The taxi’s worn suspension groaned over the familiar speed bumps of Riverbend Shore, the upscale neighborhood where I’d grown up, where every lawn was manicured to country club standards and every mailbox bore a family name that meant something in this part of Connecticut. I pressed my forehead against the cool window and watched the estates roll past—colonials with circular driveways, Victorians with wraparound porches, the occasional modern architectural statement that the homeowners’ association had probably debated for months before reluctantly approving.

My name is Marina Feldon-Whitlock, though I’d been Marina Feldon for twenty-eight years before adding the hyphen two years ago when I married Jared. I’m thirty now, working as a pediatric speech therapist at Children’s Hospital in Hartford, living in a modest two-bedroom colonial thirty minutes from my childhood home.

Modest by Riverbend Shore standards, anyway—anywhere else, it would be considered quite nice.

The driver, an older man with kind eyes and a Bluetooth earpiece, glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Which house, miss?”

“The gray colonial with the black shutters,” I said. “The one with the dogwood tree in front.”

He nodded and pulled into the circular driveway, gravel crunching under the tires in a sound so familiar it made my chest ache with nostalgia.

I’d learned to ride a bike on this driveway. I’d scraped my knee on this gravel when I was seven and my father had carried me inside, his face pale with worry over what turned out to be nothing more than a minor scrape.

I paid the fare and added a generous tip—twenty dollars on a thirty-dollar ride—because the driver had been patient with my directions and hadn’t tried to make conversation when he’d sensed I needed quiet. He thanked me warmly and drove away, leaving me standing at the edge of my parents’ property with my purse clutched in both hands and my carefully rehearsed explanation already dissolving in my mind.

The late October sun hung low in the sky, painting everything in shades of amber and gold.

The dogwood had already lost most of its leaves, and they crunched under my feet as I walked toward the front door. I’d called earlier to say I was coming for Sunday dinner—a tradition we’d maintained even after my marriage, though Jared often found reasons to arrive late or leave early, claiming work obligations that I suspected were exaggerated.