasses hid his eyes. The invitation hit him flat against his chest and flapped there like a fish out of water. He smiled slightly, tiredly, as he peeled it off, as if this was the last thing he wanted to deal with right now. This was a sign, she thought. Though of what, she had no idea. It was just what her grandmother would say when something unexpected happened, usually accompanied by instructions to knock three times and turn in a circle, or put chestnuts and pennies on the windowsill.

He took off his sunglasses and looked up at her. A strange expression came over his face, and he said, “It’s you.”

She stared at him until she understood. Oh, God. To be caught here was one thing; to be caught here by one of them was something else entirely. Mortified, Willa quickly slid off the hood and darted inside the Jeep. It was a sign, all right. A sign that meant Run away as fast as you can.

“Wait,” she heard him say as she started the engine.

But she didn’t wait. She kicked the Jeep in gear and raced away.

TWO

Whispers

Paxton Osgood had stayed late to finish some paperwork at the outreach center, so it was dusk when she left. She drove home, following the flickering lights of lampposts as they popped on, like drowsy fireflies leading her way. She parked in front of her parents’ house and got out of her car thinking that, if she timed this right, she would be able to have a quick swim before changing and heading back out to the Women’s Society Club meeting that evening.

This plan was carefully hinged on not facing her parents. She’d spent weeks tinkering with her schedule just so she wouldn’t have to stop and tell them about her day the moment she came in. This impatience, this avoidance, was a fairly new development, and she wasn’t sure what to do about it. Up until now, she’d never really minded living with her parents. Once a season, when she went to visit her Tulane sorority sisters in New Orleans, they would all marvel that Paxton still lived at home. They didn’t understand why she’d gone back to live with her parents after graduation in the first place, when she had the money to do whatever she wanted. It was hard to explain. She loved Walls of Water. She loved being a part of its history, of keeping it going. It struck a deep, resonant chord in her. She belonged here. And since Paxton’s twin brother Colin’s job took him all over the country, and sometimes overseas, Paxton felt it was only fair that their parents have at least one child nearby.

But last year, as age thirty loomed ahead of her like a black balloon, Paxton had finally made the decision to move out, not to another state, not even across town, but to a townhouse that her friend and realtor Kirsty Lemon was trying to sell, a mere 6.3 miles from Hickory Cottage. She’d measured it on her car’s odometer and offered it up as a major selling point to her parents. But her mother had been so upset at the thought of her leaving, of breaking up their happy little dysfunctional unit, that she’d been forced to back out. She did, however, move out of the main house and into the pool house, a small step but a necessary one. This was just going to take time.