Introduction

Twin sisters Cassandra and Anastasia have discovered their mother's legacy: a 40-year-old cold case murder.

When Cassie and Ana return to their childhood home in rural Connecticut, among their deceased mother's belongings they stumble across an unpublished manuscript: a murder mystery, written by their mom's girlfriend AJ -and featuring their mother as a key character.

Cassie, a writer, wants to turn the old story into a bestseller. Ana, fearful of what they will learn, wants to destroy it.

As the sisters delve into AJ's story, they uncover a disturbing trail leading to an abandoned village the locals call Grabtown.

As AJ says, "Small towns are great for scolding the kids who throw too many snowballs, but not always good at spotting real evil."

When Cassie's volatile husband, Marsh, demands they stop digging, and a retired detective arrives asking dangerous questions, the twins realize someone believes AJ's story isn't fiction-it's a confession.

What's really behind Marsh's highly successful rare-motorcar enterprise? Why does the past refuse to stay buried? And why is a major crimes detective now urging them to flee?

Set in rural New England, Grabtown is a powerful twofold story that exposes the dark underbelly of small-town secrets, where courage and unshakable loyalty become the only weapons against those who prey on the vulnerable.

If you enjoy suspense, high-stakes tales of sisterhood, and satisfying stories of justice and redemption, you'll love Grabtown. Readers of Grabtown are also fans of Kellye Garrett's Like a Sister, Liz Moore's The God of the Woods, and The Moonflowers by Abigail Rose-Marie.

Readers love Grabtown:

"A story that lingers long after the last line-beautiful, bold, and utterly unforgettable."-Kathryn Dare, Seattle Book Review

"Unique, gripping, and well-written...one of my favorite psychological thrillers! Five stars." -Chloe Belle Daffon, Readers' Favorite

"Just brilliant ten-star storytelling! Psychological suspense at its very best...a must-read for everyone who appreciates truly great writing." -Lorraine Cobcroft, Reedsy Discovery

"Grabtown is a beautifully written psychological thriller with a lit fuse and an explosive ending. It's also a search for truth and healing between sisters who face hard realities and deadly threats... Highly recommended! -A.W. Baldwin, bestselling author (Moonshine Mesa, The Antidote)

"I was completely hooked...If you're looking for a story that will keep you on your toes and stay with you long after the last page, Grabtown is it!" -Chrissy Marie, instagram (abeautyandbooks)

"[Grabtown] builds atmosphere-dense, emotional, and quietly suspenseful. It's a book about loyalty, silence, and the courage it takes to look back. If you like your mysteries with emotional depth and a touch of literary melancholy, Grabtown is a beautifully crafted, slow-burning read." - Leanne Hague, Goodreads reviewer

Editorial Review

No Editorial Review Currently Available

Excerpt

Prologue

Metal presses in from three sides, cold and unforgiving. The fourth side is wood, rough-cut planks that give you splinters if you bump against them. Twelve-year-old Elena sits with her bottom on hard smooth steel and her back against a corrugated metal wall. She shifts a little in the dark, trying to get comfortable. Sharp ridges dig into her shoulder blades through the thin t-shirt, now damp with sweat and fear.

The container smelled at first of oil and jet fuel, with an underlying earthiness of leather and wood. But now it mostly smells like them—three small unwashed bodies, plus the acrid stench from the plastic bucket they cannot empty.

Cuatro dias, she thinks. Four days they’ve been traveling. Or has it been five?

She switches on their only working flashlight and sweeps its beam across what she’s come to think of as their prison cell. The wooden crate still dominates everything, squatting in the center of the shipping container like a sleeping giant. The crate’s bulk stretches nearly to the ceiling, almost to the side walls.

Elena and her sisters are living in the small space between the crate and the container’s rear doors, eight feet by perhaps five feet. She can touch both the crate and a door if she stands and stretches her arms out. She does this often, to reassure herself that the walls aren’t closing in.

