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Chapter One
Laurie Ellis had learned to be an optimist. It was a matter of sheer will rather than some kind of quirk of her personality; there had, unfortunately, been many times in her life when optimism had seemed, well, optimistic , if not downright foolish. Stupid, even.
This was one of those times.
Above, the sky was a bright, deep blue of early September, the air summer-warm yet with that hint of crispness that fall always brought. The leaves of the glorious maples and majestic white oaks lining Highway 44 were touched with crimson and the sunlight was like syrup, pouring over the pastoral New England scene and bathing it in liquid gold.
Really, it was a perfect day. At least, it had started out as a perfect day, when Laurie had loaded up the rental van with all her worldly possessions—which admittedly did not amount to very much—and drove, haltingly because she wasn’t a hugely confident driver, from Trenton, New Jersey, all the way to this bucolic corner of northwestern Connecticut. For the whole three hours of the trip she’d been humming along to the radio, her dearest friend and lovable mongrel Max perched on the bench seat next to her, his ears pricked in anticipation as well as a little anxiety, because Max had never been the most confident of creatures. She’d made sure to give him a reassuring pat every so often, and when they’d turned off Interstate 95, leaving the gasoline fumes and rumbling eighteen-wheelers thankfully behind, she’d rolled down the windows a little bit so he could sniff the sweet country air, his plumed tail wagging hopefully.
Really, it had all been wonderful . Her heart had been both full and light, and she’d felt nothing but hope and determined optimism, like a scouring of her soul. Finally, she was leaving it all behind—the depressing top half of a duplex, a measly three rooms, where she’d lived alone for the last four years. The dispiriting, dead-end job in marketing she’d been so thrilled to get when she’d been twenty-one and newly graduated with an associate degree in marketing had started to feel more than a little defeating and dull three and a half years on. The lonely little life she’d chosen to be content with, even as she couldn’t help but feel there had to be more to it than this—another chapter, or even a whole exciting book, just waiting for her. She simply hadn’t turned the page yet.
Today she finally had , and it had felt amazing, until just outside of Wassaic she’d started to hear a clunking noise coming from somewhere in the nether regions of the van.
“Do you hear that, Max?” she’d asked, glancing at her little dog. She’d got Max from the SPCA four years ago, when he’d been little more than a puppy, skeletally thin and cowering from everyone, his wiry brown fur patchy and sparse. Life hadn’t treated him kindly, and Laurie understood all too well how a few well-placed kicks could knock you flat on your back and leave you struggling to stand up again, ever. It had taken a lot of patience and love and rawhide chews for Max to begin to trust, and then to love, her. Now they were an inseparable pair. She couldn’t have started this adventure without him.
“No?” she’d prompted as she gave the little dog, who was eyeing her with his usual bright-eyed seriousness, his little ears perked, a nod. “Me neither. I don’t hear that clunking sound at all .”
That, Laurie supposed, was when her optimism had descended, as it unfortunately sometimes did, into plain stupidity. The clunking had continued and become louder, and then it had been accompanied by a burning smell that couldn’t signify anything good. Laurie had determinedly ignored it all, knowing she had no choice but to keep driving, because there was nowhere to stop, and her cellphone had no signal. And, she’d told herself, she was so very close to her destination of the picturesque little town of Starr’s Fall, Connecticut. Surely the rental van could rattle and wheeze for just fifteen minutes more, inching down the Main Street and then conveniently conking out right in front of her new home.
That would have been perfectly acceptable, but it was not to be. Seven miles outside of Starr’s Fall, according to her GPS that was thankfully still working despite a less than stellar phone signal, the van gave a last gasp and then an alarming death rattle, before it rolled to a defeated stop. Laurie had had, at least, the foresight to jerk the wheel so the van came to its inglorious end on the shoulder of the road, away from traffic. Still, this was not good. This was not good at all.
She sat in the driver’s seat and stared up at the bright blue sky, trying to recover her optimism. Also trying to figure out what to do, because she still had no phone signal and she couldn’t see anything, anywhere, besides trees and sky and warm, golden sunlight.
Max, sensing that things were not as they should be, clambered into her lap and put his paws up on the window. Laurie stroked his wiry fur and marshaled her thoughts.
