Page 1 of Four Steps to the Perfect Fake Date

Step One: Identify the Event ... and Find a Date

Chapter 1

Daphne Davis was a good girl who followed rules and ticked boxes. She flossed daily and preened when the dentist noticed her absence of plaque. She kept on top of her finances, her health, and her chores in a way that lifestyle influencers only pretended to do when the cameras were rolling.

Life was better when there was order. Safety. Stability. When items had homes in labeled boxes and every commitment was immortalized in a color-coded calendar.

But even good little rule followers like Daphne sometimes went bad.

As she drove home from the party at her parents’ house with a tub of mint-chip ice cream sandwiched between her thighs, Daphne felt like a rebel. From the outside, her revolt was laughable. But on the inside, the core of her was turning brittle. Everything that made DaphneDaphnefelt like the faded garments on an old scarecrow, only a few bits of fraying thread keeping her together while crows circled overhead.

All she’d stolen was a container of ice cream—and a spoon—from her parents’ kitchen, and then she’d sneaked away from the party through the back door. She hadn’t said goodbye to anyone, but none of the partygoers had seemed to notice or care when she’d made her bid for freedom.

The ice cream chilled her crotch as she tore off the lid and flicked it onto the passenger seat, and Daphne ignored the little voice in her headthat told her she should at least wait until she was home so she could use a bowl. Who needed a bowl when you had desperation?

She drove with one hand on the wheel, the other digging her spoon into the pint with the single-mindedness of a toddler who knew she had only a few minutes to get away with something naughty. Creamy, mint-flavored ice cream hit her tongue, and she let out a moan.

It was ice cream from a local shop that was only open during the warmer months, which meant that this deliciousness had survived the fall and half the winter in her parents’ freezer yet still tasted like heaven. Sorcery. If there was one thing she’d missed when she’d been away from Fernley Island, it was Rhonda Roberts’s ice cream. Her mint-chip deliciousness was one of the few truly good things about the small tree-covered patch of land in the middle of the Salish Sea.

Things that weren’t so good: the incessant gossip, the lack of privacy, the stagnancy, and the fact that somehow, on an island of misfits and weirdos, Miss Goody Two-Shoes Daphne Davis, who did exactly what she was supposed to do all the time, was the odd one out.

Figured.

Unfortunately, doing exactly what she was supposed to do all the time hadn’t led Daphne down the path of success these last two years. She’d failed to foresee a few things, even with a comprehensive, color-coded schedule and a bulletproof routine. Like her ex-fiancé telling her he wasn’t in love with her anymore. Or the sale of the forever home they’d purchased together, which turned out not to be forever at all. Or the layoffs at her steady accounting job.

Jobless, homeless, near broke, and alone. Just the triumphant return home every eldest daughter imagined for herself.

Squeezing the steering wheel with a bloodless grip while she scooped another mouthful of minty ice cream into her gob, Daphne pushed down memories of everything that had gone wrong and focused on keeping her car between the lines and her speed under the limit. These were rules she could follow. Rules that made sense. If she followed the rules, everything would be okay.

After swerving slightly as she tried to angle the spoon to a particularly chip-dense patch of ice cream, Daphne jerked the wheel to right the car, flicking some of her snack on her sweater in the process.

“Crap,” she said, glancing down at the dribble of melting ice cream drawing a line down her front. Gritting her teeth, she ignored the mess and went for another spoonful.

If she’d been able to think clearly, Daphne might have wondered why she was seeking solace in a pint of cream and sugar. Or why it felt so imperative that she eat as much ice cream as possible before she got back to the little one-bedroom apartment she’d rented for a six-month term. She might have wondered why she was planning, without consciously deciding it, to throw the pint out before she went up to her apartment, as if she’d need to hide the evidence. Evidence of what?

If she’d felt like herself, Daphne could have set the stolen spoon aside and focused on the road, using the quiet of the car to sort through her chaotic thoughts. She could have embraced the darkness of the forest on either side of the road, watching the way her headlights carved moving shadows between the trunks.

Was it being back on Fernley Island that was putting her on edge? Did she feel like a failure because she was supposed to be the successful sister, and yet she’d had to come back to this small island in the Pacific Northwest out of desperation after her string of recent misfortunes?

Or, more shamefully, was it the fact that the party at her parents’ house had been a celebration of her sister Ellie’s engagement to Hugh Hartford, and Daphne couldn’t quite swallow the acid taste of her own envy?

A few splatters of rain fell on the windshield, and Daphne let out a sigh. That was as familiar as the rest of the island where she’d grown up, though she hadn’t escaped the gray skies and wet weather during her time in Seattle. She passed a soggy-looking sign made of an old sheet of plywood spray-painted with the wordsPrivate: Keep Outin drippy black letters, and she knew that the intersection where she’d turn left was coming up just over the crest of the next hill.

She wrapped her fingers around her spoon and jabbed it at the ice cream between her legs with the kind of urgency that hinted at an unwell mind.

Soon, she’d be in her small, tidy, impersonal apartment she’d rented in Carlisle, the largest and only town on the island. The ice cream would be dispatched into some public trash can down the block from her building. She would take a shower and wash off the effort it had taken to keep her smile hooked high on her cheeks all evening, get a good night’s rest, and prepare for her first day of work on Monday.

Everything would be fine. All she had to do was eat as much ice cream as possible and not think about the stomachache to come.

That was her plan, at least, until headlights appeared behind her. Whoever it was had their brights on—or maybe those horrible white LEDs that made her eyeballs ache. They were high enough that Daphne knew the vehicle was a gigantic truck. She slowed as she came to the intersection, indicating left, hoping whoever was driving behind her wasn’t heading into town.

But the truck followed her at the turn, and Daphne settled in for a squinty drive home, cursing the driver, who probably had no use for a huge truck to begin with. She’d bet every dollar in her fastidiously managed savings account that the truck bed remained empty at least 95 percent of the time.

She ate more ice cream and stewed in her own resentment. Her inner thighs were wet from the condensation beading on the container, but even the discomfort of wet, cold jeans couldn’t clear her head.

Then more lights appeared above the headlights. These ones were red and blue, and they flashed ominously in the dark. A loudwhoopcut through the night, and Daphne’s entire body clenched. The ice cream container collapsed, and melty mint-chip cream oozed from the top.

Daphne yelped, the car jerked, and her pulse kicked into overdrive. Sucking in a hard breath, Daphne angled the vehicle toward the side ofthe road. Her tires kicked up gravel as they crunched onto the shoulder. She put the car in park and waited.

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