At first, she was terrified the crate would shift position on the smooth floor. Slide back on takeoff, perhaps, crushing them against the container’s doors. Now she knows it’s securely bolted to the floor so the precious cargo in the crate, whatever it is, isn’t damaged.

She should switch off the flashlight and save the batteries. Instead, she stares again at the crate’s shipping labels, studying the details she missed in their first excited hours aboard the plane. Yellow and white papers in a plastic sleeve, sealed with clear tape and stapled to the wood. Many words are printed in English, which she recognizes but cannot yet read, and in some other language that uses unfamiliar characters.

Ten-year-old Carmen presses closer to her big sister. Elena can feel how thin her sister has become. They are rationing the granola bars, but Carmen barely eats anymore. After two days in the desert and however long they’ve been in this box, she’s barely able to hold her head up.

Carmen’s whisper is hoarse from tears. “Elena, ¿Cuando vamos a llegar?” She’s asked this a zillion times: When will we get there?

“Pronto, mija,” Elena murmurs, but the words taste like a lie. She’s been saying “soon” for several days now.

Yesterday, Sofia, the youngest, stopped talking entirely. She sits now with her knees pulled to her chest, her mostly empty backpack clutched against her stomach. In the flashlight beam her eyes are wide and glassy, staring at nothing. Carmen offers her little sister a drink of water from their last jug, but Sofia only twists her head away.

The container’s air vents are Elena’s new obsession. Four of them, high on the walls near the ceiling. They let in a little air but almost no light.

Sofia whispers, “Necesito usar la cubeta.”  The first words she’s spoken since yesterday.

Elena helps her sister to the corner where they’ve placed the white bucket, now nearly full and reeking. The smell makes her gag, but she holds the flashlight steady while Sofia uses the bucket, then wipes herself with a small scrap of newspaper from a thin pile on the floor.

As Sofia returns to sit beside Carmen, the flashlight stutters and Elena switches it off. In the darkness, every sound is amplified: the scratch of fabric against metal, the rustle of their few remaining granola bar wrappers, the quiet slosh of water as they pass around the jug.

Their container shudders. Elena feels the plane tilt and hears the whine of machinery. Pressure in her ears tells her they’re descending, about to land—but this time, her heart doesn’t jump with excitement. They’ve been through this before. The landing, then the rumble of cranes, the lifting and swaying, the voices outside giving commands in languages she doesn’t understand.

“Otra vez, nos están moviendo.” she tells her sisters. Her voice is flat, defeated. They’re being moved again.

Through the ventilation holes, she can hear men shouting, but not in Spanish or English. The words rise and fall in a fast, clipped rhythm, nothing like the warm vowels of home. The container lurches, and all three girls brace themselves against the wall. No one whimpers this time.

“¿A dónde dijiste que vamos?” There’s no hope in Carmen’s voice, it’s just another rote question.

“America.” Elena says automatically, but the word feels hollow. She tries a few words of English. “To live with Tía Rosa.”

But something’s gone wrong. Mamá had assured them the trip would take no more than a day, but they’ve been traveling too long. The man who helped them climb into the container had spoken Spanish, yes, but with an accent she didn’t recognize and a smile she didn’t like.

The container settles with a thud and Elena hears the rumble of engines starting up. Different engines, this time. Bigger, louder, with a deeper vibration that makes her teeth ache. The sound grows more insistent. They press their hands to their ears.

“Escuchen,” Elena says, but her voice cracks. “Otro avión.”  The third plane, by her count. How many flights does it take to get to Galveston, Texas?

They brace themselves against the acceleration and Elena’s stomach lurches.

The engine noise settles into a steady drone. Though she knows Sofia probably won’t eat, Elena distributes their remaining granola bars, two each. She no longer tells her sisters stories about hamburgers and pizza, or schools with smiling teachers and rooms with windows.

In the darkness, with only the drift of stale air through the ventilation holes and the steady drone of engines to keep them company, Elena holds her sisters close and tries not to think about the symbols on the crate or the strange languages she’s heard.

Elena begins to cry.

