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PROLOGUE
Charlotte threw on her running shoes, grabbed the parcel, and slammed the front door behind her. The post office beckoned, and she was on a tight schedule. Charlotte’s napkin math reasoned that if she traveled the dedicated pathway into the village, she’d be cutting it tight. Running like hell might work, but cutting things so close might upset her new friend Pat. She wanted to get there in time to make small talk too.
The race was on.
She hadn’t lived here long, but she’d already deduced that this wasn’t an ordinary town. Even with two months spent in her new homestead, some of the more stubborn residents still crossed the street whenever Charlotte passed them by. She spotted a four-piece family – dressed to the nines – across the road, no doubt on their way to Sunday morning service. She waved, but their cursory glances did not give way to a greeting.
Apparently most people – even the residents – called this place the ass-end of Maryland. There wasn’t a whole lot to do here, but after 35 years of city living, Charlotte and her husband decided they’d heard enough car exhaust zooming past their window at one in the morning. It was time to move somewhere that didn’t have five vape shops on every street. Somewhere that boasted more green than gray. Somewhere the sky wasn’t obscured by high-rise buildings.
That place was Hicksberg, Maryland. Her husband had apparently lived here as a youngster and remembered it fondly. So they’d returned, and Charlotte had quickly discovered just how different life was here compared to the bustling city. As she headed out of her house towards the cow-heavy fields, she saw examples of rural intricacies in each direction. A nice lake at the back of their house. Sometimes she’d find pig carcasses on the edges of fields, a kind of farmer’s gift to anyone who might want some butchery material. Religion was a cornerstone of this little paradise too, something the realtor had neglected to mention when Charlotte first viewed her new home. The locals were devout and sometimes even radical, eyeing anything modern with great suspicion. Charlotte, with her short hair and nose ring, was regarded as something Other upon her arrival, but she’d managed to win over a few locals with her innate charm.
Another rural eccentricity, the one that irked her the most, was that shops seemed to close their doors whenever they felt like it. For a place so steeped in routine, one would think these business owners would translate that custom to their store’s opening hours. But no, store opening times were a law unto themselves apparently, and if Charlotte didn’t post the package tucked under her arm before 9am, chances are her buyer wouldn’t see these cinnamon candles until next week. She couldn’t live with that. She was only one negative feedback away from being suspended again.
But Pat from the post office – the closest friend she’d made since moving here – assured Charlotte that if she could get the parcel to her within the hour, she’d send it out with yesterday’s batch. If not, the post office would be shut for the next two days, and that meant bad reviews would be coming her way. Charlotte kept up her speed, recalling vague advice from her gym teacher. In through the nose, out through the mouth; this was the key to maintaining stamina. Charlotte checked the time on her watch. Twenty minutes before deadline. The little village loomed in the distance, a village consisting of a post office, two shops, a charity store, and an ice cream stand. She glanced at the snaking road that veered to the left, the village appearing much closer than it actually was. That was another thing about living in the backend of nowhere. You often saw things that you couldn’t actually get to, like windmills and farmhouses and bales of hay. They were locked behind electric fences and strips of barbed wire, unreachable, like virtually rendered textures created for viewing purposes and not much else.
Or she could hop the little fence to her left, cross the field and be in the village in about three minutes. She’d have to navigate the untouchable textures, but she’d passed this field a hundred times and had never seen any signs of life in there. Would anyone really care? Would anyone even notice her? And if they did, what was stopping her just pleading ignorance and hauling ass?
You can take the girl out of the city, she thought.
Charlotte stopped, surveyed her surroundings, and decided that yes, today was a fine day to take liberties. No prying eyes in sight. No TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED signs. There were some houses on the other side of the field, but she could easily slip past them straight into the village. The residents would be none the wiser. She leaped over the fence onto the soggy grass and camouflaged herself among the trees, not that her pink sneakers aided her in the slightest. Charlotte crept along, keeping an eye out for onlookers. She hurried down a small embankment, passed over a stream, and emerged victorious on the other side. She came to a small barn, red and white, something she’d seen from a distance but never inspected up close. She always assumed there’d be chickens or sheep in there, but her heart skipped a beat when she saw a pair of human eyes staring at her from the archway.
“You shouldn’t be here, missy,” said an old man. He sat in a chair, wisps of gray hair falling out of his cap. “This area is private.”
Charlotte debated whether to argue her case or just run for the hills, but her mouth moved quicker than her mind. “Sorry. I thought I could just detour through here to get to the town.”
“Y’all thought wrong.”
Charlotte took a few steps forward, hoping that once she got out of this guy’s line of sight she could just carry on running. “Forgive me. I’m new around here. Still getting to grips with things.”
“I know. I seen ya. Some folks don’t take too kindly to trespassing.”
“Understood. This will be my only time, I promise,” Charlotte laughed.
The man took a drag on his pipe then stood up. “No, this’ll be no time. You gotta go back the other way.”
Charlotte looked up the embankment. The town was a stone’s throw away. Surely this guy wasn’t being serious.
“Come on. I only need to get up there. I’m in a bit of a rush.”
“Wouldn’t be setting a good example if I just let you go on now, would I? Come on,” the man clapped his hands. “Back you go.”
“Setting a good example? To who, the sheep?”
The man took off his cap and threw it on the table next to him. “If you’re gonna get smart, missy, I’ve got no problem calling the police. They’ll be a lot harder on you than I will.”
Charlotte began backing away. She took a few deep breaths to regain her stamina. Time to go full throttle.
“The cops? Buddy, all I did was run through a field. Not exactly genocide, is it?”
“The law’s the law,” he said, punctuating his threat with a dose of spit. “Don’t make this difficult.”
That didn’t work for Charlotte. She counted down in her head. Three, two.
One.
And darted up the hill, away from this man and his nitpicky rules. She hurried as fast as her legs would take her, the quant village coming that little bit closer with every step. There, she’d disappear into the rabble, then she’d spend the rest of her time in this town avoiding the miserable old man in the field. Easy.
Charlotte glanced back and, to her astonishment, found the old man was trailing her. He looked like he was on the verge of death already, so God knows where he found the energy to run. But he closed in on her, close enough for Charlotte to hear his vague threats.
