A dark, deadly secret between two friends tears them apart, only to reunite them decades later as they are forced to confront what happened that night . . . or lose all they hold dear.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from What They Did by Rio Youers, which releases on August 18th 2026.
She keeps me safe. She keeps me wild.
Carly Rivers and Dana Lee were best friends when they were younger. Like fire and water, they always balanced each other out: Dana kept them wild. Carly kept them safe.
But then, a split-second decision resulted in an irreversible tragedy. To this day, neither has spoken of what happened; they share a terrible secret that sent them on separate paths, each hoping to leave the darkness behind them. Carly becomes a police officer in Florida with a beautiful house and a beautiful husband and son. For Dana, things go the other way. After a string of failed relationships and broken hearts, she finds herself in Black Ash, Michigan, working for the notorious meth dealer Warner Prince.
When Carly’s husband, also a cop, is killed in the line of duty, her son, Anthony, spins out of control. In search of his own fresh start, Anthony heads to Toledo, a stone’s throw from Dana’s home in Black Ash. As Anthony’s friendship with Dana puts him in the crosshairs of some sinister people, Dana’s and Carly’s lives come together again. Twenty-four years have passed, but the secret between them hasn’t died, and the friends soon find themselves in a situation where history is doomed to repeat itself.
Brimming with action and suspense, and tempered with a strong emotional core, Rio Youers’s gripping new novel is an intense, edge-of-your-seat story about fierce friendship, the bonds of family, and the extremes we’ll go to, to keep our loved ones safe.
EXCERPT
The light turned green. Dana pulled away, accelerating to the next intersection, where she stopped for another red. There was an arrest in progress on the northeast corner. A guy in a dirty white vest and baggy jeans lay belly- down on the sidewalk, his wrists cuffed. One Avon Hill police officer had a bootheel pressed to the side of his head, keeping him from squirming. The other cop spoke into his radio. Across the street, a homeless woman twirled through the sprinkler spray on the lawn outside Hazel Brothers Realty.
The traffic got moving again. Dana turned the radio back up. The commercials had ended, and “Survivor” by Destiny’s Child rocked the airwaves. Dana and Carly bumped fists— this was their favorite song, definitely da bomb— and sang along.
They were on their way to get near- matching tattoos.
Dana’s idea.
They were twenty years old, an intermediate age— too old to still be living at home (both women vehemently agreed on this) but too young to drink in bars. They’d talked about renting an apartment together; they could get something nice if they pooled their resources. They’d talked about taking a year and traveling across Europe. And then there was college. Montclair State and Seton Hall were on Carly’s radar. She’d harbored aspirations of being a journalist since she was ten years old, and both had excellent English programs. Her parents applied significant pressure. They offered to pay Carly’s tuition, even though they couldn’t afford it (her father worked at the GM plant in Linden, her mother cleaned rich peoples’ houses). Carly was content to accept some help but would not have them struggle. “This is why God invented student loans,” she told them.
Dana’s college plans were more nebulous. She’d researched schools close to home, but her career goals were in flux. Over the last four years, she’d wanted to be a teacher, a children’s author, a TV host, a realtor, a veterinarian, and a web designer. More recently, Dana had toyed with the idea of being a firefighter— no bachelor’s degree necessary, only a high school diploma (which she had) and a fire academy graduation (which she’d ace). She currently waited tables at the Big Soup on Main Street. Her hourly wage wasn’t great but the tips were excellent. Gotta love those wealthy New Yorkers.
This wayward approach to her future was far from ideal. Even Dana’s father had mentioned this, in one of his rare moments of being a father. “You need to zero in on something and give it all you’ve got,” he’d said to her, sitting at the kitchen table with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. Frankie Lee was that Irish American, New Jersey cliché, and Dana didn’t know whether to love or hate him for it. “You’ve got the smarts, kiddo. You’ve got the grit. The only thing you’re lacking is focus.” Dana had inhaled his secondhand smoke and promised to try, and for the thousandth time that week wondered how much easier life would be if her mother was still alive. She’d been killed in a car accident when Dana was seven, leaving Frankie holding the ball. Three young children plus one emotionally absent parent was not a promising equation. Frankie worked at the waste management facility and picked up extra hours washing dishes at Barnaby’s Steakhouse. His free time was spent at the Grapevine or drinking beer at the kitchen table, usually while watching wrestling on TV. Dana sometimes heard him crying in the bathroom.
In situations like these, the parents of a best friend occasionally adopt a semisurrogate role, inviting the less- advantaged child over for dinner, taking them on day trips to the beach or the zoo, even offering career advice. This was not the case for Dana. Carly’s mom and dad were not without sympathy, but they weren’t members of the Dana Lee fan club, either. They clung to the hope that she and their daughter would eventually drift apart. This didn’t happen. Dana and Carly had several spectacular arguments over the years, but they always reconciled. They shared a deep, almost sisterly love, like Thelma and Louise, or Rachel and Monica. Mr. Villanueva, their old homeroom teacher, called them Avon Hill’s answer to Lucy and Ethel— whatever that meant.
They had known each other since kindergarten age. They’d attended different elementary and middle schools, but it was a small enough community that there was some crossover in their friend groups, and they’d see each other at birthday parties, baseball games, and soccer practices. It wasn’t until high school that they became friends— specifically, the Incident at Orangewood Lake.
