Chapter 36
Josh
By the number of cars parked along the street, it was obvious this wasn’t going to be a normal town meeting.
Inside, voices were raised, hands waved, clusters of people formed and reformed, and there were lot of secretive glances.
There was no bake sale. There were no programs. No one lingering in the entryway, making small talk. Just urgency.
Celine walked the kids down to the basement where high school students had set up activities so that parents could attend the meeting, and when she returned, I followed her into the meeting room.
She scanned the room subtly, stretching her neck and adjusting her coat. Her eyes clocking the exits, her shoulders tightening. Most people wouldn’t have caught the signs, but I noticed everything about her.
“You okay?” I asked quietly.
“Yeah. Can we sit on the end?” she said, gesturing to the chairs closest to the doors.
“Course.” I shuffled to the second seat, letting her take the one on the end.
This morning, we’d all gotten the alert about an emergency town meeting. Immediately, I was on edge. We hadn’t had one of those since the river had flooded when I was a kid, causing massive damage.
Gabe stood at the front, in his usual immaculate dark suit, running his hands though his hair. My cousin never looked ruffled. He was always calm and smiling when he was Mr. Mayor. But tonight he looked one step away from a nervous breakdown.
The air was thick and stale, and the folding chairs scraped loudly against the floor as people shuffled around for space and exchanged tense greetings.
A long table had been set up in the front, with pitchers of water that no one touched.
The harsh fluorescent lights hummed overhead, making the room feel even smaller.
Over the decades, this room had seen bake sales, retirement parties, festival planning, and preschool graduations.
Tonight it felt like a courtroom.
Phones were everywhere, screens glowing in hands and laps.
“Have you seen this one?” someone nearby whispered.
“No, the other one,” came from a few rows up. “Scroll down.”
“They tagged the inn.”
“They tagged the school.”
Though I was pretty isolated out on the farm, Ellie had filled me in on the ride into town. Celine too, who hadn’t heard much at school. These days it seemed the middle schoolers were our most tech savvy citizens, and they had hunted down hundreds of videos about Maplewood.
Murderville, USA.
The moniker was absurd.
“They’re canceling reservations,” a woman standing in the back of the room murmured. “Three weddings.”
“The Airbnbs too.”
“Yelp’s a disaster. One-star reviews from people who’ve never been here.”
“Some claimed Tony’s pizzeria has multiple health code violations.”
“Someone said they were mugged at the festival.”
“All the true crime folks are drumming up theories about the murder.”
“They’re calling us unsafe.”
That word landed hard. Unsafe.
As if the town itself had done something wrong. As if the streets I’d learned to ride a bike on were suddenly hostile or the maple forest my grandfather had walked every morning had become violent.
Celine stiffened beside me, and my protective instincts kicked in. I was angry. And sad. Our town was being unfairly flattened into a headline.
Etienne Pelletier, the owner of the wine shop, stood up in the back, and Gabe passed the microphone to him.
“Can we talk about the damage this is doing?” He asked in his thick French accent. “This year has been hard enough. My business has been hurting for months, but this? I don’t know if I can survive it.”
“None of us can,” someone shouted.
A ripple of agreement moved through the room.
Marv O’Brien took the mic next. He owned the barber shop, coached my little league team, and he and his wife had raised several foster children over the years.
“They’re digging up everything,” he said, holding up his phone.
“Stuff from the eighties. Fires, old police reports, random occurrences. It’s all being framed like some kind of pattern. ”
“Because the internet runs on outrage,” Callie shouted from the front row. “The worst thing we can do is overreact.”
“Yes,” Nora added. “No one cares if it’s accurate or not. Only if it’s clickable.”
The chatter swelled again, voices overlapping, hands raising.
At the front of the room, Gabe stood, clipboard in hand, his tie perfectly knotted but his face red.
“Let’s take this one day at a time,” he said slowly. “I know many of you are upset. I am too. But shouting isn’t going to—”
“It’s already out there. You can’t take it back,” someone hollered.
“How did this get started?” another volleyed.
The earth shifted beneath us, the fear in the room palpable. The citizens of Maplewood had built their lives around this town. Its safety, its economic opportunity, and the strong community.
Celine leaned toward me, resting her head on my shoulder. Heart thudding, I took her hand and gave it a squeeze. I appreciated the contact. The reminder that she was here with me.