Chapter One

Cassie

Cassie rubs her scalp with both hands until she feels her hair bristle like burnt-black grass. When she was a kid, that gesture would have drawn an eyeroll from her twin sister Ana and an exasperated headshake from their mother. But Cassandra Masterson and Anastasia Prescott are nearly forty, and their mother died four days ago.

Two hours after Marla Bousquet’s funeral, Cassie sprawls on the green plaid sofa in the rambling Connecticut farmhouse she grew up in. Nursing a cooling mug of coffee and more grief than she’s prepared to deal with, she’s waiting for Ana to return from delivering a carload of flowers to a local nursing home.

So many flowers. They’d filled the small Congregational meeting house with a thick, humid fragrance. Lilies, carnations, gladioli, roses, chrysanthemums. And a handful of black-eyed Susans, looking like a child had plucked them from a roadside ditch. An odd choice for a funeral, Cassie thinks. Someone else must have known how much their mother loved black-eyed Susans.

An empty fist of sadness spreads through Cassie’s ribcage. She flops back into the threadbare cushions, resigning herself to tears, but her eyes remain dry. Nothing comes—no tears, no clarity, no escape.

She’d thought the funeral service would hand her a sense of peace so she could move on. But all she’s accomplished so far is to swap her pantsuit for shorts and a T-shirt, power up the living room’s tower fan against the sultry heat of summer, and collapse into the cushions.

Her hip vibrates. Startled, she props herself up on an elbow and fumbles her phone from a rear pocket.

Marsh’s voice crackles through static, warm and familiar. “Hey, beautiful. I’m about to head out to LAX. How’s it going? God, I miss you already.”

The small hairs on her forearms lift, responding to the strong pull of his voice. It’s disorienting, hearing her husband’s California charm in this house. In their eighteen years together, he’s been here exactly once. Which was the last time she was here, too, more than a decade ago.

But why is he calling? He’s promised her one uninterrupted week to help Ana clear out their mother’s house. To mend a few fences, maybe make peace with her sister. Cassie’s already feeling unmoored. She isn’t ready for his voice wrapping her in its smooth, no-worries velvet.

She stands and pads barefoot to the front window, searching for signal. Cell reception is laughably bad here in this dead-end corner of an old Connecticut mill town, where narrow gravel roads snake between rocky hills and mosquito-infested swamps.

The smell of her mother’s old house—musty blankets, disinfectant—clings to everything, following her to the window. She wrinkles her nose. “Okay, I guess. I just got back from the funeral.”

“Oh, babe.” His voice drops to that tender register she remembers from their early days. “I’m such an ass. I should’ve asked about that first. How are you holding up?”

She rubs tired eyes, surprised by the genuine concern. This is the Marsh who used to bring her soup when she was sick, who’d massage her feet after long days at her writing desk. “It was a funeral. The usual.” If she tries to explain the sadness, he’ll worry and tell her to cut the visit short.

“I wish I knew what that meant.” He lets out a self-deprecating laugh. “I’m terrible at this stuff, aren’t I? Death, grief—I never know the right thing to say. I’m sort of glad I missed it, but I know I should’ve come with you. Should’ve been there for you.”

The vulnerability in his admission catches her off guard. “It’s okay. I know Hong Kong’s important.”

“Not more important than you.” There’s that little-boy earnestness that used to make her melt. “I keep thinking about you in that house, with all the memories. And Ana giving you grief.” He pauses. “I’m worried about you, babe. You get so lost in your own head sometimes.”

She’s too tired to argue. And it doesn’t matter what she says, Marsh will hear what he wants to hear. At the moment, his concern feels genuine, though he’s preoccupied with overseeing the delivery of a rare Lamborghini Miura—one of only twelve ever made—to a demanding Chinese billionaire. An oligarch, he’d said with theatrical mockery, mimicking the man’s accent until she’d laughed despite herself. The buyer is insisting that the owner of Masterson’s Exotic Motors be present at the Hong Kong airport to supervise the uncrating of his precious car.