Seven miles was too far to walk, but at least it was a beautiful day, and she was in a beautiful place. She could lock up the van and walk down the road until her phone got a signal or she came to a house and could ask to make a phone call. Then she could find a garage to call, get the van towed, take a taxi into Starr’s Fall…
Briefly, Laurie closed her eyes. It wasn’t impossible, she told herself, but it still felt hard, several laborious steps she really didn’t want to have to take at this particular moment in time, when she wanted things to be, if not easy, then easier . Easier than they had been for most of her life, not that she was about to throw herself a pity party.
But today was meant to be her new start, the first chapter of the book of her life she was longing to write. Having adventures. Making friends. Maybe, if she was brave enough, even learning about her own history. It was all meant to happen here , in Starr’s Fall, except she wasn’t even there yet, and this did not feel like the kind of prologue she wanted to have to the book of her life. Far from it.
“Never mind, Max,” Laurie said aloud as she sank her fingers into the dog’s fur to give him a good scratch, which he loved, squirming with pleasure as she got behind his ears. Never mind had become something of a motto for Laurie, whenever things went wrong, which had happened with somewhat depressing regularity, or at least often enough for it to become a motto. Never mind, I’ll make new friends. Never mind, I’ll just work harder. Never mind, I’ll find somewhere else to live. Never mind, I can work extra hours. Never mind, at least I’ve got a job and a roof over my head, if not much else.
“Never mind,” she said again, and the words sounded hollow in the silence of the sunny afternoon, with no one but Max to hear them. Taking a deep breath, Laurie reached for Max’s leash, clipped it on and then scooped him up and stepped outside onto the shoulder of the road.
She noticed the stillness first. Back in Trenton, there were all the noises of the city, all the time—rumbling buses, police sirens, people shouting in the street, disgruntled neighbors, clanking plumbing. She’d become used to it, to the point she’d mostly been able to tune it all out.
But here there was nothing but quiet, this stillness that seemed to vibrate in the air and penetrate her bones, her very soul. It was both peaceful and the tiniest bit frightening; she felt almost as if she were the last person in the whole world, parachuted into an empty and unfamiliar landscape. The road stretched endless in each direction, the pavement baking under the warm sun, and on either side of it there was nothing but towering trees. High above her, the wind whispered through their branches, their soft soughing the only thing she could hear.
Laurie set Max down on the ground, and he immediately wiggled his way between her ankles, his head tucked firmly between them, which was his favorite place to be, especially when he was feeling nervous.
“I guess we’ll start walking,” Laurie said aloud, and, after sliding her phone into the back pocket of her jeans, she locked up the van and started down the side of the road, Max trotting so close to her heels she had to be careful not to trip over him.
The gravel crunched under her worn sneakers and the sun, that had been so lovely and warm while driving, now started to feel uncomfortably hot. Sweat prickled between her shoulder blades and trickled down the nape of her neck. Laurie pulled off her sweatshirt and tied it around her waist, then retied her hair—a completely unremarkable light brown, as far as she was concerned, and with a weird wave right in the middle she’d never found a way to straighten—into a tighter ponytail. Then she kept walking, past the trees lining the road, casting welcome shade, and then along a stretch of gentle meadow where the sun beat down even harder, and she couldn’t see so much as a barn in the distance.
For five whole minutes, not a single car passed her. She glanced behind her and saw the rental van had disappeared into the haze. Up above was nothing but more road, trees, and sky. She was thirsty now as well as hot, and wished she’d thought to bring her water bottle with her.
“This is starting to feel like the Sahara,” she remarked wryly. She was used to talking out loud to Max, as he was pretty much her only companion, but it felt a little strange in the utter emptiness of her current surroundings. Max, seeming to sense her uncertainty, pushed his head between her ankles once more. With a good-natured sigh, Laurie reached down and fondled his ears. “Sorry about this, Max.”
She’d just begun to straighten when she heard a vehicle in the distance. Laurie put one hand to her eyes to shade them as she squinted into the sunlight. A rusty red pickup truck with an open bed was coming down the road at an alarming pace, fast enough that Laurie decided to scoop up Max before she took a large step back, near to the ditch running steeply along the side of the road. The truck didn’t even slow as it passed her, sending up a fine spray of gravel, and Laurie had a brief glimpse of a solid-looking woman with a head of salt-and-pepper curls at the wheel before she zipped past.
“I should have flagged her down,” Laurie realized out loud, although the woman had been driving so fast, she doubted she would have even noticed. The truck had gone about fifty yards or so beyond her, when, with a sudden squeal of brakes and another spray of gravel, it stopped and then swung around quickly, driving back toward Laurie.
