The Reunion

Chapter 1: One Week Ago Tuesday, December 26

1 ONE WEEK AGO TUESDAY, DECEMBER 26 Six Days Until the Engagement Party ADDISON
The Acker-Mayweathers are accustomed to breezing through life's annoying little lines-at the farmers' market, the post office, the florist where Mom buys fresh-cut lilies on Sundays "to brighten up the breakfast nook." People know us in Rhyne Ridge. People let us through. But the Cancún International Airport is six hours and one connecting flight away from New York's Hudson Valley, and here, we are three cogs in an epic crush of sweaty, stinking bodies, everyone trying to make their way from the arrival gate to the six men and women in their little plexiglass huts checking passports and releasing exhausted travelers into the bright Caribbean sunshine.

"This blows." My twin brother, Mason Acker-Mayweather. For the third time in the last five minutes, he lets his backpack slump from one shoulder to the floor.

"Mason, don't say 'blows.'?" Our mom, Elizabeth Acker-Mayweather. She twists her shiny brown hair behind her, then pats her wrist fruitlessly for a hair tie. The air-conditioning is blasting, but it's no match for the sheer magnitude of body heat in here.

We landed approximately forty-five minutes ago, an arrival time apparently shared by every other international flight touching down in Cancún on the day after Christmas. After half an hour inching along a corridor stretching from our gate to a single escalator, we descended into the massive sea of travelers already jammed into the Passport Control hall, everyone jostling to join the six long lines snaking their way toward the agents at the front. I do a quick head count of the travelers in my general circumference, then multiply by eighteen, the approximate quantity of similarly sized areas in the hall. Roughly, there are nine hundred people inside, all waiting to see six agents.

An airport official glances at our customs slips and ushers us toward the end of line

Kit Frick is a MacDowell Fellow and International Thriller Writers Award finalist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and received her MFA from Syracuse University. She is the author of the young adult thrillers Before We Were Sorry (originally published as See All the Stars), All Eyes on Us, I Killed Zoe Spanos, Very Bad People, and The Reunion, as well as the poetry collection A Small Rising Up in the Lungs. The Split is her first novel for adults. Kit loves a good mystery but has only ever killed her characters. Honest. Visit Kit online at KitFrick.com and on Instagram @KitFrick.

* "During an elaborate vacation, a family's secrets bring down the mood-and result in a murder-in this dynamic drama....Ample red herrings and eye-popping twists further cultivate this compulsive read. Through nuanced character relationships that heighten the tension, Frick handily explores themes surrounding gender roles, loyalty, sexuality, and toxic masculinity in this cleverly layered mystery." Publishers Weekly, starred review