Kill the Lights

Life hasn't worked out the way Emily Pratt once hoped, but at forty-two, she's finally married and the mother of a baby girl, Birdy. So what if her academic potential was derailed two decades ago by a fatal car accident involving her best friend? So what if her Riverdale prep school classmates would look down on her if they knew she'd become a low-rent private investigator after dropping out of Yale Law? She hasn't spoken to them in decades, and anyway, she's used to disappointment.

Then she gets a message from her old classmate and crush, Dustin Woods, now a wealthy hedge fund manager. Dustin's fifteen-year-old daughter Cassandra was killed one year ago at her prep school, the same one Dustin and Emily attended, and he wants Emily's help tracking down a stalled lead before the case turns cold.

At first, the unusual case is a welcome reprieve from the domestic drudgery of early parenthood, but the more time Emily spends in the privileged world she thought she'd left behind, the more she is reminded of a past she would rather forget.

Then a person Emily has interviewed turns up dead. Between the case, her complicated feelings for Dustin, and her demands at home, Emily struggles to keep her grip on reality. As she follows the investigation across state lines, will she be able to face up to her past to find Cassandra's killer? And when the case has ended and her postpartum fog has cleared, will she still have a family to return home to?