Ghost Orchid

Dana McIntyre heads to Kirkland Lake to help stage a wedding for an old university friend, Sylvie, someone who once understood exactly what it meant to come from the North and try to make sense of life beyond it. Its supposed to be simple: flowers, logistics, a familiar face or two.

Then Sylvie disappears on the morning of the ceremony.

At first, its explained away the way these things often are. Misread intentions, last-minute doubts, people choosing not to be where they were expected. But the explanations dont hold for long. Especially after Marcia, a respected town councillors administrator and one of the quiet forces behind the towns recent renewal, is found dead.

What follows draws Dana into a web of civic ambition, environmental compromise, and carefully maintained appearances in a town trying to sell a future while still living with its past. The closer she gets to the truth, the clearer it becomes that Sylvies disappearance and Marcias death are connected—and that some parts of Kirkland Lake were never meant to be examined too closely.

In a place built on reinvention, the truth is never simple.

And it never stays buried for long.