The sun was a hot, heavy weight on Zara’s skin. She lay on the cheap plastic lounge chair in her backyard, the floral-print bikini doing very little to combat the oppressive August heat. It was the summer after her high school graduation, a long, boring stretch of afternoons that she’d dedicated to a single, all-consuming project: Mr. Richard.

He lived in the house next door, a quiet, stoic man in his early thirties whose life was a mystery. All Zara knew was that he worked from home, his office window offering a perfect view of her backyard, and that the sight of him mowing his lawn in a sweat-soaked t-shirt...