With a bittersweet pang, Maggie admired the cover’s stark illustration of two women’s silhouettes. Haskins wasn’t just her favorite contemporary writer; she was a professor and one of the reasons Maggie had decided to stay in her hometown after high school. While so many other kids had sought the escape that distant colleges promised, Maggie had chosen Carlton College partly because Trinity Haskins taught English literature there. She was a popular professor, her classes filled up quickly, and Maggie had known she’d have to wait until her junior or senior year to win a seat in the writer’s classroom. She hadn’t minded. Haskins was worth waiting for …

“Then how about we let Marge decide? Marge. Marge.” Ran poked Maggie in the knee.

Maggie looked up, disoriented.

The girls were smiling at her expectantly.

“Sheesh,” Ran said. “I was practically screaming your name.”

“Sorry.”

“Is that the one we should read?” Julia asked, nodding at the Haskins novel in Maggie’s lap.

“Well…” She covered the book with her hands, suddenly feeling fiercely (if absurdly) territorial about it. She would answer “Absolutely,” if she could brag about kind of knowing Haskins personally, having seen her on campus many times and attended three of her readings, and maybe boasting a little, too, about Carlton College’s great reputation, its kick-ass English department, especially.

But she couldn’t, not if she was sticking to her plan: to wipe away her past, surge ahead, stay focused on the future, and become more of a Marge and less of a Maggie.

She pushed the other three novels across the floor. “Let’s do one of these.”

11

A RACKET WOKE Maggie. With a gasp, she jerked up and pushed out her hands, instinctively preparing to ward off an attacker. Heart pounding, scalp tight, she listened hard for a moment, then collapsed back onto the bed with a moan. The noise was coming from outside, a sound like a bucketful of gravel hurled at the windows. There was a clatter across the roof, too, heavier than the usual pings of rain. The wind roared, and the panes shook and strummed. The loft was under some strange climatic siege.

She rolled over, got to her knees, and squinted out at the white and silver of the sky, wind, and lake. Winter had shown up early and was transforming Wren’s corner of the world. Leaning to the side, Maggie managed to get a view of the Blakes’ property. The air, thick with driving ice and snow, blurred Devil’s Tongue.

She thought about the previous night, Hope and Ran’s arguing, the Haskins novel, Maggie’s initial thrill and pride when she’d spotted the book … and how, for the sake of anonymity, she’d kept her reaction to herself. Though not without a pang.

Staying silent on her past—her master plan—came with costs. Hid the bad parts, yes, but it also meant giving up the good. And that sucked.