Laurie hugged Max to her chest as the truck slowed to stop right in front of her. The woman rolled down the window and peered out; her face was brown and weathered, her eyes a deeper brown, her hair wild and curly. She looked to be around forty.
“That your van pulled up on the side about a quarter mile back?” she asked in a brisk, no-nonsense way that was both matter of fact and, Laurie at least hoped, friendly.
“Yes, it is,” Laurie replied in the manner of a confession. The woman was squinting at her, her head thrust out the window, her hair springing from her head in a silvery halo of curls. “I broke down.”
“You know there’s nothing much between here and Starr’s Fall? Seven miles of nothing. That’s pretty far to walk, I’d say.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” Laurie admitted humbly. “I was hoping to come across a house or something. I’m new to the area. I’m—I’m moving to Starr’s Fall, actually.”
“Moving to Starr’s Fall!” This was an exclamation of deep surprise, even disbelief. Clearly not many people moved to Starr’s Fall, tucked up in this northwestern corner of nowhere, too far from Boston or New York to attract the urbanites, or even the suburbanites. Hartford, the capital city of Connecticut, was an hour and a half away, down country roads, too far for commuting.
The woman heaved a large sigh that seemed to come from the depths of her solidly built being. “You’d best get in, I guess,” she said, and she leaned over to open the passenger door of the pickup truck, which, with a rusty-sounding squeak, swung out wide.
Still clutching Max, Laurie walked around to the other side of the truck and clambered up inside. She had a second’s pause of wondering whether to trust this woman, and a brief vision of being kidnapped and taken to some backwoods cabin where she’d be blindfolded and tied up danced through her mind before she dismissed it. She’d be foolish not to trust her, because she was right, seven miles was a long way to walk. In any case, her optimism, having flagged fairly significantly when the van had broken down, was now flickering back to life.
Things, Laurie decided, were looking up.
“So, moving to Starr’s Fall,” the woman mused, giving Laurie—and Max—a considering glance as Laurie closed the door and the woman made a jolting three-point turn in the middle of the road before speeding back toward Starr’s Fall. The truck smelled strongly of old apples, musty and sweet, and looking behind her, Laurie realized the bed was filled to the brim with burlap sacks of them.
“I’m Annie Lyman, by the way,” the woman said. “I run Lyman Farms, down Route 44. We grow apples and pumpkins this time of year. Do you know it?”
Laurie shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know much around here. Not yet, anyway.”
“Where are you from?”
“New Jersey.” In response, Annie wrinkled her nose, which made Laurie smile ruefully. That was most people’s reaction when she said she was from New Jersey, nice a place as parts of it were. “But I had family here, a long time ago,” she ventured, feeling brave enough to admit that, as well as a little bit reckless. She’d trusted very few people with this information—in fact, only one. Nadine, her as-good-as foster mother from days of old, who had died nine months ago. Laurie had grieved the idea of her more than the reality; she and Nadine had more or less lost touch years ago, after she had aged out of the system. But it turned out that Nadine hadn’t forgotten her, which was partly why she was in Starr’s Fall at all. “The Lysanders,” she told Annie. “Do you know them?” If she’d been attempting to sound casual, Laurie knew she’d failed; she’d heard a tremor in her voice, as well as an eagerness. What if Annie knew them? Knew them well , even?
“The Lysanders…” Annie frowned in thought, her gaze on the road as they bumped along, trees blurring past. “Can’t say I do, and I thought I knew everyone around here.”
A flicker of disappointment whispered through Laurie, but she pushed it away with determination. It was early days, after all, and someone in Starr’s Fall had to know the Lysander family, surely, if she worked up the courage to ask again. She wasn’t sure she would. She’d come to Starr’s Fall for a new start, not to dig deep into the past. Mostly .
“Well, like I said,” she replied with a philosophical shrug, “it was a long time ago.”
Annie’s frown deepened, carving lines into her weathered face, tanned a chestnut brown from a life clearly lived outdoors. “Still,” she said thoughtfully, “I grew up here, and so did my father, and his father, and his father before him. The Lymans came here in 1790, one of the town’s oldest families, although we’re nothing on the actual Starrs, who founded the place. Henrietta Starr still lives here, not that you’d know it. No one sees her around anymore.”
Laurie, who had basically no family history to work with, could only marvel at such long lineage. “Wow,” was the only response that seemed appropriate.
