The Blood Sister

Rue Bellamy left Bellingham the night her foster sister drowned in the quarry and the whole town decided one girl would do as the scapegoat. She has not been back in nine years. Then her foster mother dies and leaves her a house, a debt, and a letter from Nell that was posted the week she died and cut off mid-sentence. Rue plans on four days: sell the house, pay the debts, leave. On the first night, the bond wakes between her and Calder Nash — the boy who organized the town's campaign against her, the man who is now the sheriff, and the person she saw standing on the quarry ledge the night her sister died. They cannot be apart. They cannot be near each other. The town watches them circle and shivers. Over four days, Rue breaks open the drowning: a confession, a witness nobody canvassed, a police report altered in Calder's own handwriting under his father's thumb. He wasn't Nell's killer. He was her alibi, and he has spent nine years being hated for the wrong crime because telling the truth would have been worse. It ends at the quarry, with the water pulling both of them under. It ends with the letter finished in Rue's own hand.