Neither one of us speaks again until we’re both safely in the boat. There wasn’t time for words as I clawed, kicked, and climbed my way up the side until I was able to flop onto the boat floor like a recently caught fish. Getting the woman on board was even harder, seeing how her near-death experience had sapped all her energy. It took so much tugging and lifting on my part that, once she was in the boat, I was too exhausted to move, let alone speak.

  But now, after a few minutes of panting, we’ve pulled ourselves into seats. The woman and I face each other, shell-shocked by the whole situation and all too happy to rest a few minutes while we regroup.

  “You said I almost drowned,” the woman says.

  She’s wrapped in a plaid blanket I found stowed under one of the boat’s seats, which gives her the look of a kitten rescued from a storm drain. Battered and vulnerable and grateful.

  “Yes,” I say as I wring water from my flannel shirt. Because there’s only one blanket on board, I remain soaked and chilly. I don’t mind. I’m not the one who needed rescue.

  “Define almost.”

  “Honestly? I thought you were dead.”

  Beneath the blanket, the woman shudders. “Jesus.”

  “But I was wrong,” I add, trying to soothe her obvious shock. “Clearly. You came back on your own. I did nothing.”

  The woman shifts in her seat, revealing a flash of bright bathing suit deep within the blanket. Teal. So tropical. And so inappropriate for autumn in Vermont it makes me wonder how she even ended up here. If she told me aliens had zapped her to Lake Greene from a white-sand beach in the Seychelles, I’d almost believe it.

  “Still, I’m sure I would have died if you hadn’t seen me,” she says. “So thank you for coming to my rescue. I should have said that sooner. Like, immediately.”

  I respond with a modest shrug. “I won’t hold a grudge.”

  The woman laughs, and in the process comes alive in a way that banishes all traces of the person I’d found floating in the water. Color has returned to her face—a peachy blush that highlights her high cheekbones, full lips, pencil-line brows. Her gray-green eyes are wide and expressive, and her nose is slightly crooked, a flaw that comes off as charming amid all that perfection. She’s gorgeous, even huddled under a blanket and dripping lake water.

  She catches me staring and says, “I’m Katherine, by the way.”

  It’s only then that I realize I know this woman. Not personally. We’ve never met, as far as I can remember. But I recognize her just the same.

  Katherine Royce.

  Former supermodel.

  Current philanthropist.

  And, with her husband, owner of the house directly across the lake. It had been vacant the last time I was here, on the market for north of five million dollars. It made headlines when it sold over the winter, not just because of who bought the house but because of where it was located.

  Lake Greene.

  The Vermont hideaway of beloved musical theater icon Lolly Fletcher.

  And the place where troubled actress Casey Fletcher’s husband tragically drowned.

  Not the first time those adjectives have been used to describe my mother and me. They’ve been employed so often they might as well be our first names. Beloved Lolly Fletcher and Troubled Casey Fletcher. A mother-daughter duo for the ages.

  “I’m Casey,” I say.

  “Oh, I know,” Katherine says. “Tom—that’s my husband—and I meant to stop by and say hello when we arrived last night. We’re both big fans.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “Your lights were on,” Katherine says, pointing to the lake house that’s been in my family for generations.

  The house isn’t the biggest on Lake Greene—that honor goes to Katherine’s new home—but it’s the oldest. Built by my great-great-grandfather in 1878 and renovated and expanded every fifty years or so. From the water, the lake house looks lovely. Perched close to shore, tall and solid behind a retaining wall of mountain stone, it’s almost a parody of New England quaintness. Two pristinely white stories of gables, latticework, and gingerbread trim. Half the house runs parallel to the water’s edge, so close that the wraparound porch practically overhangs the lake itself.

  That’s where I was sitting this afternoon when I first spotted Katherine flailing in the water.

  And where I was sitting last night when I was too drunk to notice the arrival of the famous couple that now owns the house directly across the lake.

