Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism and racist violence.

Kayla Miller Carter is the first of two first-person protagonists to be introduced, chronologically in 2010. She is a 28-year-old home designer whose husband, Jackson—also a designer—died in a tragic fall from the stairs of the new home they built on a heavily wooded lot in Round Hill, North Carolina. The two have a three-year-old daughter, Rainie. The grief Kayla feels over the death of Jackson causes her to doubt the wisdom of moving into their newly finished home. She toys with the idea of putting it on the market, though she knows that she and Rainie must move into the house, at least initially. Through this initial conflict, Chamberlain explores Grieving a Romantic Partner and establishes a sense of loss in what will unfold as a murder mystery.

In addition to grief over her husband’s death and the stress of moving without him, Kayla is beset by several other sources of anxiety: a strange, menacing woman—"Ann Smith”—approaches her, insinuating threats and revealing intimate knowledge about her family; vandals leave harassing notes after dumping trash across her yard; someone hangs dozens of dead squirrels in the trees in front of her house; then “Ann Smith” leads Rainie into a precariously high treehouse and leaves her there.