A tight-knit New England town and a shuttered manor house hold the aftershocks of a double murder that shattered three sisters’ lives. Fourteen years later, the Palmer sisters return to Arden Hills, where old lies collide with new betrayals and the town’s power brokers still guard their secrets. The cast moves through intersecting themes of Sisterhood and Shifting Loyalties and Family Trauma and Dysfunction, as truth, perception, and survival blur.
Main Characters: The Palmer Sisters
Emma Palmer
Emma is the middle sister and the novel’s primary narrator, returning to the family home under financial duress and pregnancy only to become the prime mover in reopening the past. Protective to a fault and constantly scanning for danger, she’s shaped by the night she found her parents’ bodies—and by the cover story she spun to shield her sisters. As her husband Nathan is murdered and suspicion swirls, Emma’s need to clear herself evolves into a relentless pursuit of the full truth, even when it threatens the fragile safety she’s trying to build. Her closest ally is Gabriel Mahoney, whose steady presence tempers her fear, while her bond with Daphne and Juliette shifts from estrangement to a wary, renewed loyalty. By the end, Emma pivots from scapegoat to strategist, choosing which truths to expose and which to bury to keep her family intact.
Daphne Palmer
Daphne, the youngest, is an unnervingly calm observer who operates in the margins—an end-of-life caregiver whose quiet is a cover for ruthless calculation. Fiercely protective in a warped, absolutist way, she engineers distractions, tracks phones, and withholds information to steer outcomes that keep the sisters safe and the family’s darkest history sealed. Her violence is purposeful: she eliminates threats, including Nathan, when he stumbles onto a cache of evidence, and frames Rick Hadley to redirect the town’s scrutiny. Daphne’s devotion to her sisters is both her motive and her mask, recasting her as the story’s hidden antagonist and the most formidable custodian of the Palmers’ secrets. “No one can know” becomes her creed and the chilling logic behind her love.
Juliette "JJ" Palmer
Juliette (JJ), the eldest, has carried the crushing belief that she killed their parents, abandoning the “perfect daughter” persona for a tattooed, armored life far from Arden Hills. Guilt and fear dictate her choices; she returns primarily to control what Emma might uncover, even as she clings to the stability promised by her fiancée, Vic. Fragmented memories and an old fling with Logan Ellis tie her to the night of the murders, but the revelation that she is not the killer shatters a decade of self-punishment. Freed from that falsehood, JJ can finally face her sisters honestly, allowing love to replace distance and choosing family over the story she told herself to survive.
Supporting Characters
Nathan Gates
Nathan is Emma’s husband, whose job loss forces the couple back to Arden Hills and whose murder ignites the present-day mystery. Self-interested and image-conscious, he’s having an affair and manipulating Emma for money; his prying leads him to a hidden flash drive—and to Daphne’s deadly intervention. Nathan’s downfall exposes how greed and secrecy intersect with the Palmer past, making him both catalyst and casualty.
Rick Hadley
Rick Hadley is a local cop and former best friend of Randolph Palmer, the town’s snarling embodiment of suspicion toward Emma. Corrupt and obsessive, he was Irene’s lover and Randolph’s partner in crime, implicated in the murder of Kenneth Mahoney; his vendetta keeps the sisters under a microscope. Daphne ultimately turns his violence against him, framing him for Nathan’s death and offering the town a ready-made villain.
Gabriel Mahoney
Gabriel is Emma’s childhood friend, once tainted by proximity to the Palmer scandal and still living with the fallout in his own family. Loyal yet cautious, he begins resentful but becomes Emma’s confidant and emotional ballast as the investigation deepens. His steadiness offers Emma the possibility of a life beyond the Palmer house’s lies.
Randolph Palmer
Randolph is the deceased patriarch whose abuse and criminal empire—cargo theft and violence—seeded the catastrophe. He orchestrated Kenneth Mahoney’s murder and ruled his family with control and infidelity. Randolph’s death at Irene’s hands lit the fuse that has smoldered for fourteen years, leaving evidence and enemies behind.
Irene Palmer
Irene is the complicated matriarch: a victim of Randolph’s abuse who also inflicted emotional harm on her daughters. Obsessed with appearances and riddled with secrets, she had an affair with Rick and quietly amassed evidence against her husband while numbing herself with pills. She killed Randolph, then took her own life, bequeathing her daughters a legacy of love twisted by fear and deception.
Minor Characters
- Chief Ellis: Arden Hills’s police chief who led the original case; likely corrupt, he helped shield Randolph’s crimes and shaped the town’s narrative against the sisters.
- Christopher Best: Old friend of Randolph and Rick turned Emma’s lawyer; protective but evasive, he knows more about the past than he admits.
- Logan Ellis: The chief’s son and JJ’s secret high school fling; a small-time dealer whose insights link JJ’s memories to Irene’s clandestine movements.
- Kenneth Mahoney: Gabriel’s father; murdered by Randolph and Rick after uncovering their smuggling operation, anchoring the Mahoneys’ grief in the Palmers’ sins.
- Lorelei Mahoney: Gabriel’s grandmother and Emma’s former art mentor; a quiet sanctuary for Emma and a reminder of a life shaped by creativity rather than fear.
- Vic: JJ’s fiancée; represents the healthy, honest future JJ wants—if she can finally disentangle herself from the past.
- Addison James: Nathan’s colleague and mistress; her affair underscores Nathan’s duplicity and supplies a tempting false lead in his murder.
Character Relationships & Dynamics
The Palmer sisters’ bond is the novel’s engine: Emma’s instinct to shield, JJ’s guilt-driven distance, and Daphne’s extreme protectiveness collide into a new family compact. Where Emma moves toward transparency and healing, Daphne doubles down on control and misdirection, forcing JJ to choose between self-preservation and reconciliation. Their reunion transforms estrangement into alliance, but it’s a fragile peace built on carefully curated truths.
Against them stands Arden Hills—a town eager to believe Emma guilty and all too willing to paper over its own rot. Rick Hadley personifies that hostility, channeling the community’s rumor mill and his personal vendettas into ongoing persecution. Gabriel, by contrast, bridges the divide between Palmer scandal and Mahoney loss, helping Emma unspool the past without becoming trapped in it.
Power and corruption form a shadow faction: Randolph’s criminal network once included Rick as enforcer and Chief Ellis as the official cover, with Kenneth Mahoney as the silenced whistleblower. Love and betrayal mirror those alliances—Emma and Nathan’s marriage curdles into deceit; Irene and Randolph’s union is a toxic knot of violence and infidelity; Irene and Rick’s affair entwines intimacy with conspiracy. In the end, the sisters’ renewed loyalty becomes both shield and weapon, redefining family as the choice to protect one another—even when the cost is another carefully kept lie.