  The other half of my family’s lake house is set back about ten yards, forming a small courtyard. High above it, on the house’s top floor, a row of tall windows provides a killer view from the master bedroom. Right now, in mid-afternoon, the windows are hidden in the shadow of towering pines. But at night, I suspect the glow from the master bedroom is as bright as a lighthouse.

  “The place was dark all summer,” Katherine says. “When Tom and I noticed the lights last night, we assumed it was you.”

  She tactfully avoids mentioning why she and her husband assumed it was me and not, say, my mother.

  I know they know my story.

  Everyone does.

  The only allusion Katherine makes to my recent troubles is a kind, concerned “How are you, by the way? It’s rough, what you’re going through. Having to handle all that.”

  She leans forward and touches my knee—a surprisingly intimate gesture for someone I’ve just met, even taking into account the fact that I likely did save her life.

  “I’m doing fantastic,” I say, because to admit the truth would open myself to having to talk about all that, to use Katherine’s phrasing.

  I’m not ready for that yet, even though it’s been more than a year. Part of me thinks I’ll never be ready.

  “That’s great,” Katherine says, her smile as bright as a sunbeam. “I feel bad about almost ruining that by, you know, drowning.”

  “If it’s any consolation, it made for one hell of a first impression.”

  She laughs. Thank God. My sense of humor has been described as dry by some, cruel by others. I prefer to think of it as an acquired taste, similar to the olive at the bottom of a martini. You either like it or you don’t.

  Katherine seems to like it. Still smiling, she says, “The thing is, I don’t even know how it happened. I’m an excellent swimmer. I know it doesn’t look that way right now, but it’s true, I swear. I guess the water was colder than I thought, and I cramped up.”

  “It’s the middle of October. The lake is freezing this time of year.”

  “Oh, I love swimming in the cold. Every New Year’s Day, I do the Polar Plunge.”

  I nod. Of course she does.

  “It’s for charity,” Katherine adds.

  I nod again. Of course it is.

  I must make a face, because Katherine says, “I’m sorry. That all sounded like a brag, didn’t it?”

  “A little,” I admit.

  “Ugh. I don’t mean to do it. It just happens. It’s like the opposite of a humblebrag. There should be a word for when you accidentally make yourself sound better than you truly are.”

  “A bumblebrag?” I suggest.

  “Ooh, I like that,” Katherine coos. “That’s what I am, Casey. An irredeemable bumblebragger.”

  My gut instinct is to dislike Katherine Royce. She’s the kind of woman who seems to exist solely to make the rest of us feel inferior. Yet I’m charmed by her. Maybe it’s the strange situation we’re in—the rescued and the rescuer, sitting in a boat on a beautiful autumn afternoon. It’s got a surreal Little Mermaid vibe to it. Like I’m a prince transfixed by a siren I’ve just plucked from the sea.

  There doesn’t seem to be anything fake about Katherine. She’s beautiful, yes, but in a down-to-earth way. More girl-next-door than intimidating bombshell. Betty and Veronica sporting a self-deprecating smile. It served her well during her modeling days. In a world where resting bitch face is the norm, Katherine stood out.

  I first became aware of her seven years ago, when I was doing a Broadway play in a theater on 46th Street. Just down the block, in the heart of Times Square, was a giant billboard of Katherine in a wedding dress. Despite the gown, the flowers, the sun-kissed skin, she was no blushing bride. Instead, she was on the run—kicking off her heels and sprinting through emerald green grass as her jilted fiancé and stunned wedding party watched helplessly in the background.

  I didn’t know if the ad was for perfume or wedding dresses or vodka. I really didn’t care. What I focused on every time I spotted the billboard was the look on the woman’s face. With her eyes crinkling and her smile wide, she seemed elated, relieved, surprised. A woman overjoyed to be dismantling her entire existence in one fell swoop.

  I related to that look.

  I still do.

  Only after the play closed and I continued seeing the woman’s picture everywhere did I match a name with the face.

  Katherine Daniels.

