Lena’s drive from Watersend to Connecticut had been accomplished in a fugue state punctuated by tears and recrimination, of roiling anger and slamming her fists on the steering wheel. She hadn’t stopped to sleep or eat, only to refuel the car and use the dirty restrooms at convenience stores that all looked alike, selling junk food, beer, soda and beef jerky. She spent most of the drive reviewing the wedding and the weeks leading up to it in obsessive loops. When had her sister and her fiancé found the time and privacy to become lovers?

Colleen had been out of town only once since the engagement—a weekend spent traveling with her father to check out pubs along the East Coast. It was their annual dad-daughter trip and they always came home with new ideas, some innovative way to streamline the ordering or to attract new patrons, although new patrons were rarely truly needed. After the wedding, Colleen was going to stay and help run the pub whenever she wasn’t working for the local newspaper; she and Walter had even discussed adding a microbrewery with their own brand of Lark beer.

As the ribbon of highway had disappeared under her tires, the signs and exits a blur, Colleen tormented herself with endless questions. When had Hallie and Walter hooked up? Had they been running around together this entire time? Had her sister always hated her and only pretended to admire and love her? Was Hallie getting back at her for being older and being, well, so freaking bossy?

And Walter. My God, Walter. Loving him seemed to be stapled onto her bones, infused in her blood, so much a part of her body that she would never be able to stop feeling it. Yet, he chose her sister. The only thing she knew to do was run—get away from him as far and as fast as she could even as her body and her heart beat with the need for him.

It seemed impossible to hate the very same person she desired. A cauldron of toxic, contradictory emotions bubbled inside her. During that drive (and in the years following) the love sometimes won out and she wept with grief; other times, hate and rage took over and she seethed.

Fourteen hours of such fruitless thinking, of angry expletives and ignoring her ringing cell phone, passed before she pulled into Maggie’s driveway and stumbled to the pullout bed. For the next two weeks, Maggie listened and Colleen ranted.

Colleen’s family did not retreat so easily. They all called, one after the other, in hourly increments and quick sequence. They left messages. They texted. Colleen refused to tell them where she was. Let them worry. She answered her dad once, told him she was safe and asked him to give her time to grieve.