Meet the Characters

Claire has lived on Wisteria Court for nine years, and in every way that matters, the street belongs to her. She's at the front window of number six with her coffee every morning at six, before anyone else is up. She hosts every welcome party, knows every neighbor's business, and decides where the new arrival will stand when she walks into the room.

Nobody gave her the job. She took it, and she's very good at it.

I have always been good at knowing what I want.

Tom is an architect, the kind of steady, reliable man other people mistake for simple. He has never once left the house without his wedding ring. Claire knows every sound he makes getting ready in the morning, down to the dresser drawer that sticks.

The night Quinn walks into the welcome party, Tom goes completely still. He has his reasons, and he isn't saying.

Quinn moves into number seven after it has sat empty for four months. Her boxes are packed with the kind of care that says she planned this a long way out, and she brings almost no furniture. She's from out of state, works remotely as a consultant, and has the whole street charmed within a week.

She also watches a room the same way Claire does. Claire notices that right away.

Quinn did not come to Wisteria Court by accident.

Claire keeps a few phone numbers Tom knows nothing about. Peter's is one of them. She has called him before, in circumstances she has never described to her husband, and Tom has never asked.

He doesn't need anything explained. He just does the work.

Discreet, thorough, and expensive.

No one on Wisteria Court talks about Sarah. Claire has spent eleven years pushing the thought of her down. Tom has spent the same eleven years unable to let her go. You'll learn who she was the way everyone else does, a piece at a time.