Chapter 1
Present Day
The fall winds whispered through the trees, the leaves brightly aflame with the orange, yellows, and browns of the impending autumn. The sunlight cast its fiery glow upon the world and kept her bathed in golden light, still warm enough for short shirt sleeves. Mother Nature was fighting the cyclical battle between the summer departing and the arriving winter. The days of fun in the sun, a swim in the lakes, and chasing lightning bugs and butterflies were over. Soon, the frost would land heavily on the gardens of flowers, shriveling their stems and lulling the plants to sleep. The winter would weigh the world down with heavy, drifting snow, thick and white and cold. She would lose the fight, eventually, to the bitter winds of winter, but for now, the spicy fragrance of burning leaves floated heavily on the air as neighbors fought to clear their yards of this year’s foliage.
Birds chirped to each other, calling for their mates, as they hurriedly prepared to move south for the winter. And for those who stayed, they were busy putting the finishing touches on the nests they would use to house themselves when Jack Frost came to town. The deer hid further back in the wooded areas, wary of hunters, and only walked at night when the moonlight was hidden by clouds. On the floors of these painted woods, creek beds ran fast with water, moving forward in their never-ending journey to the countless lakes that spread out through Vermont. Along the skyline, mountains already capped with white adorned the horizon, enshrouded by wispy clouds that coiled around their peaks.
Orchards ran full of apples, ripe and waiting to be picked, and syrup was harvested from the tall maple trees. Honey bees drifted a little slower, now that the weather had turned cool, and landed upon chrysanthemums as the monarch butterflies landed on the blue didiscus in the early autumn flowerbeds. Farmers moved their dairy cows through the fields as they happily munched upon the grasses on the outskirts of town.
It was late September in Maplewood, a sleepy little community where everyone knew each other just as their families had generations prior. Brooke Elementary School ran from kindergarten to eighth grade and from there, students walked across the street to Thomas Jefferson High School, where they sat for another four years before being unleashed on the world. Most of the adults in the town worked for IBM Computers—the largest employer in the state—or did as their relatives had for many years and tended dairy farms or orchards.
Restless youths, who found their wanderlust too much for a small place like this, would hit the road to universities across the country or to larger cities like New York or Boston. Yet sometimes, when the road they traveled seemed a bit too long, they would find their way back down State Road 12 and were greeted with the sign that welcomed them back to Maplewood: population 3,000. They’d settle down and raise their families in a place where crime was limited to adolescent misbehavior and the occasional drunken brawl at the local pub on a Saturday night.
On Sundays, three-quarters of the town could be found at St. John the Apostle Catholic Church, while the others either didn’t go to church at all or attended other denominations in smaller venues. During the week, people who had forgotten Father Mark Ambry’s message about gossip found their way down to the post office to wag their tongues about local news and recent scandals. The mail clerk, Ms. Rose Demeter, a sixty-two-year-old veteran of the mail room, was sure to be in the know about who went where, who was sleeping with whom, and whether the good reverend from St. Joe’s would be presiding over the fall festival in a few short weeks. She narrated the stories to her gray-haired followers under a mask of concern for the community, which everyone appreciated. Even the potbellied chief of police for the town, Don Lage, stopped by the mail room once a week if he had a question or two about things that went down in “his town.”
On Main Street, in the town square, was a park where people met in the summertime for barbecues and to let their little ones run wild while they chatted each other up. The street housed various little boutique clothing stores, a candy confectionery, a burger joint, and an Irish pub with the only decent dance floor in town. Local bands played there on the weekends, and the place would be packed wall-to-wall with the younger crowds, while Crowley’s Bar, across the street, housed the blue-collar and retiree bunch.
Beautiful old homes lined the streets of the little burg; each lawn was manicured and bordered with roses, flowerbeds, and shrubbery. Some had porch swings and others had chairs, where people could sit on warm evenings after a hard day at work and soak up the evening air. Wind chimes tinkled as the night breezes wove their way through the streets and pushed leaves and rose petals along the walk.
Now, most of the people didn’t venture outside as the sun went to bed earlier this time of year and the air was just a bit too nippy. Instead, they piled into the house to make sure their children’s homework was finished and their families were fed. Soups, stews, pot roasts, and apple pie replaced the summer cuisine of barbecue and ice cream, and families gathered at tables to eat with each other and watch movies.
Tourists visited the area all year round, drawn to Vermont for skiing at the numerous resorts and to swim in her many lakes. Lake Veronica, the second deepest body of water in the state, was located on the outskirts of Maplewood. The west side of the lake was littered with cabins and sandy beaches, where bathers swam and fished her water. She stretched out for fourteen miles and was 250 feet at her deepest. On the other side sat an old lake house, built into a rising hill. The Tudor Revival had been empty for many years after her occupants had passed away. On the property, there was a boat house and a pier that ran into the lake.
As the sun faded away behind the mountains and darkness stretched itself over the town, lights burned inside this house once more.