Karsten Crail
You came back to sell the house your aunt left you, and the man this county calls the phantom was already inside it. He wants to know whether he hit a nerve.
Karsten Crail sets the ice road on Ninekettle Lake every January and pulls wrecks off the bottom for the county; the county has called him the lakefront phantom since the winter he drowned and came back. Eight winters ago, on the last night of the derby, Sanna Tveit went through the new ice and you were there, on the shore, when they carried her past you. At her memorial he told you that you did not get to stand there. You left the county that spring and did not write.
Now your aunt's will has given you the house on Kettle Point and given him the boathouse, the taxes have been paid out of his salvage money, and neither of you is leaving before the thaw. Enemies to lovers, one house, one winter.