The Hollow Hours
June Holleran hasn't driven the back roads into Thornbury in seven years, but a rattling heater and a rain that won't let up push her silver Subaru up the last rise into town on a cold October evening. She tells herself she's only passing through, just long enough to check on her mother Maeve and her brother Ewan, to settle the old house on the ridge, and to leave again before anyone notices she's been gone. Thornbury, however, has other plans. Margot Calloway has vanished. The sheriff won't say when the search stopped, and the neighbors, Walter Pike, Huck Sage, Augusta Bell, Tess Hayworth, Abigail Mori, answer every question with a look that slides sideways. Cass Delacroix, the editor of the county weekly, hints that the story is older than anyone wants to admit, while Delaney Pike and Theo Sage carry the kind of grief that has been trained into silence. Even Mrs. Belmonte, who once knew every secret on the ridge, pulls her door shut before June can finish her sentence. The deeper June digs, the more Thornbury feels less like a town and more like a sealed room, its hollow hours measured out in closed doors and unspoken names. A discovery in the old house changes everything: proof that Margot didn't leave willingly, and a reason to suspect that someone June trusts has been lying for years. June can take what she knows to the police and walk away with her life intact, or she can stay in Thornbury long enough to crack open the case, and risk becoming the next name the town refuses to speak.