The Stranger I Know

At ten years old, Rose watches her world collapse. Her father leaves without a backward glance, and her mother, Sarah, is consumed by a question she can never answer: who is the other woman? The truth is one no one suspects. The man who held her father's body at the crash site, Aidan, was never a rival for his marriage but the love of his life, a secret kept for over a decade.

When Aidan declares he will raise Rose, the relatives erupt in disgust, demanding to know what he could possibly be to her. Rose already knows him from the factory breakroom, from the treats and comic books, from the quiet happiness he brought her father. She also knows what her mother never did, and what her grandfather's fury cost them all.

Now the divorce is frozen by another death, and Rose is left between two impossible truths: a father who chose to lose everything, and a mother who threatened to destroy them all.