Daughter of Mine

The story opens on May 15 after 62 days without rain in the small North Carolina town of Mirror Lake. A 28-year-old woman named Hazel Holt returns from the big city of Charlotte to attend her father’s funeral. Detective Perry Holt, then in his sixties, died unexpectedly of a heart attack. His daughter and two sons, Gage and Caden, join the rest of the town in mourning his passing. Perry was a pillar of the community, and both his sons followed him into law enforcement.

Perry’s ceremony is upstaged by another major event. With lake levels dropping, a submerged car has been discovered at the bottom of Mirror Lake. The entire police force is called away from the memorial to raise the vehicle and investigate how it got there. Hazel remains a spectator to both events. Her reunion with her brothers is tense. While she always looked up to older brother, Gage, her relationship with younger sibling, Caden, has been combative.

Hazel is equally wary of Caden’s wife, Jamie, who was her best friend in high school until they became estranged. Caden and Jamie have a six-year-old daughter named Skyler of whom Hazel is very fond. Just as Hazel is about to return to the city, Jamie mentions that Gage and Caden are going to sort through their father’s belongings at the house on Sunday. Hazel is upset that no one told her and assumes her brothers were trying to cut her out of the process. She informs Jamie that she will return on Sunday, too.

Just as Hazel backs out of the parking lot to leave, she encounters her high school flame, Nico Pritchard. He broke up with her, and Hazel is uncomfortable seeing him again. She wants to put some distance between her small-town past and her big-city present life. She recounts, “I started the car and didn’t look back. I had learned long ago that this was the only way to truly leave” (15). While on her way home, Hazel receives a call from her father’s brother. Uncle Roy is the family attorney, and he has a copy of Perry’s will. He says that there’s a provision in the will that he wants to discuss with Hazel.

The following night, Hazel finds herself back on the road to Mirror Lake. She is staggered to learn that her father left his house entirely to her, with no share to be given to her brothers. Hazel decides that she wants to spend Saturday night alone in the house before her brothers arrive on Sunday to sort through Perry’s possessions.

When she arrives, she realizes that she has no key. Taking a chance, she uses the garage keycode pad to let herself in. The back door is unlocked. Hazel assesses the home’s interior with a practiced eye because she is part-owner of a home renovation company, and acutely aware of the secrets that houses hold. She flashes back to the week after Nico’s father died when she was still a teenager. Nicholas Pritchard was also a detective, and Hazel discovered a secret room in his house that was filled with crime scene photographs. Nico dubbed it a murder room and insisted that no one should know about its existence.

As Hazel continues her inspection of her own father’s house, she feels a growing sense of unease. She notices that her brothers have already begun rifling through its contents but then abandoned the task. Presumably, they learned that she had inherited the house. Hazel finds a gun in a case on the table. It isn’t her father’s police weapon, and she didn’t know that he owned another one. Hazel goes to her old bedroom on the house’s lower level. As she settles down for the night, she is haunted by memories from her past.

At nine o’clock the following morning, Hazel awakens to realize that someone is in the house. It is her niece, Skyler, who let herself in through an unlocked garage window. Caden and Jamie appear soon afterward. Hazel is wary of Caden. She says, “Things with Caden could go one of two ways: either he was in a good mood and generally ignored my existence; or he was in a combative mood and took every dig he could manage” (37). On this day, he seems to be in a foul mood because the house has been left to Hazel. She is secretly convinced that Caden is a sociopath because of his complete self-absorption. She tried to warn her friend Jamie against Caden, but Jamie ended up marrying him and has resented Hazel’s interference ever since.

Later that morning, Hazel takes a break from the sorting operation and escorts Skyler down to the lake for a swim. She promises Jamie that she will look after her niece. As she stands by the lake, Hazel sees her Uncle Roy approaching. He warns her that Caden intends to contest the will but says that the suit is unlikely to succeed in court. He points out that Gage and Caden already have access to their father’s bank accounts, so leaving the house to Hazel was only fair.

After Roy goes inside, Hazel remains lost in thought. She assumes the reason for Caden’s animosity is that she isn’t a blood relative of Perry’s. She and her mother arrived later. “My mother had grifted her way into the Holts’ lives when Caden and I were both almost eight, and Gage was ten. A little more than six years later, she’d grifted her way out, but left me behind” (48-49). Hazel’s mother was a con woman who took advantage of the widowed Perry. After cleaning out his bank accounts, she left town, never to be seen again. She left behind a cryptic note for Hazel addressed “Daughter of Mine” (48). It read, “I hope one day you can forgive me” (49).

Hazel snaps out of her reverie to realize that she can’t see Skyler in the water. Fearing that the girl has drowned, she dives in to rescue her. Skyler is floating on the underside of the diving platform, looking at something beneath the water through her swim goggles. As Hazel brings her niece to the shore, all the adults have run out of the house, ready to form a search party. Even Nico, who lives nearby, has arrived to lend a hand. Caden bitterly accuses Hazel of failing to look after his daughter. Skyler tells the adults that she saw a shipwreck at the bottom of the lake. Gage, Nico, and Hazel dive back into the water to investigate. To everyone’s surprise, Hazel sees a car resting on the bottom of Mirror Lake.

By noon, a contingent from the police department has arrived to investigate the vehicle. Hazel fears there might be a dead body inside. Serena Flores is the young officer in charge of the case. She went to school with Hazel and followed in her own father’s footsteps by joining the force. Although Nico is a high school teacher, he also helps the police as a diver when needed and offers to get his gear to inspect the vehicle more closely. A tow truck won’t be able to come until Monday to pull the car out. After Nico makes his dive, he reports that no one is inside the vehicle. The license plates have been removed. This was also true of the car that was discovered on the day of Perry’s memorial. Hazel decides to stay another day to oversee the removal of the car from the lake. A body might be in the trunk.

After everyone leaves on Sunday evening, Nico, Gage, and Hazel go to eat at the local cop diner, Reflection Point. Gage speculates that Hazel’s mother might have dumped both cars before she left town. Hazel is furious at the suggestion but realizes that her brother is really more upset that his father left the family home to the daughter of a con artist. When the trio returns to the Holt house, they notice that the garage window is open, but Hazel says that it was closed the night before. Gage insists on searching the house anyway while Hazel secures the window. He then leaves. Nico walks to his own house, which is the property adjoining the Holt home. Hazel remembers her clandestine teen romance with Nico. She had even showed him her mother’s goodbye letter. The two are bonded to each other by mutually held secrets.

The next afternoon, a tow truck arrives to pull the car out of the lake. While she waits for the car to surface, Hazel gets a call from Skyler’s school. They have been unable to reach either of her parents, and someone needs to come for her. Hazel tries calling both Caden and Jamie, but neither one picks up the phone, so she goes to collect Skyler and bring her home. Hazel is surprised to see the front door slightly open, but no one is inside.

Hazel searches all the rooms just to be sure. Caden arrives soon afterward and is annoyed about Hazel being in his house. When pressed, he admits that Jamie’s unexplained absence isn’t unusual. They had a fight, and she left to make a point. Caden says that she will be back and tells Hazel to leave.

Back at the Holt property, the tow truck finally succeeds in pulling the car out of the lake. When the trunk is opened, it reveals two suitcases. Hazel demands to know the color of the baggage. Once the cases are cleaned off, they appear blue. Hazel is staggered to realize that they belonged to her missing mother, as did the car.