She checks her watch. His flight from LAX is scheduled to leave in a few hours.

“It’s only six days,” he’s saying, and she pictures him smoothing his sculpted beard with a thumb and index finger, the way he does when he’s nervous. “The container was off-loaded yesterday. So I check it for damage, get it through customs, schmooze the buyer for a few hours on Saturday—you know how these guys love the dog-and-pony show—talk with a couple other clients on Sunday, and head back that night.” He pauses. “Actually, I could try to get home a day early. Maybe switch my flight and catch a Saturday night red-eye, go straight through to Boston or Hartford and join you there for a few days. What do you think?”

Through the dusty window, Cassie glimpses a basket of red geraniums hanging from the roof-edge above the front porch. Her mother’s most cherished plants, four large pots evenly spaced beneath the roof overhang where they catch the rays of the afternoon sun. Mindful of the heat at this time of year, her mother always gave the flowers a thorough soaking each morning. Cassie wonders who’s watering the geraniums now.

“Babe? You still there?”

“Sorry, I’m here. Just…taking it all in.” She catches up to what he’s been saying. “No, don’t change flights. I’m fine.”

His voice softens again. “I can only imagine. That house holds a lot of history for you.”

Beside the porch steps, two dogwood trees flank the gravel path running from the house to the unpaved driveway. Near the end of the driveway, there’s a woodlot where a farmer collects sap from a grove of sugar maples each spring. It’s late August now, but thin blue plastic tubing still hangs in haphazard coils from the massive maple trees lining the dirt road.

She shifts her eyes back to the porch’s white railing, with its peeling paint and coating of gray-brown road dust. One picket is cracked and two are missing. Everywhere I look, something is broken.

“Cassie?” Marsh’s voice pulls her back. “I was asking about Ana. How’s she treating you? Still playing the grieving daughter who was always the favorite?”

There it is again, the familiar jealousy disguised as protection.

“She’s fine. We’re fine.”

“I just don’t want her laying some guilt trip on you, okay? Making you feel bad because you weren’t there as much as she was.” His voice gets that reasonable quality that always makes her doubt herself. “If she really cared, she would’ve invited you to visit more often instead of hoarding your mother to herself.”

“Marsh—”

“Are you sleeping okay? You have your Xanax, right?” The concern is genuine but tinged with something else. Control, maybe, or the need to fix things he doesn’t understand.

“We’ve been over this. I’m okay.”

“I know, I know. It’s just—” He laughs with that charming, self-aware chuckle. “I can’t help myself. I see you hurting and I want to swoop in and make it better. Very caveman of me, I know.”

Despite everything, she almost smiles. This is the Marsh who won her over—the successful businessman who could poke fun at his own intensity. Who made her feel precious and protected.

He says, “Do you think you’ll have time to write? What are you working on?”

“Jeez, no. I haven’t even had time to think.” She’d told him that a few extra days here in her childhood home, with no WiFi and few other distractions, would give her a chance to concentrate on writing a new story. The truth is, she hasn’t even unpacked her laptop. And her creativity evaporated months ago.

“That’s okay, babe. Sometimes you just need to let the well refill, you know?” His voice hardens slightly. “Just remember how much we’ve invested in giving your mom the best care possible. Extra homecare nurses, specialists, that adjustable bed we rented—Ana seems to think we’re made of money.”

“I know. We’ve been over it before.” The sharp impatience in her voice surprises them both.

She bites her lip at the overstep. Now she’s crossed some invisible line. Hearing his quick intake of breath, she braces for the shift. Marsh can be so mercurial, it’s hard to keep up.

“Dammit, Cass, I can barely hear you. You’re breaking up.” His voice has changed, all the warmth gone. “Find a better goddamn signal or call me back on the landline. But not now—make it four o’clock, after I get to the airport.”

He pauses. “Did you hear me? Say it back, so I know you got it.”

Her familiar rush of submission fights with something more resistant. “Four o’clock, your time. Yes, okay, that’s seven my time.”

