Room 9 was locked for a reason.

Sienna Lavoie spent years trying to lock away everything attached to it: the whispers, the stigma, and the family name no one ever forgot.

She thought the worst of it was buried in the mud.

Then the river began to thaw.

When a woman's shoe is found behind a culvert off Stillwater Pond Road, old secrets begin surfacing through the thawed North Country ground. The evidence points back to the North Star Motel, to the room Sienna has tried not to think about, and to the brother who may know more than he ever admitted.

Pulled into a dangerous search with fire-and-rescue captain Jonah Rusk, Sienna is fighting on two fronts: the truth rising from the mud and the reckless heat building with a man who asks too many questions, sees too much, and somehow keeps showing up when the ground gives way.

As the investigation leads them through motel rooms, washed-out roads, hidden records, and men who thought the North Country would stay quiet, Sienna is forced to confront what her family knew, what Room 9 kept, and why the Androscoggin has started giving its secrets back.

The ice is gone. The secrets are not.

And this time, Sienna is wide awake.

When the River Thaws is Book Two in the Androscoggin After Dark romantic suspense novella series, following When the River Freezes.