This was not giving up. This was not running home with his tail between his legs. This was an economical writing retreat…said Jack Torrance as he pulled up to the Overlook Hotel.

Ugh. Images of typing All work and no play makes Ash a dull boy flitted through his head, but he pushed the thoughts away. At least in Long Acre there was no chance of getting snowed in.

But there were definitely ghosts.

With one last look at his now-former apartment building, Ash packed his things into the rental van, got behind the wheel, and cued up the longest and scariest audiobook he owned. Horror seemed appropriate right now. The road home was a long one.

* * *

Kincaid was aggressively frying eggs on Sunday morning. The sizzle, like white noise in her ears, was usually soothing, but her head was pulsing with steady panic. She flipped the eggs and accidentally broke the yolk on one.

“Dammit.” She grabbed a whisk to turn this batch into scrambled instead of over-easy.

She never messed up eggs. This dish was one of the things she’d been perfecting since childhood—the perfect fried egg. But the signed contract sitting in her purse seemed to be emanating some kind of “Tell-Tale Heart” signal, asking silently—What have you done, what have you done? It was totally throwing off her cooking mojo.

At least she hadn’t burned the biscuits.

“No, genius, just your life savings,” she muttered to herself, “and your goddamned good sense. Ashes for both of them.”

For so long, she’d prided herself on not being like her mother, on being responsible and saving each penny, on taking care of herself and never having to count on anyone to bail her out. She’d already learned what putting all of her hope on someone else could do to you. And in one fell swoop, she’d pulled a classic Judith Breslin. She’d taken money she’d spent so much time saving, dropped it on a random number, and spun the goddamned roulette wheel of her life.

She could end up back in the same situation she’d grown up in. Panic tried to choke off her breath, but a quick knock and then the sound of a key turning distracted her from the spiral. Her friends had arrived for their long-standing Bitching Brunch date. Kincaid took a few deep breaths and practiced her normal smile, her everything-is-just-peachy-keen smile, and transferred the eggs to a plate with a shaking hand. She rubbed her lips together, smoothing her lip gloss, and called out, “In the kitchen, y’all.”

Footsteps sounded on the polished floorboards of her lake house, and her friend Rebecca stepped inside the kitchen first, her red hair pulled back into a loose braid and a cute gingham dress making her look more like a farm girl than the lawyer she was. Rebecca closed her eyes and inhaled. “Wow, it smells awesome in here. Please tell me those are your famous biscuits.”

“As if I’d serve breakfast without homemade biscuits,” Kincaid said. “What do I look like? An amateur?”