Bitsy Bramble stood next, but she waved away the microphone. We all knew she was loud enough to reach the next block.
“By next spring, we’ll be ruined. If we don’t get a handle on this, the state might be tempted to move the official Vermont Maple Festival to another town.”
The room erupted in a collective gasp.
“Birch Hollow wants it,” Tony said.
Chris, a firefighter, grunted. “Their syrup tastes like kerosene.”
“What if Birch Hollow paid her off?”
“They’re evil. They probably did. Probably hired a bot farm to amplify it and spread lies.”
Shit. This was getting out of hand. While Birch Hollow had no love for Maplewood and would certainly celebrate our demise, it was a stretch to think they could be capable of a sophisticated online smear campaign like this.
“Bitsy. Please,” Gabe said, trying to regain control of the room. “We can work through this. It’s just a bit of bad publicity.”
Rowan held up her phone. “WanderBetch has four million followers.”
“People are canceling reservations.”
Caroline from the spa stood up. “The inn has received several cancellations. Including several spring weddings.”
My stomach dropped. Okay, that was bad. The inn was usually booked up a year in advance.
“And this woman said our sheets were scratchy and gave her a rash,” Linda added.
Half the crowd roared with anger.
“We should sue for defamation,” Mavis shouted.
Gabe huffed. “That’s not a sound legal strategy.”
“Should we film some rebuttal videos?” Nina asked. “Tell the world she’s a filthy liar and those lips are fake?”
Gabe pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’re not attacking anyone’s lips.”
“Why not?” she groused. “They’re 90 percent filler.”
“That’s irrelevant.”
“What’s not irrelevant,” Bitsy said, her hands on her hips, “is that this town is not the safe, beautiful place it used to be.” She shuffled, turning to face Gabe. “We’ll never be the same after the murder.”
In the doorway, Nolan stood, one shoulder resting against the frame, his face blank.
“WanderBetch lit the fuse,” Opal piped in, “and now there are conspiracy theories everywhere.”
Movement to one side of the room caught my attention and that of the people around me, every one of us now watching Frankie Dunne trudge to the front of the room.
She held her hand out and with a grimace, Gabe handed her the microphone.
Despite her small stature, her presence took up a lot of space. Always had.
“Everyone,” she said sharply. “We have got to focus.”
The crowd hushed. She didn’t speak loudly, but her tone was full of certainty.
“Yes, we’ve taken a hit financially and our town’s reputation has been dragged through the mud since the murder.
Trust me, I want to punch this bitch as much as the rest of you for what she’s said.
But…” She pulled her shoulders back, her head high.
“There is some truth to some of these claims. This town was rocked by a brutal murder. And it wasn’t properly investigated.
” She stared at the doorway where Nolan stood perfectly still.
“The details don’t add up. We understand that the local authorities were under a lot of pressure”—she looked at Gabe—“to solve Will’s murder and wrap things up neatly. But maybe the internet is right. Maybe it’s a little too neat…”
All around the room, people shifted, but they were all focused intently on her.
“One young man is dead,” she said softly. “And another is about to lose his life to prison. My brother is innocent. And as much as I hate WanderBetch, I’m thankful she’s shining a light on this bullshit investigation.”
She handed the microphone back to Gabe and stalked out of the room, brushing right past a stunned Nolan and out the door.
The exterior door slammed shut, and the room erupted into chaos.
Marty shook his head. “It was too rushed.”
“Why was the FBI here?” Clem asked.
“We should still be looking at that Louisa up at Sugar Moon. She’s dirty.”
Ned, the postman, grunted. “I always thought there was something fishy about that story.”
Dread washed over me. The doubt spreading through the room could be dangerous. Because once doubt took hold, it didn’t stay contained, especially where public safety was concerned.
The kids’ laughter on Halloween still echoed in my ears. We’d all fiercely embraced them. And now this welcoming, friendly community was trembling under the weight of scrutiny and judgment.
Sitting in this room, with Celine’s warm hand in mine, as doubt and anger swirled around us, it hit me.
This wasn’t about a TikTok video.
This was about fear and its ability to take over and change the fabric of this place.
My head spun. This town had been a powder keg for six months, and Frankie Dunne, with the help of some influencer on TikTok, had just lit a match.