Stony Bay appeared when Lance wasn’t expecting it. There had been no sign welcoming him to the small town just before the bend that hid it from view. It simply emerged from the land; the single road he had been following opened up into a thoroughfare lined with small shops and businesses. As Lance slowed the vehicle to abide by the speed limit, his head turned on a swivel, taking in each shop’s front and what it offered.
There were two cafés nearly side by side, a store that proclaimed souvenirs of all kinds, an ice-cream parlor decked out in colorful blues and reds, and an ornate-looking business with the simple word Books over the wooden front door. Lance could see several bars and a contemporary restaurant made almost entirely of stone scattered closer to the slight rise on the lake side. A relatively new gas station sat forlornly at the far end of the long street, seemingly an outcast among the older stores. Lance took it all in—the wide sidewalks, the flags flying from every lamppost, the people strolling along the fronts of the businesses and every so often entering them for a look at their wares. It was a northern tourist town at its best, so quaint that it was memorable enough to return to year after year, not large enough to tempt visitors to put down roots permanently.
Lance pulled into a parking spot directly in front of the twin cafés and glanced at the clock again before turning the Land Rover off. He had another hour to kill before he had to be at the house, and his hunger had become a living thing in the past ten minutes. The remainder of the drive to the town had been uneventful. No more visions or breakthroughs had come to him, but a part of his mind began to glow with a small flame. Despite how unsettling the drive had been, the story was starting to take on a shape and the fire burning in his brain was one of hope.
The inside of the café on the left was narrow but long, lined with worn wooden booths and tables that rocked back and forth no matter how you turned them. Lance ordered a club sandwich and a bowl of chicken-and-wild-rice soup from the middle-aged waitress, who smiled at him with no recognition in her eyes. Being a best-selling author was a good thing, but being unable to enjoy a quiet lunch without being accosted by at least one person for an autograph was something else altogether.
After appeasing his aching stomach with the sandwich and soup—which were surprisingly good—Lance stepped out of the café onto the sidewalk. Like the waves that beat on the shore of the great lake to his right, the sun’s rays pummeled his shoulders and back as he strolled down the sidewalk, and he began to regret wearing a black shirt in the heat. After checking his watch, he realized he still had time to kill before the showing. Lance ran his fingers through his hair and squinted at several of the signs on the buildings, silently cursing himself for not grabbing his sunglasses from the car. His eyes finally landed on the bookstore he had noticed, and without thinking, he made his way up the building’s short walk and opened the heavy oak door.
A bell dinged once somewhere out of sight in the rear of the store as he shut the door behind him. Dark wood floors held row after row of chest-high shelves, which in turn housed the spines of thousands of books. Lance’s eyebrows rose in surprise. He hadn’t expected such a selection from the outward appearance of the small building. Glancing around, he found that he was the only customer within the quiet shop. As he made his way down the first aisle of books, he mused that there wasn’t another silence like that of an empty bookstore. It was as if hundreds of thousands of people were biting their tongues, waiting for the moment to release their voices with the opening of a cover.
A particular book caught Lance’s eye as he strolled down the row, its dark cover emblazoned with sharp zigzags of lightning. Lance pulled Legends of the North Shore from the shelf and examined the inside flap. His attention was so drawn to the overview of the book that he didn’t hear the soft footsteps approaching from behind.