The line crackles again and she thinks they’ve lost the connection. No, he’s still there.

“Just be careful, Cass.” Now he’s almost pleading. “I know I sound paranoid, but that house—it’s not good for you. All those old ghosts, your sister stirring up ancient history. Don’t talk to anyone you don’t have to, okay? Get through the week and come home to me.

“Or you could come home early,” he adds hopefully. “Maybe switch to an earlier flight—Sunday or Monday instead of Tuesday?”

“Not a chance, Marsh. Sunday’s the estate sale. Ana needs me for that. And I’m thinking of staying on a few days longer, maybe.”

And just like that, the steel is back. “That’s a hard no, Cassandra.” He’s switched to The Voice, that steely tone of command that makes the heat rise on the back of her neck as if he’s grabbed her there, pulling her in for a hard kiss. Like he did the last time they had sex, three nights earlier when he spread his long fingers and gripped her skull hard, bringing her mouth down to his crotch. Insisting on one last romp before her 5:00 AM flight to Hartford, when all she wanted was to sleep off the extra wine he’d poured for her at dinner.

“You have commitments here, Cassie. To me. To us. Get yourself home on schedule.”

The line goes dead and she’s left staring at the phone. Did the call get dropped, or did he hang up? She should have managed a “miss you” or a “love you too,” but the moment passed too quickly.

She exhales sharply and turns away from the window. That’s the thing about Marsh—he can make her feel like the most beloved woman in the world one moment and like a small, disappointing child the next. Nearly two decades together, and she still can’t predict which version of him will show up.

Enough. It’s time to begin what she’s agreed to do, help her sister clear their mother’s very cluttered house.

Downstairs: dust-caked rugs, the sagging sofa, stacks of National Geographics, cheap tote bags hanging on cup hooks by the door—all destined for the landfill. Upstairs: clothes, photos, costume jewelry, scarred furniture, closets full of who knows what.

Ana will save only a handful of photos for herself and ask the estate-sale people to clear out the rest. Cassie briefly considers shipping the mahogany guest-room chest back to Palos Verdes but then imagines Marsh’s scowl.

Her eyes fall on her mother’s ancient black rotary phone, perched on the little telephone desk in the front entry—maybe she’ll keep that as a stage prop for the gritty, darkly humorous, mid-century play she’ll write someday. Maybe.

She paces the living room, dropping books and knick-knacks at random, until she stops at a shelf lined with photos. Mom and Dad, impossibly young on their wedding day in 1981. Then the twins at two: Angelic Ana beams at the photographer but Cassie scowls and shrinks from the camera.

Even then, I wanted to be anywhere but where I was.

She begins assessing the rest of the room, creating a mental checklist. Donate this, recycle that, discard everything else. Discard, discard, discard.

The front door swings open with a sudden burst of sunlight and heat. Cassie jumps slightly and trips over a braided rug, feeling a quick pang of guilt. She wanted her sister to find her hard at work, perhaps taking down curtains or sorting clothes—anything but drifting aimlessly or crying into the sofa cushions, which she’s already done plenty of.

Ana drops her purse on the sofa. Smudged mascara rims her green-brown eyes, and her cheeks shine with dried tears. “Oh my god Cassie, the crowd. I didn’t know half those people, but they all knew Mom.”

Cassie shrugs. “You live and work seventy years in one small town, you get a long funeral line.” That sounds unfeeling so she tries again. “Mom knew a lot of people. Helped a lot of people.”

“Yeah. People remember their physical therapist even when they forget their doctor’s name.” Leaning against the back of the sofa, Ana toes off her kitten heels and plucks her navy linen skirt away from her thighs. “What was I thinking? Pantyhose, in this heat. Ugh.” She kneels in front of the tower fan. The air tousles her shoulder-length hair, pale cornsilk threaded with gray. “And no AC. Who’s gonna buy this place?”

“Someone with lots of money, who falls in love with an old farmhouse in a backwater town. They’ll gut it, probably, and put in mini-splits for AC.” Although Cassie hasn’t been home for years, the thought of someone else living here hits with a quick sadness that she tries to mask. “It was good to see Jonathan and Julie today, even for a few minutes. Did Jules get away okay?”

