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This was so stupid. The script pages slipped into my lap and I let my head drop back against the canvas cushion of the deck lounger. The sun beat down on the smooth white surface of the patio and soaked into every inch of my skin not covered by my bikini.

Whatever. It was just for fun, anyway. And besides, what had I been thinking, trying to write a screenplay while lounging poolside?

Especially not when there were so many distractions out here.

The hammering next door started up again.

I adjusted my oversized sunglasses on the bridge of my nose and cast a furtive glance over the elegant, wrought iron fence toward the rooftop of our next-door neighbors. I had no idea where Mrs. Gardner had found her repairman, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the listing in the phonebook read Handyman, Hot.

He was tall and built, and seemed to be allergic to shirts. At least, he never wore any when he was working on the back and side of the house, turning what used to be a dated, enclosed porch into a gorgeous, modern outdoor kitchen and patio area my mother had already made several envious comments about. Me, I just envied whoever got a glimpse of the handyman without the fence in the way.

I’d been watching him work on a regular basis since getting back from Europe last month, and I’d yet to see so much as a T-shirt cover up his broad shoulders and washboard abs. There was a tattoo of some kind of sunburst design high up on one muscled arm, and I’d caught glimpses of another—writing I couldn’t quite read—down near his waistline. His hair was cropped so short I couldn’t tell if it was brown or blond, and he was too far away to make out eye color, but his smile, when he showed it, was almost blinding. You could see it from space.

He caught me staring. He smiled. Somewhere, no doubt, a satellite fell from the sky.

I rolled my eyes and put my sunglasses to the side. Showtime. I sat up and released the clip holding my long, blonde hair off my neck. I shook my hair out and stretched, feeling the movement tug at the material of my bikini top. I cast a glance over my shoulder at the Gardners’ roofline.

Hot Handyman had leaned back to watch, his shapely arms draped casually across his knees.

I rose from the chair and walked—no, I can be honest—strutted across the patio. When I reached the deep end, I put my hands up over my head in a pose perfected over years of swim lessons, and entered the water with a dive so smooth it barely splashed. When we’d put in the pool, Dad had paid a veritable fortune for the dark glass tiles that covered every inch. He said it looked more elegant. I knew what I looked like against this backdrop, too, a glimmer of sun-drenched hair and skin covered with a two scraps of white and green fabric. Let’s face it: the pool was probably best observed from a nearby roof, so at least I was giving Hot Handyman something pretty to look at.

One lap down, one lap back, and my lungs began to burn. Once more down the pool, and then I surfaced in the shallow end to take a breath and slick my hair back. I checked out the audience.

He mimed a golf clap and went back to work.

So I’m hot. That and twelve-fifty will get you a ticket at the movies.

I did twenty more laps—freestyle down, backstroke back—then twenty butterfly-breaststroke combos. My form was as perfect as the tiles. Dad’s money had paid for that, too. It didn’t take as much time as I would have liked, and by the time I looked again, the handyman was gone, which made hanging out at the pool much less entertaining.

Back at my chair, some breeze had come by and scattered the script pages onto the ground and into a puddle. Now there was a sign. Garbage. Just like everything else I tried to do. Dylan, my sister, Europe…you’d think I’d have gotten the message by now, right?

I gathered the ruined pages in a clump, chucked them into the recycling bin, and headed inside to take a shower. Once I was dried and dressed, I checked my phone. No new texts, no new social media notifications. There were two emails from Canton officials about back to school activities in August, and one from a high school friend about a pool party with our old classmates before everyone left town again for Durham or Cambridge or Palo Alto. A party where they’d all talk about summer internships and graduate school applications and LSAT courses. A party where everyone would ask me How was Europe? and What happened to that cute boyfriend of yours? and Have you picked a major yet?

I didn’t even want to answer the standard “what did you do on your summer vacation?” Because all I could say was that I sat around my backyard pool and flirted with the neighbors’ handyman through the fence.

Sighing, I checked my other email. Twenty-six new messages. Most were the usual replies to my latest post: agreements, arguments, one pointed comment about how I should be raped and murdered for daring to have an opinion while being a girl. I zapped it and blocked the IP. Probably some stupid 14-year-old boy who’d just found the blog for the first time. That kind of thing used to bother me a lot, but apparently, all female bloggers who attempt to play in the boys’ sandbox get this sort of feedback. If I’d had to do it over again, I probably would have picked a gender-neutral pen name. Oh well, live and learn.

I was doing a lot of that lately.

