Chapter 1

The salt air hit me the moment I stepped off the main path, thick and heavy with the scent of roasted marshmallows, stale beer, and the brine of the churning Atlantic. It was a Friday night in late August, the kind of humid, sticky evening that clings to your skin like a second layer of clothing. The beach bonfire party was in full swing about three hundred yards down the shore, a chaotic sprawl of glowing embers, laughing teenagers, and the low thrum of a portable speaker blasting something generic and upbeat. But I had drifted away from the noise, seeking the quiet edge of the dunes where the sand turned hard-packed and the driftwood piled up like skeletal ribs of some ancient leviathan. I was looking for solitude, for a moment to breathe before I had to face the crowd, before I had to play the role of the composed, successful daughter my father expected me to be. Instead, I found him. Daddy stood alone near the water’s edge, silhouetted against the dying light of the moon. He wasn’t looking at the party. He wasn’t looking at anyone. He was looking at the fire he had built himself, a