It wasn’t that Lindsay was unsympathetic to Hope’s complaints about Hopewell. Lindsay loved her hometown, but there was a reason she had opted to stay in Manhattan after graduating from law school. In a borough of fewer than two thousand people, not too many of them were strangers, and Hope had it worse than the usual resident. When she first arrived, everyone was curious about her. She was a walking, talking, living, breathing real-life mystery. But over the last decade and a half, Hope had woven herself into the fabric of the community, and it was precisely because of the incestuousness of their small town that Lindsay knew Hope would always be safe in Hopewell. The doctors still took care of her pro bono, even for things that had nothing to do with her original trauma. She had a rent-free garage apartment, thanks to Tony and Grace, the couple who organized the first prayer circle after word got around town about the stranger who turned up at the hospital with life-threatening injuries but no identification. All they asked in return was that she watch the house when they left for their frequent camping trips. The police understood why she couldn’t have a driver’s license, and also knew that their beloved ex-chief—Lindsay’s father—considered Hope a second daughter, so they pretended not to see her on those occasions when they spotted her behind the wheel.

She had worked her way up to manager at Rex’s Diner, all the while getting paid under the table. Lindsay supposed she could take credit for that one. The owner wasn’t a Rex, as the name would suggest; she was a Miriam and had practically raised Lindsay from the time she was seven years old, thanks to the eight years she had been married to Lindsay’s father.

When Hope was in Hopewell, Lindsay knew that she was being looked after—by her father, by the Becketts, by Miriam, by that tight-knit community that had apparently come to feel like an anchor around Hope’s waist.

In a way, Lindsay blamed herself for Hope’s decision to leave. She had been the one to invite Hope to tag along two months before to look at a Hamptons rental she was considering for the summer. No surprise, given the price, that the place turned out to be a dump, but Lindsay and Hope had spent the weekend checking out the shops and restaurants that would soon be too crowded when summer rolled around. They even took a fishing trip as an excuse to get out on the open water. After a third man made some not-too-subtle moves in their (meaning, Hope’s) direction, Hope had announced a new life plan: she’d meet a rich man and spend the rest of her life at a beach house. By the close of the weekend, Hope was saying she was serious about not wanting to leave.