Lindsay pulled up next to the SUV, rolled down her window, and waved. The woman at the wheel had plump, suntanned cheeks and bloodshot eyes. She leaned in Lindsay’s direction, and the passenger side door of the SUV opened. Lindsay climbed in.

“Lindsay Kelly,” she said, offering her hand.

“Very funny.”

“It wasn’t meant to be. That’s my name.”

“That was what she said her name was.” The woman pulled a rumpled sheet of paper from the console and thrust it in Lindsay’s direction. It was a copy of the flyer that Lindsay had posted around town.

Lindsay looked down at Hope’s smiling face in the photo, afraid of what she was about to learn from this stranger.

“Her name is Hope. Hope Miller. And you are . . .”

“Jocelyn Hodge.”

“You met her?” Lindsay asked, gesturing to the photo.

“I cut her hair. I work at the Lock Box.” Lindsay recognized the name of a supermodern, minimalist-looking salon on the main road through Bridgehampton. “She was a walk-in. Most new clients, they’re on their phone scrolling through Insta or Twitter, answering their emails, whatever. Or they let me fill the silence, asking if they’re out here visiting, their plans for the weekend, typical small talk. But your friend? I couldn’t shut her up. Is it true that she had just moved here from New Jersey?”

Lindsay nodded. “A town called Hopewell.”

“Hope from Hopewell.” The woman gave her a skeptical look. “You sure she’s not lying about her name to you, too?”

“When did you give her a cut?” Lindsay asked.

“Two weeks ago? Maybe three.” It lined up with Hope’s diary entry about the man watching her as she left the salon. “She was super nosy. It started out with her saying she was new in town. How she was having a hard time meeting people. Like the way the long-term actual human beings who live here don’t need to make any new friends. Or it was a bunch of city assholes she had nothing in common with. I mean, she wasn’t wrong. You need to move here full time and make your bones if you really want to have a life.”

“When you called me, you said you thought she was stalking your boyfriend.”

Jocelyn blew her bangs from her eyes. “Stalking? Okay, maybe I exaggerated. But once she was in my chair, she kind of moved the conversation over to whether I was single or not. I told her I had a boyfriend, and she asked how we met. Seemed like girl talk at first. But once we were on the subject, she just kept grilling me. Whether he had grown up here or was new to town. Where he had moved from. How he was settling in as a newcomer. Whether I thought he’d stay for the long haul. If I had met his family. It was . . . a lot.”