Straightening up, Ana turns her back toward the inadequate fan and lifts her skirt to let the air travel up her legs. “Jonathan hustled Julie out early, while we were still in the receiving line. He’s taking her for lunch so they can have some daddy-daughter time before she flies back to Chicago. Her flight’s at 3:30.”

She retrieves her phone from her purse, taps and scrolls quickly. “And I got a text from Scott in Edinburgh. He sends his condolences, says he’s sorry he couldn’t be here to say goodbye to Gramma. All’s well, he’s loving the city, et cetera.”

Cassie feels a tug of what-if wistfulness. She’s never wanted children and hasn’t paid much attention to her only niece and nephew, but still. “You’ve launched them well, you and Jonathan.”

Ana frowns a little, but her voice remains neutral. “They’re good kids. We had a lot of help from Mom. And Jonathan’s parents, of course.”

She doesn’t say, “And you’ve helped too, Cassie,” because it wouldn’t be true. Cassie hasn’t been any more present in her niece and nephew’s lives than she was in her mother’s, these past twenty years. Does she even know what they’re studying? Architecture and engineering, maybe.

Ana’s saying, “It hasn’t hit me yet, losing Mom only a week after the kids left for school. I’ve been living with her, I watched her fade away, and still somehow, I didn’t expect her to ever really die. It’s the finality of it, isn’t it? I keep expecting her to come out of the kitchen or walk in from the garden.”

She sighs and shakes her head. “Next week, I’ll step back into my normal boring life in West Hartford. Go to the office, plan the athenaeum fundraisers, decorate our house for the next holiday. But now there’s this huge empty hole. My mother’s gone, my kids are in college. Nothing will be the same.”

Cassie’s too detached to offer appropriate comfort. She watches her twin push back a stray lock of yellow-gray hair and feels an unusual twinge of envy.

No color tints, fasting, or skinny shots for Ana. She’s apparently never been at war with her comfortably padded mom-body. With guilty satisfaction, Cassie notes the sweat stains beneath her sister’s armpits. It’s a rare blemish in her sister’s usual composure. Anastasia, the first-born twin. The unshakably competent big sister, moving through the world with deliberate care and an eagle eye for disorder.

Cassie’s spent her entire life, nearly forty years, trying not to be like her twin sister.

Ana says, “Sorry it took me a while to drop off the flowers. There were so many, I had to make two trips.”

“Were they happy to get them?”

“They seemed to be. Oh, I nearly forgot.” Ana walks out to the porch and returns with a cluster of black-eyed Susans in a brown stoneware pitcher. “I felt a little embarrassed, giving these away to a nursing home. They’re so pitiful-looking. Do you know who brought them? Here.” She thrusts the pitcher at Cassie. “They can go on the kitchen table, I guess. Or I’ll dump them in the woods if you think they’re too ratty.”

“They’re okay. I like them.” Cassie carries the pitcher into the kitchen and sets it in the center of the wide oak table, then pokes at the stems to see if she can make them stand a little straighter. In the jungle of green leaves, her fingers touch a small card, limp with moisture. She wipes it off on the seat of her shorts and deciphers the uneven handwriting:

Marla, you’ve done well. Godspeed. Carl

It’s a strange thing to write on a funeral bouquet. Did their mother have a boyfriend that no one knew about? Cassie feels the ghost of a smile touch her face. She tucks the card into her back pocket and returns to the living room.

Ana’s still talking funerals and flowers. “A strange custom, isn’t it? Donating all those strong-smelling lilies and gardenias to old people who’re going to have their own funerals soon. I hate the scent of gardenias, don’t you? They always smell dirty, sort of musty. I can’t see why—” She stops abruptly, her shoulders sagging. “I’m babbling. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Cassie hesitates, then moves near and stretches a little to wrap her taller twin in a stiff hug. They stand uncomfortably close until Ana steps away.

