He was Walter.

She was Hallie.

Lena’s belly turned to fire, ignited by the truth of what she was seeing. There Lena stood, a walking cliché: the sister betrayed on her wedding day. If it weren’t so stunning it would be laughable. It was the annihilation of everything Lena Donohue believed in: true love, her family’s protection, and her sister’s fidelity. It was death, so why was she still alive?

The champagne bottle shattered on the stone floor, a bombshell of splintered glass and fractured reality as she dropped it in shocked pain. All that had seemed real was illusion; all solid ground fell away; all love dissolved into treachery. Only one pure thought exploded through her mind—This is the end of everything good.

Chapter One

May you never forget what is worth remembering, nor ever remember what is best forgotten.

Irish proverb

TEN YEARS LATER

The problem with memories, Colleen Donohue often thought, wasn’t with the ones she couldn’t let go of, but with those that wouldn’t let go of her.

She was no longer called Lena; now she was Colleen. She had long ironed-straight hair, bright red lipstick, a loft apartment in New York City and scant vestiges of a Lowcountry river running through her veins. Gone were the curls and the sundresses, the flip-flops and fishing poles.

Her apartment in Brooklyn was a studio—functional, sunny and chic. Once a Presbyterian church, the stone building had years ago been divided into apartments. Colleen lived in the smallest unit, in the far top corner overlooking Arlington Place. She’d once found faded photos of the church and believed her studio had been part of the old choir loft.

That August morning she knew better than to leave the apartment. Although the air conditioner strained, it still kept her space at a lovely seventy-two degrees. Outside, the city was almost intolerable, the heat roasting the garbage and wilting anything green and lovely. No one talked much of that, but it was why New Yorkers who had them left for their Hamptons homes or their seaside cabins. Colleen had neither; her job as a freelance travel writer kept her out of the city most of the time anyway. Yet she was home that day, having just returned from Mexico.

The rainy morning was sluggish and insolent, having its own personality it wanted to impose on Colleen.

She needed coffee.

It was ten a.m. Colleen wasn’t exactly the type to jump out of bed and make a run for the day. She brought the day to herself on her own terms, slowly and carefully. How many office jobs had she turned down merely because she’d have to rise to an alarm, dress in something presentable and chat inanely with colleagues over the tops of cubicles? Here, she rose at her own internal clock—sometimes early but usually not—and poured coffee before launching into her writing.