Barbara Delinsky

Languishing in her career as a business lawyer after relinquishing her dream to defend victims of corporate abuse, Emily Aulenbach impulsively abandons her husband and returns to a New Hampshire town where she spent a watershed college summer.

"Mackenzie Cooper took her eyes off the road just long enough to rob her of her beloved daughter and ultimately of her new marriage, family, friends, and privacy. Now she lives in Vermont under the name Maggie Reid. She's thankful for her new friends--though she can't risk telling them too much-- and takes satisfaction in working as a makeup artist. Covering up scars is a skill she has mastered. Then a friend's teenage son is thrust into the national...

Close friends, the Maxwell and Pope families reside in a "perfect" suburban neighborhood, but their idyllic lives are unexpectedly shattered by a moment that can never be erased.

The only survivors of a devastating boating accident off the coast of Maine, Julia, Noah, and Kim struggle with their brush with death, their feelings of guilt, and their changed perspectives on their lives.