“I’ll ask my mother,” Annie stated definitively. “Lysander… She knows everyone, or she used to, anyway.” She jerked the wheel of the truck to turn right down a narrower road; with one hand cradling Max, Laurie couldn’t keep from flinging the other out to the door handle to steady herself.
The trees that had been lining Route 44 now became denser, a thick forest of evergreen along with the maples and oaks, so it felt as if they were going right into the woods, with hills rising steeply above. The last and only time Laurie had been to Starr’s Fall had been in May, on a wet and windy day when the rain had come down in gusting sheets. She’d barely been able to take anything in and had sprinted from car to storefront with her coat pulled over her head. She’d been hoping to have more of an explore of the place she’d firmly decided to call home, but the weather hadn’t made it possible, and in any case, she was here now. She was looking forward to seeing the town—and her very own home—on a day like today, sunlit and mellow.
“So what’s brought you to Starr’s Fall?” Annie asked bluntly. “Because, I’ll be honest with you, there’s not much going on here, much as I love the place.”
“Well, there will soon be a little more,” Laurie replied with a determined smile. “I’m opening a pet store and bakery on the Main Street.”
“A pet…” Annie swiveled her head to gaze at Laurie directly, her jaw dropping as the truck started to drift toward the center of the road. “Wait, did you buy the little place right across from Reilly’s Books?”
Laurie couldn’t remember a Reilly’s Books, but it had been raining a lot. “I… think so? It’s number forty-six, halfway down the street, white brick with a bow window and an apartment above. I’m only renting, though, although I might have an option to buy later.”
“That’s the one. I thought I saw a sign saying it had been rented out.” Annie jerked the wheel back to even out the truck, and Laurie found herself clinging to the door handle once more. A ride with Annie Lyman was clearly an exciting, if not downright dangerous, experience.
Annie frowned. “A pet… what did you say?”
“A pet store and bakery,” Laurie replied firmly.
When she’d applied for the business loan, the perplexed bank manager had not been immediately convinced. “Pet… bakery ? I’ve never even heard of such a thing.”
“I saw them in New York,” Laurie had assured him. “They’re getting very popular. You know how people are with their pets.”
She’d shown him spreadsheets of statistics and sales projections that she’d labored over for hours, but whether such fanciful notions would be popular here, in the backwoods of Connecticut, remained to be seen, although Laurie had done at least some homework. She knew that this part of Connecticut had a lot of dog owners and also that the nearest pet store was over twenty miles away. She’d researched how people wanted an in-person experience when it came to shopping for their pets, rather than online anonymity. It had been enough to convince the bank manager but this still might, Laurie had forced herself to acknowledge, be another instance of optimism straying into serious stupidity. However, she was still determined to take a risk… and follow her dream. For once.
“All right, so humor me,” Annie declared, propping one elbow on the driver’s open window. “A pet bakery. What is that, exactly? Cookies for cats? Donuts for dogs?”
She sounded so genuinely perplexed that Laurie couldn’t keep from laughing. “Well, I guess, in a way,” she replied, “but not actual donuts and cookies. More like pet treats… baked dog biscuits, and flavored chews, and things like that. All healthy, of course, and good for animals.” She’d already tried out several recipes on Max—sweet potato pumpkin chews, peanut butter and banana hearts. He’d gobbled them all up. “The store part will have all the pet accessories,” she told Annie. “Bowls, leashes, dog and cat toys, that kind of thing. No actual pets, though,” she hurried to state. “I don’t think it’s very humane, to keep pets in cages in a store, and to be honest, I’m not sure I could manage that much responsibility.”
“We’ve never had a pet store in Starr’s Fall,” Annie mused, “that I can remember, although we certainly have plenty of dogs! And cats too, to be fair.” She grimaced as she continued. “Not that we’ve got much anymore in town, to be honest. Amazon and all the online shopping have forced so many people to close. At least half the stores on Main Street are empty, which is such a shame.”
“It is,” Laurie agreed. She remembered seeing several empty or shuttered storefronts from her trip back in May, beneath the sheets of rain. “But I’m hoping to change it, at least a little.” Despite Starr’s Fall’s lack of retail, Laurie believed it could be a place where people came to shop, eat, enjoy life. At least, it could become that, with a little effort. Laurie had chosen to come to Starr’s Fall for a lot of reasons, but one big one was that she’d felt sorry for it, its Main Street looking so forgotten. She understood how that felt.
“And who is this guy?” Annie asked with a nod toward Max, who was sitting on Laurie’s lap, his head pressed close to her body as he surveyed Annie warily.
