Kensington’s streets pulse through Long Bright River, where the opioid crisis, strained policing, and family secrets collide. At the novel’s heart are two sisters shaped by the same past yet pulled toward opposite futures—one enforcing the law, the other trapped by addiction. Around them, mentors, partners, and caretakers form a fragile web of loyalty, exploitation, and uneasy love.
Main Characters
Michaela 'Mickey' Fitzpatrick
Mickey is the novel’s narrator: a single mother and patrol officer whose beat—Kensington—keeps her perilously close to the life her estranged sister is living. Stoic, guarded, and relentless, she carries the burden of being “the responsible one,” protecting her son Thomas while concealing the truth of his parentage and bending rules in the pursuit of justice and family. Her investigation into a string of murders doubles as a desperate search for Kacey, forcing her to confront the moral compromises of her work and the scars of their childhood. Bound to Kacey by love and guilt, shaped by her complicated past with Simon Cleare and steadied by her loyal partner Truman Dawes, she ultimately chooses honesty over secrecy and resigns from the force to build a safer life for herself and her son.
Kacey Fitzpatrick
Kacey is Mickey’s younger sister and the catalyst for the novel’s mystery, her disappearance entwined with a series of murders targeting women on the Avenue. Volatile yet deeply vulnerable, she is driven by impulse and the ache of abandonment, but her resilience flickers through repeated attempts at recovery. Her life embodies the human cost of addiction as she navigates abusive relationships and the instability of the streets, fiercely loyal to friends like Paula and haunted by family fractures. As the truth emerges, Kacey’s determination to get clean for her unborn child—supported at last by her father’s reappearance—offers a fragile hope that she and Mickey might rewrite their shared story.
Supporting Characters
Simon Cleare
Simon is the charismatic PAL mentor who becomes Mickey’s secret lover and the biological father of Thomas—revelations that expose a stark power imbalance. Charming and predatory, he hides his own addiction and a pattern of exploiting vulnerable young women behind a veneer of authority. Over time, his savior image collapses, revealing him as a linchpin of betrayal that fractures the sisters and reshapes Mickey’s understanding of consent and trust.
Truman Dawes
Truman is Mickey’s longtime partner and closest friend, on medical leave but ever-present as a steady, principled voice. Patient, fair, and deeply loyal, he models community-minded policing and offers Mickey the judgment-free support she rarely finds elsewhere. His quiet decision not to return to the job mirrors Mickey’s disillusionment, even as their friendship endures—changed but unbroken.
Eddie Lafferty
Lafferty begins as Mickey’s chatty new partner, a seemingly harmless “regular guy” whose casual misogyny masks a predatory core. Embedded in the investigation, he weaponizes access and authority to stalk and kill vulnerable women, including his ex-wife. The novel peels back his facade in a slow-burn reveal that culminates in a chilling confrontation, embodying institutional rot hidden in plain sight.
Gee (Nancy O'Brien)
Gee is the sisters’ grandmother and caretaker after their mother’s death, a bitter, withholding matriarch hardened by grief. She favors responsibility over tenderness, rewarding Mickey while resenting Kacey, and ultimately admits to concealing their father’s letters and support. Far from simply tragic, she becomes an architect of isolation whose secrets warp the sisters’ sense of family and self.
Thomas Fitzpatrick
Thomas is Mickey’s bright, sensitive five-year-old and the innocent center of the novel’s most dangerous secret. His presence compels Mickey’s fiercest protective instincts and drives her toward truth, even as he quietly absorbs the instability around him. He represents the possibility of breaking cycles—if the adults around him can finally tell the truth.
Paula Mulroney
Paula is Kacey’s tough, streetwise friend, a familiar face on the Avenue who both distrusts police and cares fiercely for the women beside her. Her tip that the killer is a cop reframes the investigation, and her murder turns rumor into urgency. She lingers in the novel as a hard-earned reminder that the victims have histories, loyalties, and voices worth hearing.
Minor Characters
- Daniel Fitzpatrick: The sisters’ father, a recovering addict kept from them by Gee’s lies; his return helps Kacey choose sobriety and forces Mickey to reexamine their past.
- Sergeant Ahearn: Mickey’s obstructionist, misogynistic supervisor, emblematic of the department’s punitive “old guard.”
- Mrs. Mahon: Mickey’s landlady and former nun whose nosy kindness grows into steady support for Thomas and quiet counsel for Mickey.
- Connor McClatchie (Dock): Kacey’s abusive boyfriend and pimp whose menace yields a pivotal lead that helps expose Lafferty.
- Mike DiPaolo & Davis Nguyen: By-the-book detectives on the murder case, standing in contrast to Mickey’s personal, rule-bending pursuit.
Character Relationships & Dynamics
At the core, the Fitzpatrick sisters are bound by a fierce, conflicted love: Mickey casts herself as protector and rescuer, while Kacey resists that control even as she depends on it. Their push-pull dynamic—love, guilt, resentment, and shared history—drives every choice they make, turning the murder investigation into a reckoning with their past.
The family fault lines run through Gee’s house, where grief curdled into secrecy and favoritism. Gee’s suppression of Daniel’s letters isolates the sisters and distorts their sense of abandonment; Daniel’s late return offers Kacey the acceptance and structure she had been denied, creating a new bond that both comforts and challenges Mickey.
Inside the department, relationships split along ethics and power. Truman’s loyalty and community-first approach anchor Mickey, offering the rare model of principled policing. In stark contrast, Lafferty’s faux affability enables predation, exploiting the very trust and access that a partner should honor. Ahearn’s antagonism compounds Mickey’s isolation, making the institution itself an obstacle as she hunts a killer within its ranks.
Around the sisters, two fragile communities exert pull: Kensington’s street network—friends like Paula who share information, protection, and hard-won wisdom—and the police force, where alliances can be lifelines or traps. Simon’s entanglement with both sisters forms the story’s most corrosive triangle, fusing intimacy, power, and deceit; his betrayal cleaves the siblings even as the truth ultimately pushes them back toward each other. In the end, emerging alliances—Mickey with Truman, Kacey with Daniel, both sisters with Thomas—suggest a tentative reweaving of family, built not on secrecy but on the difficult work of telling the truth.