"e;One of you is my mother. I know which one. I want to see if she'll lie about it."e;Every house is a story the family tells itself. For the Vale sisters—Margaret, Elise, Nora, and Paige—the story has always been that there are only four of them. But their quiet, annual family reunion in Blackwater County is permanently shattered when a sixteen-year-old girl named Sadie appears on their porch in the dead of night. Armed with a DNA test, a beaded bracelet, and a collection of letters, Sadie is looking for the mother who abandoned her.Nora Vale is a county property assessor. She makes her living measuring structures, looking for the discrepancy between what a property claims to be and what it actually hides. But she has spent her entire life choosing not to measure her own childhood home. As Sadie's undeniable presence forces the sisters to confront a past they've sworn to forget, Nora realizes the upstairs hallway of their house is six feet too short.Behind a wall built sixteen years ago lies a fifth bedroom. And inside that room lies the terrifying truth about a fifth sister named Ruthie, a locked lake cabin, and a prominent father who chose to protect his pristine public reputation over his teenage daughter's life.
