Secondly, there was Carol Robertson. A classic name for a classic bitch. She was that stereotypical popular girl in every TV show or movie in which they were the devil incarnate. Former prom queen who had cocooned and then emerged as the town’s newest, most beautiful queen-bee-butterfly thing. Even her appearance fit the stereotype. Beautiful golden hair, crystal blue eyes, not an ounce of fat where it wasn’t supposed to be, and from a rich family who owned and ran the town. Her ego had been as big as the egregious amount of money the Robertsons had had in high school, and, from what Sloane had seen on Facebook and heard through Callum, that ego had aged like a fine, very expensive wine.

And if the world wasn’t revolving around Carol? Boy howdy, she was sure going to find the person it had replaced her with…then destroy them with a smile as sweet as the tea Mrs. Bellview at the café brewed.

Which made the need to hide from the third—extremely oblivious—person even more important.

Sloane walked into Cassidy’s Place, Arbor Bay’s only bar, wearing an outfit she hoped was inconspicuous, and was relieved to not see any of the three. She pulled her ball cap down tighter on her dark braid and went to the barstool farthest from the door.

It was a Wednesday night, and only a handful of patrons dotted the tables and booths around the room. Sloane hadn’t been to Cassidy’s Place since the year before, when she’d visited Callum for Christmas. Like her childhood home, where he now lived, it was a small comfort to see not much had changed.

A chandelier of antlers hung down in the middle of the room like some weird, ritualistic scene out of an eighties horror flick, and the walls were covered in enough wood and wooden decorations that she’d made many a dirty joke about it through the years. The bar was less intense and stretched along one side of the room, while the door that led to the outdoor patio was opposite.

There were only ever two bartenders at Cassidy’s, and both were related to the man who had built it fifty years ago. Sloane recognized the one behind the bar now but couldn’t place his name. Arbor Bay was a small, small town, but there was still room for a few people to not be familiar with the others.