Ruth Calloway is fifty-one and her husband has been leaving for years. She knows this the way you know things you can't say aloud - gradually, then all at once. She has her lake, her garden, the particular quiet of a woman who has made her peace with what she has. Then a girl arrives for the summer. Margot is nineteen and managing something she has no name for. Ruth doesn't ask what it is. She's spent enough years watching people carry things sideways to know when someone needs company rather than questions. This is the summer before everything. Ruth doesn't know that. Margot doesn't know that. The lake knows what it holds. A quietly devastating literary thriller about what women keep and what they give away, The Summer Before is the prequel to the Still Water Series - the book that begins the beginning.