Author’s Note
People like to believe the truth is a fixed thing. One version of events. One clean answer waiting beneath enough evidence. But memory is rarely honest, and grief almost never is.
I started writing this book because I became fascinated by the way a single moment can fracture into completely different stories depending on who survives it. Every person carries their own version of the past—edited by guilt, fear, love, resentment, or the simple need to keep living with themselves. Sometimes the truth disappears not because it is hidden, but because too many people are protecting their own piece of it.
Bellweather Lake was born from that idea.
Each perspective in this novel was written as its own small world: a voice trying to explain itself, justify itself, or confess something it can no longer carry alone. Some narrators lie openly. Others lie without realizing it. A few tell the truth too late for it to matter.
At its heart, this story is less about what happened to Nora Vale than about the people left standing in the aftermath of uncertainty. The spaces between their stories became just as important to me as the stories themselves.
If there is one thing I hope readers take from this book, it is this: people do not remember events—they remember the versions of themselves that existed inside those events. And sometimes those versions are the hardest things to face.
Thank you for reading.
