Chapter 9

Rowan didn't rush to the door.

She stood still for a few seconds, listening. No footsteps outside, just rain. She waited a little longer, then walked slowly and quietly over and picked the thing up from under the door.

It was a sheet of paper, folded neatly, one corner soaked through.

She unfolded it. One line, cut from newspaper headlines, letters in different sizes, pasted on:

The blue book shouldn't be in your hands. Put it back where it was, and pretend you never saw anything.

Rowan held the paper. Her palm was damp, and the edge of the sheet grew wet.

Put it back where it was. Pretend you never saw anything.

She stared at the letters for a long time. Cut from newspapers, the letters different sizes, some straight, some slanted—the safest way. No handwriting. Even forensically, there was no way to trace it. Whoever had done this was careful.

Pretend you never saw anything. Rowan said the words softly. Those six words weighed on her more than the threat itself. Because it meant: what he wanted her to give up wasn't a thing. It was the act of seeing. He wanted her to go back to being the shop owner who pretended she knew nothing, who'd found nothing.

But Rowan had seen too many people who pretended they saw nothing. In the city, she'd watched witnesses lower their heads on the stand and say I didn't see clearly. She'd watched family members hold a dead person's things and say I don't want to know. She'd watched family after family put forget it, it's over, let it go between themselves and the truth. She knew the weight of that way of living. It didn't go away. It just sat on the chest, like a damp cloth that never dried.

She didn't want to live that way anymore.

Put it back where it was. She looked at the cut-out letters in her hand and thought: did this person think she'd be like so many others in this town—gently put something hot back, pretend nothing had happened?

He didn't know her.

Whoever had slipped this under her door didn't know that the one thing Rowan Cassidy had never learned was how to pretend she didn't see something.

The blue book shouldn't be in your hands.

But Mr. Hale had handed it to her.

And the man outside had made a mistake. He'd said the blue book.

Rowan hadn't told anyone about the dark blue manuscript. She'd mentioned it to Toby once—the blue book—but Toby wouldn't write a note like this.

Which meant: either someone had been watching her shop, or someone had already looked through the box, that night, before she'd locked up.

Rowan took a breath, locked the door, pushed the desk against it, then sat back down and put the blue manuscript, the invoice, the newspaper, the photo into a locked metal box, and slid it into a corner behind the bookshelf where nobody could see.

When she was done, she sat in the dark, listening to the rain, and didn't move for a long time.

She thought of a lot of things.

She thought of eleven years in the city, of evidence locked in metal cabinets. She thought of the night she'd found the tiny mismatch between two nearly identical evidence tags—the thing that had become the last straw for her marriage, and the reason she'd moved back to Hollow Creek.

She'd thought coming back to this quiet town meant coming to a place where you didn't have to watch your back.

But tonight she'd learned: small towns slip hot things under your door on rainy nights, too.

Mabel jumped up on the table and settled by her hand, her tail brushing Rowan's wrist. Rowan looked down at her and laughed, a little bitterly. "Mabel, do you think they're scared I'll be frightened by a cut-up note?"

Mabel said, mrow, like she was saying: no.

Rowan sat a while longer. She thought about those years in the city, about the night she'd crouched in front of the evidence shelf, holding two nearly identical tags up to the lamp, comparing them line by line. It was a burglary case. The evidence was a crowbar and a footprint. Two boxes, but the tags didn't match. Someone had switched one tag.

She hadn't made a scene. She'd written it down, reported it. The person who'd switched the tags was found—a colleague she'd thought was a friend. The case closed, but she couldn't stay. She quit, divorced, packed, and moved back to Hollow Creek.

She hadn't come back to be a detective.

She'd come back to live a life where she didn't have to crouch in front of an evidence shelf at midnight, watching the people around her.

But tonight, she'd learned: Hollow Creek wasn't the place she'd thought it was. It just hid the things you had to watch out for deeper, more decently, in a way that was easier not to think about.

Rowan picked Mabel up and held her against her chest. She buried her face in the soft fur for a moment, then said softly, "It's okay. I'll watch. I know the way."

She sat a while longer, then stood up and walked to the bookshelf. She didn't take the blue book. She pulled out another one—a worn Hollow Creek yearbook, left by the previous owner, never sold.

She wasn't going to put anything back.

She wanted to see how many corners of this town she didn't know about, waiting to be opened.

She opened the yearbook's flyleaf. A version from over twenty years ago. Handwritten entries of previous owners. After the previous owner died, the record stopped. Rowan flipped through it, and on the last page, she saw a line in pencil—handwriting that looked startlingly like the handwriting in the blue manuscript:

The last page of this book is for you. Some books have to be balanced by someone.

Rowan's fingers tightened on the yearbook. She didn't touch the blue book again. She didn't tell anyone about the line.

She just sat in the empty shop after closing, with the rain outside, and laid the cut-out letters flat on the desk, beside the sheet music fragment, the invoice, the photo.

Outside, Hollow Creek went quietly black in the rainy night.

And the voice in her head—the voice she'd built over eleven years in a records room—said, softly and steadily, and it didn't stop:

This wasn't an accident.

An old man who'd taught music for thirty years was sent off by the word accident. Money that disappeared twenty years ago was blocked by the words audit of finances. A girl who never made it to conservatory was passed over by the words officially.

In this town, people were used to covering less-gentle things with gentle words.

Rowan looked at the cut-out letters again. She didn't tear them up. She didn't throw them away. She slid the rain-soaked sheet carefully into the old dictionary, next to the handwritten note. She was keeping them. Keeping them, so someday she could say to that person: Look. I saw. I remember. I didn't put any of it back.

She looked down at the old yearbook. The line on the flyleaf—the last page of this book is for you, some books have to be balanced by someone—handwriting so similar to the blue manuscript. She couldn't remember the previous owner's name, but from this moment on, she decided: when she had time, she would find out. Who was the previous owner of this bookshop? And what kind of "book" had he left behind in it?

Rowan blew out the lamp. In the dark, she held the blue book against her chest, like holding the unfinished last words of an old man who'd trusted her.

Outside, the rain kept falling. In the rain, there seemed to be other sounds, mixed in with the wind, fading in and out.

She gripped the blue book tighter. She didn't light the lamp. She just sat quietly, waiting for dawn.

And in that darkness, she understood one thing: the cut-out note told her to put the blue book back where it was. But Mr. Hale had handed it to her saying I'll come back for it in a couple of days. The "where it was" he meant was never the box. It was the part of his own story he'd hidden in the sheet music—the part he'd spent his whole life not daring to say out loud.

Someone wanted her to bury that story again.

She didn't intend to bury it.