“Max.” Laurie rested her hand on top of his head. “He’s got a little bit of everything in him.”
“Looks like it, too,” Annie replied with a laugh. “I’ve got a black lab, George, at home. He’s the seventh one we’ve had, and they’ve all been named George. My grandfather named the first one after a neighbor he didn’t like.”
Laurie smiled. “That sounds like a story.”
“It is,” Annie told her. “You’ll have to come out to the farm for dinner one night and I’ll tell you the rest of it. Do you know anyone here?”
The question, so bluntly asked, made Laurie wilt inside a little bit, even though she appreciated the unexpected invitation. “No,” she admitted as cheerfully as she could manage, deciding she would be as blunt as Annie. “Not a soul.”
“Then you’ll definitely have to come,” Annie replied. “I’ll introduce you to a few people, too. How about Thursday? Assuming your van is fixed by then.”
“Actually,” Laurie confessed, “it’s only a rental. I don’t have a car. I thought I might buy one eventually, but I wanted to see how I managed without one at first.”
“No car!” Annie marveled. “You’re a real city person, aren’t you? Well, I can always pick you up. Seven?”
“That would be great, thanks so much.” Laurie could hardly believe she had already made plans with a potential friend, and she hadn’t even arrived in Starr’s Fall yet. Stuff like that never happened to her, no matter how optimistic she tried to be. Back in Trenton, she’d made a few friends through work, but the extent of the relationships was coffee in the kitchenette, the very occasional drink out. She’d made a few other friends as well, through various community links, but no one she could depend on. No one who would miss her.
Maybe, Laurie decided, Starr’s Fall had a little bit of magic, of optimism, in it, after all. Either that or Annie Lyman really was a serial killer.
It certainly felt magical as Annie drove down the Main Street, past the white wooden sign that announced:
Welcome to Starr’s Fall, incorporated 1731, population 2,200.
Old-fashioned-looking stores in a variety of gracious brick and more homely wooden clapboard lined either side of the street, behind wide sidewalks of deep red brick and interspersed with wrought-iron benches and square wooden planters bursting with the bright oranges and reds of fall chrysanthemums. At the far end of the street, a verdant town green rolled out in front of the historic Congregational church, its tall white spire pointing heavenward and piercing the bright blue sky.
Despite all this, it was impossible not to notice the boarded-up storefronts, just as Annie had mentioned. Starr’s Fall was a quaint little town, but it definitely could use some TLC, or really, just some more people doing business there.
Annie pulled up to number forty-six and turned off the truck. “Here we are. You’ve got the key, I hope?”
“Yes.” Laurie patted her pocket. She’d kept the key on her since she’d been sent it last week, from the realtor in Hartford. It had felt like a talisman of sorts, an anchor to the life she wanted to have, was going to make.
“You’ll need to tow the truck, I guess?” Annie wondered aloud. “Mike at the garage on the other side of town can do it. Do you want me to give him a call?”
“Oh… if you wouldn’t mind…” Laurie wasn’t used to having people offer to do things for her. It made her feel both humbled and guilty. “Thank you,” she said as Annie whipped out a cellphone with a screen so cracked Laurie wondered how it was still functioning. As Annie made the call, she opened the door and slipped out of the truck, still clutching Max to her.
She was here. She was finally here, and it seemed almost too good to be true. Laurie stood in front of her store, marveling at the building before her. The white paint was flaking off the door and the glass of the bow window was dirty and smeared, but it was hers, the whole thing—two rooms downstairs for the store, plus a tiny office and a half bathroom, and upstairs a living room overlooking the street, with the kitchen in the back, and two bedrooms and a bathroom on the floor above. She could hardly wait to explore it all, to begin the adventure she felt she’d been waiting for her whole life.
Finally, finally , she was about to turn the page.
From the truck, Annie called out to her. “Mike’s going to fix it for you. I told him where the van is, and he’ll tow it straight here. Two hundred bucks for the job. Is that okay?”
Laurie swallowed hard. Hopefully the rental company would reimburse her, but for now she needed her stuff. “Sure, thanks,” she called. “And thanks for the lift?—”
“Not a problem.” Annie waved her thanks aside. “I’ve got to get going with these apples. Joe is waiting for me at the cider press. See you Thursday!” And then, with a rev of the engine and a belch of smoke from the exhaust pipe, she was off, rattling down Main Street at a good clip, leaving Laurie and Max by themselves.