When Everly Rose returns to Windward Cove for her grandfather Cormac Ashford’s memorial, she expects grief and family fights — not a corpse that seems to have been boiled alive with a placid smile and an ink painting lying over him: an old landscape titled "Forget-Me Pond." Told to sell the painting, Everly pockets it instead. What begins as a private escape from anxiety — a literal plunge into the painting’s cool, soothing pond that erases fear and sharpens her focus — becomes an obsession with its other gifts: glimpses of past and future, and a dangerous "algae" that can pay fortunes or kill. The pond gives comfort, insights, and temptations. Her father uses it to chase a future windfall; her mother sees chances for a new life; their appetites grow. As Windward Cove’s secret eats itself, bargaining with fate turns into a hunt that cooks bodies and conscience alike. Everly must unravel how the pond eats people, who used poison in the kitchen, and whether a family can survive the lure of an easy escape. The deeper she dives, the less sure she is who she protects — herself, or the memory of a man she loved into his last, steamy breath. Forget-Me Pond is a slow-burning coastal horror about inheritance, addiction, and the price of wishing away your troubles.