Read Chapter 6: The Town Meeting

The general store sat at the junction of two plowed roads, its tin roof bowed under a fresh layer of snow. A bell chimed as Maren pushed through the door, and the warm smell of wood smoke and pickled eggs hit her like a wall.

She grabbed a wire basket and started down the narrow aisles, scanning for the staples she needed—flour, butter, yeast, coffee, something that could pass for vegetables in February. The shelves were stocked with the essentials of rural survival: canned corn, instant oatmeal, a sad rack of bananas turning brown at the tips.

"You're the new one, aren't you?"

Maren looked up from a bag of sad-looking apples. Two women stood at the end of the aisle, dressed in puffy vests and knit caps, studying her with open curiosity. The older one had silver hair cut short and sharp eyes that missed nothing. The younger one, maybe Maren's age, held a box of cake mix like a prop.

"Depends who's asking," Maren said, forcing a smile.

"Edna Pemberton." The older woman stepped forward and offered a hand that was surprisingly calloused. "I ran the post office here for thirty years. You're Nora's granddaughter."

It wasn't a question. Maren shook her hand. "Maren Cole. I'm getting the inn ready for winter."

"Getting it ready?" Edna laughed, a dry sound like rustling paper. "Honey, winter's already here. It's been here since October. You're just catching up."

The younger woman shifted her weight, looking embarrassed. "I'm Lisa. I didn't mean to stare. It's just—we don't get many new faces around here. Especially not at the Cole place."

The Cole place. Not the inn, not the establishment Maren's grandmother had run for forty years. The Cole place, like it was a haunted house and Maren was the ghost.

"You knew my grandmother well?" Maren asked.

Edna's expression flickered—something passing across her face like cloud shadow. "Nora and I go back. She was a stubborn woman. Stubborn and private." She paused. "You've met the writer, I assume."

So it was already common knowledge. Maren tried to keep her voice neutral. "Julian Hale. He's a guest."

"That's one word for it." Edna picked up a jar of pickled beets, examined the label, put it back. "He's been up there since before Christmas. The whole town's been wondering what he's doing."

"He's working," Maren said. "He's a novelist."

"Oh, we know who he is." Lisa's voice dropped to a near whisper. "My sister went to college with someone who knew his editor. She said he used to be a big deal. Then his last book—" She made a face. "It wasn't good. Like, critically bad. He disappeared after that."

Maren thought of the stacks of paper in Julian's room, the typewriter, the way he'd snapped at her for touching his space. She thought of the photograph of the girl with his eyes.

"He's been here before," Maren said slowly, testing the waters. "Did my grandmother—I mean, was that a thing? Him staying here?"

Edna and Lisa exchanged a look that lasted a beat too long.

"No one really knew," Edna finally said. "Nora kept to herself. She had her routines. Church on Sundays, coffee with me on Thursdays. But there was always..." She trailed off.

"Always what?"

"The third floor," Lisa said. "Everyone knew it was off-limits. There was a girl who worked here summers a few years back who swore she heard typing at night. And a guest, maybe five years ago, who complained about the noise. Footsteps, he said. Doors opening and closing. Nora refunded his money and he never came back."

"Ghost stories," Maren said.

"Maybe." Edna's eyes held hers. "Or maybe just a woman who didn't want anyone knowing her business. We never pushed. Around here, you learn not to."

Maren paid for her groceries—flour, butter, canned tomatoes, a bag of coffee that claimed to be from a Vermont roastery but felt as old as the building. Lisa bagged them with more care than the transaction warranted, and Edna walked with Maren to the door.

"If you need anything," Edna said, "and I mean anything, you come find me. The inn's had a rough go of it since Nora passed. People around here want to see it make it."

"Thank you." Maren meant it. "Did you know she lent money to Elijah Hart?"

Edna's face went carefully blank. That flicker again, like a curtain drawn. "Elijah. The lumberyard."

"I found a promissory note. Eleven thousand dollars. I'm trying to figure out if he's going to pay it back."

"I wouldn't hold your breath," Edna said quietly. "Elijah's been circling the drain since the sawmill closed in '09. He's got a heart condition now, I hear. His son's been running things, but there's not much to run."

Maren's stomach tightened. Eleven thousand dollars. If Elijah couldn't pay, that money was gone. Gone like her savings, gone like her career, gone like every other bet she'd made that had come up snake eyes.

"That's not public knowledge," Lisa added quickly. "The heart condition. Please don't say anything."

"I won't." Maren pulled her gloves on. "Thank you for the information. And the groceries."

She drove back to the inn through a sky that had gone from gray to a deeper, meaner gray. The wind was picking up, tossing loose snow across the windshield in white sheets. By the time she pulled into the parking lot, the temperature had dropped enough that she could feel it through the truck's thin floorboards.

She saw Julian before she saw the delivery truck.

He was standing in the delivery bay, his breath fogging in the cold, a shovel in his gloved hands. A man in a brown uniform was gesturing at a stack of boxes in the back of his truck, clearly trying to get Julian to help unload.

Julian was not helping.

"—told you to leave it at the road," Julian was saying, his voice carrying across the lot. "I told you the driveway doesn't handle the weight."

"It's a delivery," the driver said, exasperated. "I deliver to the door. That's the job."

"The job is to not get stuck in three feet of snow and then blame me for it."

The driver's face went red. "Look, mister, I'm just trying to do my route. You want your stuff or not?"

Julian shoved the shovel into a snowbank with more force than necessary. "You know what? Leave it. Put it back on the truck. Take it back to wherever it came from."

"You're kidding."

"Do I look like I'm kidding?"

The driver stared at him. Then he looked at Maren, who was walking toward them with her grocery bags, and seemed to decide she was the lesser of two evils. "Ma'am? Can you do something about this?"

Maren set her bags down. "Julian. What's going on?"

Julian turned to her, and she saw it then—the thing she'd missed from a distance. His face was tight, his eyes bloodshot, his jaw clamped so hard the muscle jumped along his cheek. This wasn't about a delivery. This was about something else.

"He's three hours late," Julian said. "Three hours. I've been standing here waiting. I've lost half the day."

"It's a Tuesday in February," the driver said. "There's a storm coming. I got held up."

"Then you should have planned better."

"Julian." Maren stepped between them. "It's fine. Let him unload. I'll take the boxes up."

Julian's eyes met hers, and for a moment she saw something raw underneath the anger. Something that looked almost like fear. Then it was gone, replaced by that familiar wall of ice.

"Fine." He grabbed his shovel from the snowbank and stalked toward the house, not looking back.

The driver exhaled. "Is he always like that?"

You have no idea, Maren thought. But she smiled and said, "He's a writer. They're sensitive about their process."

She carried her groceries inside and through the kitchen, passing the doorway that led to the third-floor stairs. Up above, she could hear pacing. Heavy, rhythmic, back and forth across the floorboards like a caged animal.

She thought about the photograph pinned above Julian's desk. The girl with his eyes. She thought about what Edna said—that everyone knew he'd been coming for years, that the whole town had watched him disappear into Nora's inn like a secret she'd agreed to keep.

He was hiding something. That much was clear. What she couldn't figure out was whether Julian Hale was hiding from the world, or whether he was hiding from something he'd done to it.

Maren pulled out the key marked 3B from her pocket and turned it over in her hand. The brass was worn smooth on one side, polished by years of use.

Nora had wanted her to find this. Maren was sure of it now. The question was why.