  The magazines called her Katie. The designers who made her their muse called her Kat. She walked runways for Yves Saint Laurent and frolicked on the beach for Calvin Klein and rolled around on silk sheets for Victoria’s Secret.

  Then she got married to Thomas Royce, the founder and CEO of a social media company, and the modeling stopped. I remember seeing their wedding photo in People magazine and being surprised by it. I expected Katherine to look the way she did on that billboard. Freedom personified. Instead, sewn into a Vera Wang gown and clutching her husband’s arm, she sported a smile so clenched I almost didn’t recognize her.

  Now she’s here, in my boat, grinning freely, and I feel a weird sense of relief that the woman from that billboard hadn’t vanished entirely.

  “Can I ask you a very personal, very nosy question?” I say.

  “You just saved my life,” Katherine says. “I’d be a real bitch if I said no right now, don’t you think?”

  “It’s about your modeling days.”

  Katherine stops me with a raised hand. “You want to know why I quit.”

  “Kind of,” I say, adding a guilty shrug. I feel bad about being obvious, not to mention basic. I could have asked her a thousand other things but instead posed the question she clearly gets the most.

  “The long version is that it’s a lot less glamorous than it looks. The hours were endless and the diet was torture. Imagine not being allowed to eat a single piece of bread for an entire year.”

  “I honestly can’t,” I say.

  “That alone was reason enough to quit,” Katherine says. “And sometimes I just tell people that. I look them in the eye and say, ‘I quit because I wanted to eat pizza.’ But the worst part, honestly, was having all the focus be on my looks. All that nonstop primping and objectification. No one cared about what I said. Or thought. Or felt. It got real old, real quick. Don’t get me wrong, the money was great. Like, insanely great. And the clothes were amazing. So beautiful. Works of art, all of them. But it felt wrong. People are suffering. Children are starving. Women are being victimized. And there I was walking the runway in dresses that cost more than what most families make in a year. It was ghoulish.”

  “Sounds a lot like acting.” I pause. “Or being a show pony.”

  Katherine laugh-snorts, and I decide right then and there that I do indeed like her. We’re the same in a lot of ways. Famous for reasons we’re not entirely comfortable with. Ridiculously privileged, but self-aware enough to realize it. Yearning to be seen as more than what people project onto us.

  “Anyway, that’s the long story,” she says. “Told only to people who save me from drowning.”

  “What’s the short version?”

  Katherine looks away, to the other side of the lake, where her house dominates the shoreline. “Tom wanted me to stop.”

  A dark look crosses her face. It’s brief—like the shadow of a cloud on the water. I expect her to say something more about her husband and why he’d make such a demand. Instead, Katherine’s mouth drops open and she begins to cough.

  Hard.

  Much harder than earlier.

  These are deep, rough hacks loud enough to echo off the water. The blanket falls away, and Katherine hugs herself until she rides out the coughing fit. She looks frightened when it’s over. Another cloud shadow passes over her face, and for a second she looks like she has no idea what just happened. But then the cloud vanishes and she flashes a reassuring smile.

  “Well, that was unladylike,” she says.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I think so.” Katherine’s hands tremble as she pulls the blanket back over her goose-pimpled shoulders. “But it’s probably time to go home now.”

  “Of course,” I say. “You must be freezing.”

  I certainly am. Now that the adrenaline of my earlier attempted heroics has worn off, a fierce chill takes hold. My body shivers as I haul the anchor up from the bottom of the lake. The entire rope—all fifty feet of it—is wet from being stretched underwater. By the time I’m finished with the anchor, my arms are so spent it takes me several tugs to start the motor.

  I start to steer the boat toward Katherine’s place. Her house is an anomaly on the lake in that it’s the only one built after the seventies. What had previously been there was a perfectly acceptable bungalow from the thirties surrounded by tall pines.

  Twenty years ago, the bungalow was removed. So were the pines.

