Hemlock

The novel opens with a prologue in which Maggie Ellis drives frantically through Myers, Illinois, toward a house engulfed in flames. She repeatedly calls someone who will not answer. She arrives to find the top floor blazing with no emergency responders on scene, rushes inside, and fears she is too late. The story then jumps back to explain how she arrived at this moment.

Maggie, 35, recently single after a five-year relationship, unemployed, and grieving her mother's death, returns to her hometown of Myers and uses her inheritance to buy a rundown house at 40 Hemlock Drive that she admired as a child. When the front door key sticks, her next-door neighbor Tucker Ford appears and helps her open it. They have not seen each other in 13 years. Shortly after, Clayton Beckett, Maggie's lifelong best friend and a country music singer-songwriter, arrives. The tension among the three is palpable.

The narrative alternates between past and present timelines. Fourteen years earlier, Maggie went to a bar to confess her romantic feelings to Clayton, but before she could finish, he received a record deal in Nashville and left without asking her to come. Heartbroken, she met Tucker, a blunt bartender. A year later, Clayton returned with a fiancée named Raven, a songwriter. Devastated, Maggie accepted Tucker's offer to dance with her and make Clayton jealous. What began as a fake-dating arrangement gradually became real. They shared a first public kiss to maintain the ruse, and Tucker took Maggie to a secluded barn where they watched the sunset from a hayloft. Maggie began to realize her feelings for Tucker were no longer pretend.

In the present, strange events plague the house on Hemlock Drive. Maggie hears scratching noises at night, feels inexplicable cold, and detects a smell of decay. The thermostat resets itself, lights flicker, and she feels constantly watched. Tucker inspects the house and offers to do repairs for free on one condition: Clayton cannot be present while Tucker works. Their argument reveals deep, unresolved bitterness. Clayton kisses Maggie one evening, telling her it is something he should have done years ago, but she asks him to leave so she can think.

Tucker and Maggie investigate the house's history and uncover a devastating truth. In 1991, Chris Collins killed his wife Jolene and their two young children, Jason and Shelby, in an apparent murder-suicide at 40 Hemlock Drive. The house has sold seven times in 30 years, almost always at a loss. Maggie has a panic attack, and Tucker comforts her. She confronts Clayton about why he never warned her; he claims he only heard childhood rumors, though Tucker suspects Clayton let her buy the house knowingly because he wanted her back in town.

In the past, the love triangle reached a crisis during a weekend at Clayton's family lake house. Tucker confessed his desire for Maggie during a private drinking game. Clayton pulled Maggie aside and said he was considering leaving Raven, but Maggie refused to put herself on the line again. Later, Clayton appeared at a baseball game drunk, with scratches on his neck and a split lip, claiming Raven had attacked him.

In a pivotal scene, Maggie went to Tucker's apartment to tell him she loved him and was choosing him. They slept together for the first time. The next morning, Clayton texted about an emergency and revealed that Raven was pregnant. Maggie told him she could not compete with a baby. She avoided both men for weeks and spotted Tucker and Raven together in a car one night, assuming the worst. When she returned to Tucker's apartment, she found him in bed with Eve Eden, a professor who had been sexually harassing students in Tucker's ethics study group. Maggie fled and told Tucker never to contact her again. She later learned Eden had died the same day. Shaken, Maggie left Myers and did not return for 13 years.

Back in the present, Tucker and Maggie find faded bloodstains in the attic where the parents died. Maggie has a severe panic attack and loses consciousness. Tucker carries her to his house, where she discovers one of her paintings, the barn from their evening together, hanging on his bedroom wall. She also finds a photograph of Tucker as a toddler with his grandfather and another boy on the porch of her house; Tucker believes the boy may be Jason Collins. Tucker installs a security system in the house. Through a small door in the attic wall, they retrieve a bundle of children's clothes and cash, likely packed by Jolene as part of an escape plan she never completed.

In late-night conversations, Tucker and Maggie confront the past. Tucker reveals he received a text from Maggie's phone saying she was choosing Clayton, but Maggie insists she never sent it. Tucker explains he slept with Eden because he believed Maggie had ended things. He tells her he never stopped loving her. They sleep together again, and Maggie hears a scream, but security footage shows only her own cry.

At her mother's storage unit, Maggie discovers an adoption certificate revealing she was born Angela Collins at 40 Hemlock Drive. Her biological parents were Chris and Jolene Collins, and she was adopted in 1991, the year of the murders. Tucker remembers her as "Angie," Jason's baby sister, and recalls hiding her under his bed when her father tried to forcibly cut her hair. A letter from Jolene's mother, Loretta Ray, thanks the adoptive parents and reveals that Jolene had been planning to escape with help from Tucker's grandparents next door. Maggie realizes the screams she has been hearing are not ghosts but her own repressed memories of the night her biological family died.

The full truth about Clayton emerges. Maggie notices an app on his phone that controls her smart thermostat. Clayton confesses he has been remotely manipulating the house's systems and sneaking in with a spare key from his brother Garrett to simulate a haunting, all to scare Maggie into moving in with him. He admits he faked the injuries he blamed on Raven, sent the fake breakup text to Tucker from Maggie's phone years earlier, and blocked Tucker's number. He also reveals he blackmailed Eden into seducing Tucker and killed her when she did not comply.

Clayton starts a fire in the attic and sends a fake text from Maggie's phone to lure Tucker inside. Maggie, at Clayton's house for dinner with his teenage daughter Abby, sees the fire on her security cameras and races to Hemlock Drive. She finds Tucker unconscious, drags him to a window, and pushes him out before jumping herself. Both survive and are hospitalized. Raven visits and warns Maggie that Clayton is a master manipulator. Police determine the fire was arson. Maggie confronts Clayton, who confesses to everything, insisting it was done out of love. When she says she never wants to see him again, he punches through a glass door and declares Tucker and Eden deserved to die. Maggie goes to the police.

One year later, Maggie and Tucker have moved to Wilmington, starting fresh. Tucker proposes by asking Maggie to dance, echoing the night they first connected, and she says yes. On the mantel sits the old photograph: Tucker as a toddler, his grandfather, and a grinning little girl. On the back, in what they believe is Jolene's handwriting, are the words: "Cliff, Tucker, and Angie, 1990."