Chapter 7

Friday was market day. The Hollow Creek farmers' market set up in the square at the end of High Street, running from May through the last week of October. The stalls were piled with pumpkins, kale, jars of amber honey, and Marnie's bakery table—always with a line, the smell of cinnamon rolls carrying for two blocks.

Rowan had set up her own stall: a few stacks of old books and a small box of loose-leaf teas, the bookshop's mobile location. The autumn sun was warm. People browsed the books, bought tea, or just stopped to say hello. She'd been in town for over six months before the townspeople started to treat her as one of their own. After Mr. Hale's death, more people seemed to know her. Several older women nodded at her: Rowan, sorry for your loss—you knew Mr. Hale, didn't you?

Marnie was next to her, calling out to people in a voice sweet as syrup.

"Hey, Sheriff Crowe!" Marnie waved at the crowd. "Cinnamon roll? Fresh out of the oven!"

Jesse Crowe walked over. He didn't take a roll. He nodded at Rowan first. He wasn't in uniform today—an old plaid shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, looked a few years younger, less like a sheriff. He stood at the stall, the sunlight catching the lines around his eyes, the kind of face that had been shaped by slow small-town days—steady and gentle.

"How's business?" he asked.

"Okay." Rowan smoothed the cover of an old Little Women. "Old books. More browsers than buyers."

Jesse smiled. His eyes paused on her row of teas. "Chamomile?"

"Yeah," she said. "Sleep aid. Autumn's here. Half the town can't sleep."

Jesse made a sound, didn't answer. After a pause, he said, almost casually, "Rowan, how's that box of sheet music coming along?"

Her heart skipped a beat. Her face stayed calm. "Slowly. There's a lot of it."

"If you need, you can drop it off at the station. I'll find somewhere to store it. Save space in your shop."

She heard something in the words, but she didn't push. She just nodded. "Sure. When I'm done organizing, I'll bring it by."

Jesse didn't say more. He bought two cinnamon rolls, paid, and was about to leave when he stopped, his back to her. "Rowan. The coroner's report on Mr. Hale came back."

Rowan held her breath.

"Accidental overdose," Jesse said. "The amount left in the bottle, and his heart condition—it lines up." He turned. His gray-blue eyes were steady. "So. It was an accident."

He walked away. But Rowan had the feeling that one word in his sentence had landed lighter than the rest—the so.

So it was an accident. As if he was trying to convince himself.

She watched him go. The words—the amount in the bottle and his heart condition lined up. It sounded airtight, like a finished report. But Rowan had spent too many years in a records room. She knew how slippery lines up was. If the person writing the report wanted it to line up, anything lined up.

She looked down at her row of teas. Chamomile. Sleep aid. She thought: a man who organized his sheet music alphabetically and sharpened every pencil—would he be the kind of person who lost track of how many pills he'd taken, and accidentally overdosed on his own heart medication?

She didn't know. But she suspected that the unnatural lightness in Jesse's voice was a doubt he couldn't quite push down.

At the end of the afternoon, Marnie squeezed over with two hot chocolates, her voice low. "Rowan, I'll tell you something. But you didn't hear it from me."

"Okay."

"I just heard," Marnie's eyes were bright, "that before he died, Mr. Hale didn't just leave sheet music with you. He was at Leonard Pritchard's place. The hardware store. Someone saw him there three days before he died, walking out in the afternoon, face like thunder, holding a piece of paper."

Rowan's hand tightened on the hot chocolate.

"And another thing." Marnie was getting into it. "People say Mr. Hale and Leonard were actually close when they were young. Served on the school board together. Then they drifted apart. Nobody knows why. Nobody'll say. Some guess it was about the church organ. Some say it was something older."

She leaned in, almost whispering. "Rowan, you tell me—a man who went to the hardware store three days before he died and walked out clutching a piece of paper—do you think that man just accidentally took too many heart pills?"

Rowan didn't answer. She finished the hot chocolate, set the cup on Marnie's tray. "Marnie, can you find out what was on that paper?"

Marnie blinked, gave her a leave it to me look. "Consider it done. There's nothing in Hollow Creek I can't find out."

That night, after the shop closed, Rowan sat at her desk. The blue manuscript and the altered invoice were spread in front of her.

She took a fresh sheet of paper and listed what she had: three days before he died, Mr. Hale had gone to Pritchard's Hardware, walked out looking ill, holding a paper. In the sheet music box: a five-thousand-dollar piano invoice, an old newspaper about a girl who never made it to conservatory, a blue notebook with five thousand dollars, it wasn't your fault, it was mine. Ruth said the scholarship treasurer was Leonard Pritchard, Mr. Hale was the advisor, and both signatures were required.

Each clue looked like a coincidence on its own. But when the same name, the same money, the same date tied them together, they stopped being coincidences.

She thought of Marnie's line—Hale and Leonard had been close, then drifted apart for no reason. How did a respectable friendship drift apart for no reason? Usually because something was between them. Something that couldn't be talked about.

She thought of Jesse's it lines up. She thought of Mr. Hale's hand gripping the sheet music. She thought of how do you expect me to pretend I didn't see that money. She thought of Leonard Pritchard's face—always respectable, always airtight.

She opened the manuscript to the last page. The line was still there.

Five thousand dollars. It wasn't your fault. It was mine.

She looked at it for a long time. Then she took the crumpled note from behind the dictionary and laid it side by side with the sheet music fragment.

Stop digging through those sheet music books, the note said.

Rowan traced the words with her fingertip and said softly, to no one, "But Mr. Hale—you handed them to me."

She remembered him sitting on this tall stool, drinking tea that evening. He'd said: Rowan, when I was young, I thought if I put up with things long enough, they'd pass. But the thing that never passed was me. He'd said it calmly, as if he'd thought about it for years and finally understood.

Rowan hadn't said anything then. She'd just refilled his tea. Now she understood: that evening, Mr. Hale had probably already known what he was going to leave in the box, and what he was going to hide there. He'd probably already known he didn't have much time.

Outside, the Hollow Creek autumn night was quiet. Just the wind moving through the pines, again and again, like a story that hadn't been finished, waiting for someone to listen to the end.

And across the street, Pritchard's Hardware still had a light on. Someone was still sitting there, awake.