Seventeen-year-old Clara Oates’s boyfriend Adam attempts suicide when she tries to leave him, prompting her father, crime writer Bobby Oates, to sweep Clara off to a summer beach house on Deception Pass. He insists that Clara needs time away from the clinging, needy Adam, and space to shake off the sense of responsibility, guilt, and fear she feels about him. But guilt and responsibility prove hard to escape even in Deception Pass, as Clara falls into new love, Bobby’s own shameful secret emerges, and Adam is never as far away as anyone hopes. A story about obsessive “love,” Stay is a poignant examination of what we owe others, and, more importantly, the things we should never owe anyone.
