Chapter 1

I APPROACHED Middle River at midnight—pure cowardice on my part. Had I chosen to, I might have left Washington at seven in the morning and reached town in time to cruise down Oak Street in broad daylight. But then I would have been seen. My little BMW convertible, bought used but adored, would have stood out among the pickups and vans, and my D.C. plates would have clinched it. Middle River had expected me back in June for the funeral, but it wasn't expecting me now. For that reason, my face alone would have drawn stares.

But I wasn't in the mood to be stared at, much less to be the night's gossip. As confident as my Washington self was, that confidence had gradually slipped as I had driven north. I drank Evian; I nibbled a grilled salmon wrap from Sutton Place and snacked on milk chocolate Toblerone. I rolled my white jeans into capris, raised the collar of my imported knit shirt, caught my hair up in a careless twist held by bamboo sticks—anything to play up sophistication, to no avail. By the time I reached Middle River, I was feeling like the dorky misfit I had been when I left town fifteen years before.

Focus, I told myself for the umpteenth time since leaving Washington. You're not dorky anymore. You've found your niche. You're a successful woman, a talented writer. Critics say it; the reading public says it. The opinion of Middle River doesn't matter. You're here for one reason, and one reason alone.

Indeed, I was. All I had to do was to remember that Mom wouldn't be at the house when I arrived, and my anger was stoked. I wrapped myself in that anger and in the warm night air when, in an act of defiance just south of town, I lowered the convertible top. When Middle River came into view, I was able to see every sleepy inch.

To the naive eye, especially under a clear moon, the setting was quaint. In Peyton Place, the main street was Elm. In ours, it was Oak. Running through the center of town, it was wide enough to allow for sidewalks, trees, and diagonal parking. Shops on either side were softly lit for the night in a way that gave a brief inner glimpse of the purpose of each: a lineup of lawn mowers in Farnum Hardware, shelves of magazines in News 'n Chews, vitamin displays at The Apothecary. Around the corner was the local pub, the Sheep Pen, dark except for the frothy stein that hung high outside.

On my left as I crossed the intersection of Oak and Pine, a barbershop pole marked the corner where Jimmy Sacco had cut hair for years before passing his scissors to Jimmy the younger. The pole gleamed in my headlights, tossing an aura of light across the benches on either side of the corner. In good weather those benches were filled, every bit as much the site of gossip-mongering as the nail shop over on Willow. At night they were empty.

Or usually so. Something moved on one of them now, small and low to the seat, and I was instantly taken back. Barnaby? Could it be? He had been just a kitten when I left town. Cats often lived longer than fifteen years.

Unable to resist, I pulled over to the curb and shifted into park. Leaving my door open, I went up the single step and, with care now, across the boardwalk to the bench. I used to love Barnaby. More to the point, Barnaby used to love me.

But this wasn't Barnaby. Up close, I could see that. This cat, sitting up now, was a tabby. It was orange, not gray, and more fuzzy than Barnaby had been. A child of Barnaby's? Possibly. The old coot had sired a slew of babies over the years. My mother, who knew of my fondness for Barnaby, had kept me apprised.

Soothed by the faint whiff of hair tonic that clung to the clap-boards behind the bench, I extended a hand to the new guard. The cat sniffed it front and back, then pushed its head against my thumb. Smiling, I scratched its ears until, with a put-put-putter, it began to purr. There is nothing like a cat's purr. I had missed this.

I was straightening when I heard a murmur. Cats have claws, it might have said, but when I looked around, there were no shadows, no human forms.

The cat continued to purr.

I listened for a minute, but the only sound here on the barbershop porch was that purr. Again, I looked around. Still, nothing.

Chalking it up to fatigue, I returned to my car and drove on—and again the town's charm hit me. Across the street was the bank and, set back from the sidewalk, the town hall. The Catholic church was behind me and the Congregational church ahead, white spires gently lit. Each was surrounded by its woodsy flock, a generous congregation of trees casting moon shadows on the land. It was a poet's dream.

But I was no poet. Nor was I naive. I knew the ugly little secrets the darkness concealed, and it went far beyond those men who, like Barnaby, sowed their seed about town. I knew that there was a place on the sign between Farnum and Hardware where and Son had been, until that son was arrested for molesting a nine-year-old neighbor and given a lengthy jail term. I knew that a bitter family feud had erupted when old man Harriman died, resulting in the splitting of Harriman's General Store into a grocery and a bakery, two separate entities, each with its own door, its own space, and its own sign, and a solid brick wall between. I knew that there were scorch marks, scrubbed and faded but visible nonetheless, on the stone front of the newspaper office, where Gunnar Szlewitchenz, the onetime town drunk, had lit a fire in anger at the editor for misspelling his name in a piece. I knew that there was a patched part of the curb in front of the bank, a reminder of Karl Holt's attempt to use his truck as a lethal weapon against his cheating wife, who had worked inside.

These things were legend in Middle River, stories that every native knew but was loathe to share with outsiders. Middle River was insular, its face carefully made up to hide warts.

Holding this thought, I managed to avoid nostalgia until I passed the roses at Road's End Inn. Then it hit in a visceral way. Though I couldn't see the blooms in the dark, the smell was as familiar to me as any childhood memory, as evocative of summer in Middle River as the ripe oak, the pungent hemlock, the moist earth.

Succumbing for an instant, I was a child returning with chocolate pennies from News 'n Chews, shopping alone for the first time, using those rosebushes as a marker pointing me home. I could taste the chocolate, could feel the excitement of being alone, the sense of being grown-up but just a tad afraid, could smell the roses—unbelievably fragrant and sweet—and know I was on the right path.

Copyright © 2005 by Barbara Delinsky