The Neighbor's Secret

The novel opens with a prologue from an unnamed narrator who witnesses two people slip separately through a back gate at a party and into nearby woods. After a body is found, the narrator suspects murder. The story returns to the previous September to trace the events leading to that night.

Cottonwood Estates is an affluent subdivision in the Colorado foothills, where a monthly book club serves as social glue and gossip clearinghouse. The novel follows three women connected to the club, each harboring a dangerous secret.

Annie Perley, a part-time school counselor, lives in the neighborhood with her husband Mike, a struggling restaurant owner, and their two children: 13-year-old Laurel and seven-year-old Hank. One morning, Annie spots graffiti on the mailbox of Lena Meeker, a wealthy recluse at the top of the hill, and knocks to warn her. The two bond over a shared love of books. Annie once attended a swim-team dinner at the Meekers' house as a teenager, having been teammates with Lena's daughter Rachel. Lena has lived in isolation since a tragedy 14 years earlier: Her husband Tim killed a young man named Bryce Neary in a hit-and-run after a party at their home, was arrested, and died of a heart attack in his jail cell that same night. Rachel fled east and never returned.

In a parallel storyline, Jen Chun-Pagano and her husband Paul learn their 13-year-old son Abe has been expelled after stabbing a classmate with an X-Acto knife. Jen, a researcher studying ethology (the science of animal behavior), now faces homeschooling him. Haunted by a psychologist's years-old warning that Abe showed a troubling lack of remorse after hurting a class hamster, Jen confronts the question she has been dreading: whether Abe might be a sociopath. A therapist named Dr. Maggie Shapiro diagnoses Abe with conduct disorder, a clinical precursor to sociopathy, and recommends therapy and a new school. Abe enrolls at the Kingdom School, a tiny religious institution run by Nan Smalls, where a young teaching assistant named Colin befriends him by taking interest in his passion for building video games.

Over the fall, Annie coaxes Lena out of isolation. Lena shows Annie and her children Waterfall Rock, a scenic overlook behind her property accessible through a locked gate, and gives Laurel and Hank a key. Annie pressures Lena to attend book club; Lena agrees in exchange for Annie accepting a favor connecting Mike's restaurant with potential clients through Lena's brother. Lena attends her first meeting and discovers a warmth of belonging she has denied herself for years.

Jen hires Colin to drive Abe home from school and stay through dinner so she can focus on her research. Colin becomes embedded in the Pagano household, eating meals with the family and joining them for Thanksgiving. Jen treasures his calming effect on Abe.

At the town's Fall Fest, Laurel gets drunk on stolen vodka, disrupting a performance. Annie grounds her and begins watching obsessively for deeper trouble, fixating on a family history of alcoholism she has never disclosed. Over the months that follow, Laurel grows moody and secretive, taking up late-night running and picking fights. Book club friends stage a gentle intervention, telling Annie she needs to ease off.

An escalating vandal plagues the neighborhood: smashed pumpkins, a torched community Thankfulness Tree, and eventually a rock through the Perleys' window. Paul suggests Abe's history of fires and property destruction mirrors the pattern. Jen refuses to consider it, but the doubt gnaws at her.

Flashbacks reveal Annie's secret. As a young woman, she had an affair with her boss, Tim Meeker. When she became pregnant, Tim paid her off. Enraged, Annie smashed the headlights and brake lights of his car with a golf club. That night, Tim's car struck and killed Bryce Neary on a dark road. Annie believes her destruction of the lights made the car invisible and caused Bryce's death. She and Mike raised Laurel without telling her the truth about her biological father.

In the spring, Abe and Laurel become friends, with Laurel visiting the Pagano house to play video games. Abe is calmer and more sociable than ever. The friendship, however, also brings Colin into regular contact with Laurel.

The novel's tension converges on Laurel's eighth-grade graduation and the lavish party Lena throws in her honor. Months earlier, in a science class blood-type lab, Laurel discovered her type was incompatible with Mike's. Using a family photo and old yearbooks, she mistakenly concluded that Bryce Neary was her biological father and has kept the discovery hidden since October. On graduation day, she refuses a Perley family heirloom necklace and reveals what she knows.

Before the party, Annie confesses to Lena: the affair with Tim, the smashed car lights, and the fact that Laurel is actually Tim's biological daughter. A parallel flashback reveals Lena's deepest secret: It was not Tim who drove the car that killed Bryce but 16-year-old Rachel. When Lena found Rachel in the garage with a cracked windshield and blood on her dress, she told the police Tim had done it. Tim died in his cell hours later. Lena burned Rachel's dress, cleaned the car, and sent Rachel to boarding school. She has carried the cover-up ever since. To Annie, Lena says only that it was all a horrible accident.

At the party, Janine Neff, the book club president, arrives with her daughter Katie, who confesses to being the neighborhood vandal, driven by jealousy of Laurel. The revelation that Abe was never responsible floods Jen with relief. Then Abe's written apology to Laurel for a violent video game he created, one depicting a character resembling Laurel being killed, inadvertently exposes something worse. Abe references Laurel and Colin going off together, locking him out, and spending weekends as a couple. Annie reads the note and realizes that 25-year-old Colin has been grooming and sexually abusing her 14-year-old daughter.

Annie confronts Colin on Waterfall Rock, where he appears to be waiting for Laurel. He first denies everything, then admits the relationship has been going on "long enough." When Annie threatens to expose him, Colin attacks her, locking his arm around her neck and saying it needs to look like an accident. During the struggle on the wet rock, Colin slips and clings to an exposed root. Annie does not help him. She watches him lose his grip and fall.

Annie tells Lena she has killed Colin. Drawing on her experience concealing Rachel's crime, Lena counsels Annie not to call the police, warning that involving authorities will make news of Laurel's abuse public. She helps Annie clean up and sends her home. Two months later, Colin's body is found in the creek. A newspaper report identifies him as David Ratzen, a man with outstanding warrants in Texas for indecency with a child. Police suspect no foul play.

The novel's interludes, narrated by the unnamed witness, are revealed to belong to Harriet Nessel, the book club's observant elder member. When Harriet tries to voice her suspicions to Jen, Jen shuts her down. A flash-forward 10 years shows Jen publishing two books; Abe working as a programmer but never leaving home; and Laurel graduating college two years late. A photo captures the extended family at Laurel's graduation, with Rachel standing next to Lena, the half-sisters' matching dimples visible. The novel ends at book club, with Harriet clicking her pen and announcing it is time to discuss the book.