Cassie breaks the awkward silence. “At least they get to enjoy Mom’s flowers, right? They won’t see their own.”

“I guess,” Ana says uncertainly. “Okay, I’ve got to get out of these things. Back in a sec.” She picks up her shoes and hat and disappears up the stairs.

When she returns, dressed in khaki shorts and an oversized pink tee knotted at the waist, Cassie’s busy dumping stacks of magazines and paperbacks into two boxes labeled RECYCLING. She holds up a yellow booklet, no bigger than a thin paperback novel. “Ana, look. A phone book from the year we were born.” It’s titled 1985, Winslow, East Winslow, Coulterville, Graves Parish. “The current one’s over there beneath the phone, so why’d Mom save this one?”

“She saved everything from the year we were born, newspapers to napkins. The bigger question is, why does the new phone book even exist? I can’t believe someone’s still printing them.”

“Because people here still have landlines, I guess.” Cassie retrieves the current directory from beneath the phone’s permanently tangled spiral cord. “The cell coverage sucks.”

“Cassie, please. Just keep the latest book and toss the old one. We don’t have time to examine everything page by page.” Ana wraps a scrunchy around her hair and pulls it up into a high pony. Selecting an empty carton, she heads back upstairs. “I’m going to start on the shelves in my old room. Maybe you can put together more of those banker boxes?” She points her chin at a stack of flat-packed cardboard.

“Okay.” But when Ana’s out of sight, Cassie takes the two phone books to the kitchen table. She sinks into a chair and sets them side by side.

The newer one is only slightly thicker than the one from 1985. Winslow and surrounding villages certainly haven’t expanded much in four decades. The directories have nearly identical covers, featuring photos of black-and-white cows grazing in a field of golden dandelions and impossibly green grass.

In 1985, she remembers, Winslow was a town of barely eight thousand people. And the flanking villages—Coulterville on the west and East Winslow, bordering Rhode Island on the east—were less than half the size of Winslow proper.

Graves Parish, on the northeast edge of Winslow, hasn’t been a real town for nearly a century. Even in 1985 it was nothing more than an artifact, a smudge on a byroads-and-bygones map. Now it must be only a few stone foundations beside a weed-covered path, eroded by storms and overtaken by the forest.

The phone book was another artifact. When Cassie was little, your phone book was your lifeline, how people found you before Google and PeopleSearch. Such a quaint concept, allowing—expecting—the phone company to publish your name, address, and phone number in a free directory for everyone to see.

Here, phone books are still a thing because many people still have landlines. So yes, these numbers get published in the little free book. Which is also chock-full of local advertising and large-print information about fire and police and social services.

In Marla Bousquet’s house, a phone directory also served as a message board, its front and back covers filled with random handwritten notes, their mother’s way of taking notes or starting a shopping list. Her unique cursive covers every available space on the front and back of both directories, old and new. Her distinctive scrawl squeezes along the edges and inside the white patches of clouds and cows, the spontaneous life notes of a quiet, considerate woman who preferred to scribble in the phone book rather than ask a caller to wait while she searched for a notepad.

Planting an elbow on the kitchen table, Cassie leans her chin on one hand as she runs a finger over words on the cover of the old directory, deciphering broccoli bread peppercorns Kleenex white vinegar cider vinegar. White vinegar for cleaning, cider vinegar for pickling, because cider vinegar has the milder flavor.

She finds 6/7 Monday – Marge, The Talisman. Overdue? which meant her mom might have been in trouble with the head librarian at the Winslow Public library. Marla wasn’t a fan of Stephen King or Peter Straub—the British cozies were more her style—so maybe it was Keith, their dad, who’d borrowed that year’s best-selling fantasy-horror novel.

Cassie puzzles over two other notes: AJ loafers? and a cryptic reminder to Call C. Androski, with a local number written large on a cow’s pale flank. She knows who AJ was, their mother’s closest girlfriend from way back in sixth grade, but she draws a blank on C. Androski. She checks the white pages but can’t find a listing for that name.

