Page 48 of Where the Fields Don’t Reach

“But Sarah still hung the talisman.”

Hadley’s gaze was drawn to the window where a pentacle hung, its slender twigs lashed at each point with string long gone frayed and pale. Dried corn husks had been woven through the frame, brittle and curling at the edges, and a row of small yellow beads hung from the bottom on separate threads, standing in for kernels of corn. They swayed a little, though Hadley sensed no draft to move them. It was the same charm she’d grown up seeing in nearly every window in Whistlerun.

“Sarah clearly didn’t believe that version,” Hadley said, pushing the issue.

“We’re talking at least the eighteen-hundreds, if not further back.” Martin lifted a shoulder in a small shrug, as if to indicate he was a man who’d given up sorting truth from fiction a long time ago. “There are a dozen versions of that tale, and near as many ways to bind those charms. Some say husks, some say bones, some say gold. Been told so many ways nobody living knows which part’s true, if any of it is.”

He stared at her steadily, as if he was searching for his own answers.

“Does it even matter?”

Hadley didn’t respond, because she didn’t have one to give. Her gaze drifted back to the window and the swaying beads. Whatever Martin claimed not to know, he hadn’t taken the charm down. Not in the year since Sarah died, and not in all the years before. Martin followed her gaze, and when he turned his attention back to her, something uncertain had crossed his features and remained there.

Hadley stood before he could put a question to it.

“I shouldn’t keep you from the fields, Mr. Cox.” Hadley rose with her coffee in hand. She needed something to keep her going for the rest of the morning. “I appreciate your time.”

She had what she’d come for, though she couldn’t yet say what she meant to do with it. An old story about a girl who walked into the east field to appease a thing in the ground. A sacrifice wasn’t proof of anything. Yet Roland had basically built a shrine to that same field, and Reed had burned on the road that ran behind it.

Martin led her down the hall, slower than she moved, and at the small table by the front door he stopped and pulled open a drawer. He took something from it and turned it once in his hands before he held it out to her.

A talisman.

An old one, the husks gone brittle and amber, similar to the one in the kitchen window. The binding twine on this one had faded to a near-white.

“I couldn’t help but notice the last time I was in town that you haven’t hung one in the station window yet.” Martin’s voice had gone gruff. “The whole town can see you haven’t, and Sarah would have my hide if I let the new chief go without.”

“Mr. Cox, I can’t take...”

“You can, and you will.” Martin pressed the talisman into her hands and folded her fingers over it with his. There was no arguing with him. “I got no use for two, and Sarah made a dozen, if not more. They’re tucked in every hidey-hole in this house. Life’s worth more than any old keepsake, Hadley. You hang that up.”

Martin cleared his throat and stepped back. He then reached for the doorknob before the moment could turn heavy.

“Thank you for the coffee and the bear claw. Best thing to happen to me all week.”

“You’re welcome, Mr. Cox. You have a good day.”

Martin held the door, and there was nothing to do but step through it. She descended the porch steps and walked across the gravel toward her Equinox, the talisman heavy and dry in her hand.

Martin’s parting words wouldn’t leave her, though.

Life’s worth more than any old keepsake.

A young woman walked into a cornfield with a bag of gold and other valuables to buy a county its harvest.

Maybe Sarah’s story wasn’t a story at all. Maybe there was some truth to it, and the answers to who had killed Reed Langley had been buried in Vinton’s east field this entire time.

21

Hadley Dawkins

September 2026

Thursday – 6:27 am

The talisman rested on the passenger seat, and it emitted a low, prickling unease into the interior of the Equinox. She glanced at it when she came to a stop at the first stop sign. The brittle husks, the frayed twine, and the little yellow beads had an aura that made Hadley want to toss the thing from the window. She wouldn’t, though, because there was always that little smidgeon of doubt behind Cane County’s urban legend.

Was the Threshing Man real?