  Now in their place is an angular monstrosity that juts from the earth like a chunk of rock. The side facing the lake is almost entirely covered in glass, from the wide, rambling ground floor to the tip of the peaked roof. During the day, it’s impressive, if a little boring. The real estate equivalent of a store window with nothing on display.

  But at night, when all the rooms are lit up, it takes on the appearance of a dollhouse. Each room is visible. Gleaming kitchen. Sparkling dining room. Wide living room that runs the length of the stone patio behind the house that leads to the edge of the lake.

  I’ve been inside only once, when Len and I were invited to dinner by the previous owners. It felt weird to be sitting behind all that glass. Like a specimen in a petri dish.

  Not that there are many people around watching. Lake Greene is small, as lakes go. A mile long and only a quarter mile wide in spots, it sits alone in a thick patch of forest in eastern Vermont. It was formed at the tail end of the Ice Age, when a glacier plowing its way across the land decided to leave a chunk of itself behind. That ice melted, digging a trough in the earth into which its water eventually settled. Which basically makes it a puddle. Very big and very deep and quite lovely to look at, but a puddle all the same.

  It’s also private, which is the main draw. The water is only accessible by one of the residential docks, of which there are few. Only five houses sit on the lake, thanks to large lot sizes and a shortage of additional land suitable for construction. The northern end of the lake is lined with protected forest. The southern end is a steep, rocky bluff. In the middle are the houses, two on one side, three on the other.

  It’s the latter side where Katherine lives. Her house sits tall and imposing between two older, more modest structures. To the left, about a hundred yards down the shore, is the Fitzgerald place. He’s in banking. She dabbles in antiques. They arrive at their charming cottage on Memorial Day weekend and depart on Labor Day, leaving the place empty the rest of the year.

  Sitting to the right of the Royces’ is the ramshackle abode of Eli Williams, a novelist who was big in the eighties and not so big now. His house resembles a Swiss chalet—three stories of rough-hewn wood with tiny balconies on the upper floors and red shutters at the windows. Like my family, Eli and his wife summered at Lake Greene. When she died, Eli sold their house in New Jersey and moved here full-time. As the lake’s only permanent resident, he now keeps an eye on the other houses when everyone else is away.

  There are no lights on in Katherine’s house, making its glass wall reflect the lake like a mirror. I catch a distorted glimpse of the two of us in the boat, our reflections wobbling, as if we’re made of water ourselves.

  When I bring the boat to the property’s dock, Katherine leans forward and takes my cold hands in hers. “Thank you again. You truly did save my life.”

  “It was nothing,” I say. “Besides, I’d be a terrible person if I ignored a supermodel in need.”

  “Former supermodel.”

  She coughs again. A single, harsh bark.

  “Are you going to be okay?” I say. “Do you need to go to a doctor or something?”

  “I’ll be fine. Tom will be back soon. Until then, I think I’ll take a hot shower and a long nap.”

  She steps onto the dock and realizes my blanket is still over her shoulders. “God, I forgot all about this.”

  “Keep it for now,” I say. “You need it more than I do.”

  Katherine nods her thanks and starts to make her way toward the house. Although I don’t think it’s intentional, she walks the dock as if navigating a runway. Her stride is lengthy, smooth, elegant. Katherine might have grown tired of the modeling world, with good reason, but the way she moves is a gift. She has the effortless grace of a ghost.

  Once she reaches the house, she turns back to me and waves with her left hand.

  Only then do I notice something strange.

  Katherine mentioned her husband several times, but—for now at least—she’s not wearing a wedding ring.

  My phone is ringing when I return to the lake house, its angry-bird chirp audible as I climb the porch steps. Because I’m wet, tired, and chilled to the bone, my first instinct is to ignore it. But then I see who’s calling.

  Marnie.

  Wonderful, caustic, patient-beyond-her-years Marnie.

  The only person not yet completely fed up with my bullshit, which is probably because she’s my cousin. And my best friend. And my manager, although today she’s firmly in friend mode.