One of the emails looked interesting. I clicked through to see an invitation to an advanced screening of a small-budget horror movie, Render. Ooh, good title. I read the description, which was typically vague, but the comparisons to Triangle had me intrigued. One of the screening locations listed was DC. Tomorrow.

What the hell. I RSVP’d. It wasn’t like I had some packed social schedule to keep. I could drive up to DC.

“Hannah?” My mom’s voice floated down the wide, empty hallways to my room. “I’m home!”

I went out to meet her. She was back from her trainer, green smoothie in one hand, Coach bag in the other. Not a hair on her head seemed out of place and sweat stains wouldn’t dare make an appearance even on her workout clothes. She frowned at me.

“You’re getting tan. You should stay out of the sun in the afternoon.”

“Probably.” I shrugged.

“You’ll thank me for this advice when you’re forty, sweetie. Sun is bad for your skin. It’s great that you swim, but you should do it in the morning before the sun gets too high in the sky.”

That would detract from my valuable sleeping-in-and-doing-nothing time, though.

“Maybe you could work out with me in the gym instead. Remember that trainer we got you last winter when you first got your diagnosis?”

Yes, when Mom’s greatest fear was that my malfunctioning thyroid would make me put on weight. The trainer had given me some workout and diet tips that went right out the window the second I’d discovered French pastry in Paris. But I did stay active, like my doctor and the physical trainer had advised. And I hadn’t needed any adjustment to my thyroid medication in months.

Mom was checking out the fridge now. I grabbed an apple from the basket on our white marble kitchen island. It was bright green and blemish-free, of course.

“Oh, I saw Mary Beth Connell at the gym,” my mother said, emerging from the fridge with a packet of salmon and a replacement apple. She laid the latter gently on top of the perfect pile on the basket, moved it a half-inch to the right, and smiled at the result.

I crunched loudly. “Yeah?” I mumbled around Granny Smith.

She ignored my rude manners and assembled the ingredients for her marinade. “Yes. And she says her son Jeffrey finished up his internship and will be in Canton for a few more weeks before he goes back to law school. Do you remember Jeffrey Connell?”

“Vaguely.” Another boy from the country club. I may have partnered with him at cotillion at some point. “Red hair?”

“Not red red,” she replied. “It’s a nice auburn.”

Too bad. I liked gingers. I’d made out with at least three of them while I’d been in Scotland last spring. I liked that they called them gingers over there—made them sound like tomcats. Not that I’d managed to take it any farther than “snogging,” as they called it. The boys had been willing. I, apparently, had been more interested in learning the slang of the British Isles than in going through with crazy European vacation one-night stands.

“Plus, he’s at Yale. Did you know that?”

“Nope.” Uh-oh. Another setup.

“Anyway, he’s home and I was thinking maybe you two could go out some time.”

“Mom,” I said, trying not to whine. She hated whining. “I don’t think I’m up for more blind dates this summer.”

“And I think that’s precisely the wrong attitude, Hannah. You need to get out there. Meet some nice guys. Quality guys.”

“I dated a quality guy. He dumped me.” For my sister, I added internally.

“Well, I never was sure about that Dylan. I mean, we don’t know anything about his family. But Jeffrey Connell…” she shrugged. “Think about it. You know, when I was your age, I would have killed to date a Yale man.”

Why hadn’t she? Instead, she’d married a Canton man, my father, and settled down here. Maybe a Yale man wouldn’t have done what Dad did. Or maybe all men were pigs.

Mom looked down at the cut of fish. “By the way, it’s just us for dinner tonight. Dad’s staying out at the yacht club. He’s got another business meeting first thing.”

I could count on one hand the number of times Dad had deigned to dine with us since I’d been home from Europe. And then I could use the other hand to count the number of sentences he’d said to me. Not that I was surprised. During our last real conversation, I’d essentially threatened him. Blackmailed him? Did it count as blackmail if the money wasn’t going to you? If you were just forcing your dad to pay your sister’s college bills?

It was the right thing to do. It was.

“Well, I won’t be around tomorrow night,” I replied. “I’m driving up to DC for an event.” Maybe Dad would come home if I was gone.

“What kind of event?”

“Canton poli-sci career mixer,” I lied. I hadn’t been a poli-sci major for a year. “It’ll probably be a bunch of Hill staffers and stuff.”

“Oh?” Mom brightened. “That’s nice.”

I took another bite of my apple. Yes, it was nice. And, for my mom, as long as things were nice, as long as they were smooth and neat and blemish-free, all was well with the world.

I was twenty years old when I found out my father had another family, and it almost ruined my life.