Another note, written in bright purple on a fluffy white cloud, looks more recent. Baby aspirin—ask Grace. Dr. Grace Gorham, she remembers, was the cardiologist who’d set up her mother’s heart bypass operation after her first stroke, nearly a decade ago.

She feels the heaviness swell again in her chest. Isn’t she done with weeping? How on earth will she survive the week if something so insignificant as an old phone book sets her off?

She rubs her face with a rough hand and tosses the ’85 directory in a recycling box. Done and dusted, just a relic from the past.

But curiosity tickles again, so she retrieves it and thumbs through the inside pages, looking for old familiar names and addresses. She finds teachers, shop owners, neighbors, Ana’s basketball coach.

Her sister’s steps sound on the staircase and there’s the muted clatter of a box being set on the floor in the front hall. “Cassie,” Ana calls, “come give me a hand with these collectibles. We need to figure out if there’s anything worth adding to the estate sale, or if it’s all going to charity.”

Poking her head through the kitchen doorway, Ana frowns at the sight of her sister, still sitting at the table.

Cassie holds up the older phone book. “Ana, did you see all of Mom’s old notes in here?”

“Yeah, she did that to every phone book we ever had.” The frown deepens. “Come on, Cass, we need to get rid of this stuff.”

“I can’t believe Graves Parish is still labeled as a town. See?”

Ana sighs and gives in, propping a hip against the wall and crossing her arms.

“Do you remember,” Cassie muses, “that Halloween when we were eleven? When Dad walked us through the woods to the lost village. At night, with flashlights. There was nothing there but old chimneys and cellar holes. It was really spooky. Remember how mad Mom got when she found out? She said Graves Village used to be called Grabtown. It was a place where bad things happened to naughty kids, especially girls. We had nightmares for a week.”

“Wow, you’re going way back.” Hunching her shoulders in a small shiver, Ana pushes herself away from the door frame. “Dad said there used to be a big barn up there, where all the kids hung out when he was young. It burned down, I think, before we were even born.”

She glances at her watch. “Come on, Cassie. Put that down. I can’t do all this by myself.” view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the Author:

1. What do you think of the title? Why do you think it was chosen?

2. When the twins discover AJ’s story about the 1985 murder, what did you think was going to happen? When did that understanding change?

3. As more details were revealed about Jimmy in AJ’s story, what were your thoughts/expectations?

4. What surprised you about the plot? Were there twists you didn’t see coming?

5. As the timeline shifts between present-day and 1985, the point-of-view shifts between third person close (Cassie) and first-person (AJ). Which did you prefer?

6. What’s your first impression of Marla in AJ’s story? How does that change?

7. What about Cassie? Is she a complicated, somewhat sympathetic character or do you see her as mostly selfish? How does that change?

8. Ana is the “good” twin in the contemporary story. Did anything about her surprise you?

9. What about Marsh? Is he a monster, a charming sociopath, or something else? Why did Cassie stay with him all those years, and why is she finally able to pull away?

10. Detective Androski is a bridge between past and present. What other role(s) does he play?

11. Consider other secondary characters from both stories: the Rolands, Jimmy’s wife Charlotte, the reporter Zach, Dotty Kellerman. What roles do they play?

12. This story touches on some hard truths and difficult themes (child abuse, trafficking). How did the author handle these topics?

13. There are other themes to consider: sisterhood, family loyalty, justice, adolescent peer pressure, the vulnerability of children, small-town secrets and failures. Which resonated with you, and why?

14. One theme is second-chances and redemption. How was this explored in AJ’s story? In the contemporary story?

15. How do you feel about the ending of AJ’s story (Marla on the bridge)? What did you like or dislike, and why?

16. What did you like or dislike about the ending of Cassie and Ana’s story? Were you left with questions?

Weblinks

»	Author's website
»	Book Review from U.S. Review of Books
»	Book Review from Booklife
»	Book review from Reedsy-"A Must Read"
»	Kirkus Review of Book

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