Around the corner and down the road, private detective Jones Cooper mowed the lawn in front of the house he shared with his wife, Maggie. His wife had been nagging him to hire the neighbor’s son Greg to do the yard work. The boy was a boomerang, unable to find a job in banking after college and living in his parents’ basement; he needed the work. But Jones Cooper needed the exercise. Of course, it was only a matter of time before he did what Maggie told him. He was a man who loved his wife and was smart enough to know that she was right about most things, even if he took his time getting around to admitting it.
There were 9,780 living souls populating The Hollows. There were good people and bad ones, people with secrets and dark appetites, happy people, and people buckling under the weight of grief and sorrow. There were people who were looking for things and loved ones they had lost, and people hiding. There were lost people, trying to find their way home. Each of them was connected to the others in ways that were obvious or as hidden as the abandoned mine tunnels beneath the ground. Each had his purpose and his place in The Hollows, whether he knew it or not. Every thing here had its time and its season.
After a few minutes, Finley came out of the bakery with a pink box that she carefully stowed in her backpack, mindful not to crush the contents. Then she climbed on her bike. She zipped out of town, returning home the way she came. Even though she had been born and had grown up -someplace else, The Hollows had kept its tendrils reaching out to her, tugging at her, keeping her connected until very recently, when it was time for her to come home.
Finley had noticed that all the warmth had gone from the air and knew that it meant winter, her least favorite season, was approaching. She didn’t know how fast it was coming or how hard it was going to be. She didn’t know that something would be asked of her, something she didn’t want to do but in which she had little choice. And she certainly had no inkling that she might not see another spring.
Even The Hollows couldn’t tell the future.
ONE
Squeak-clink. Squeak-clink. Squeak-clink.
Oh my God. Finley Montgomery rolled over in bed and pulled the pillow over her head. What the hell is that?
Squeeeaaak. Clink.
It wasn’t loud exactly. In fact, it was faint but unceasing and arrhythmic, like the dripping of a faucet in another room. It was its stuttering relentlessness that made it so annoying.
The unidentifiable noise had leaked into her dream, where Finley had been repeatedly turning a knob on a door that wouldn’t budge. In her dream, her frustration grew as she tried in vain to enter the room, tugging and pulling, twisting the rusty knob. Finally, the sound had woken her, tickling at the edges of her awareness as she came to wakefulness, her irritation lingering.
Sitting up, she looked around the mess of her bedroom—open laptop on her desk, stacks of books, laundry in a basket to be put away, more clothes on the floor, boots in a tumble by the door. She was alone, the door closed. She knew that the sound was inside her, not outside.
Squeak-clink.
“Okay,” she said, drawing in and releasing a breath.
Finley focused on the details of her room, listing off what she saw. The gauzy curtains are billowing in the cool breeze. The wind chimes are tinkling outside. The golden sunlight of an autumn morning is dappling the hardwood floor. She took another deep breath and released it. By staying in the present moment, she could—allegedly—-control “the event.” This is what her grandmother—who had a way of making it sound so easy, as if it were just a choice Finley could make—had told her. But it required an unimaginable amount of discipline, of psychic (for lack of a better word) effort.
Not that she was trying to get rid of the sound precisely, not for good. At this point, she understood that if she was hearing something—or seeing something, or whatever—there was a reason. It was just that she was trying to train herself to take in information in a time and place that was appropriate for it. She was trying to learn how to set boundaries so that “this thing” didn’t destroy her life. I let it take too much, her grandmother confided. You can do better than I did.
“Not now,” Finley said firmly. “Later.”
The sound persisted, oblivious to Finley’s desires.
Downstairs, Finley’s grandmother Eloise was moving about the kitchen, making the music of morning—the opening of cabinets, setting of dishes, the gong of a pan on the stove. Then wafted in the scent of coffee, of bacon on the stove.
Squeak-clink.
It was fading as Finley climbed out of bed and stretched high, then bent over to touch her toes. Usually Finley took care of breakfast, thinking it was the least she could do, considering she was living with her grandmother rent free while she finished school. But on important days, Eloise made a point to get up early and cook—which was really just so nice. Finley marveled at how different were her mother and her grandmother.