The Hollow Beneath Bellwood
Lillian Ashworth hasn't slept properly since she returned to Bellwood, and at 2:47 a.m. the telephone in her rented room above the Marrow Creek Diner delivers the call she has been dreading without knowing why. A child is missing, and the case brushes against a decades-old vanishing Lillian cannot stop reliving. Reluctantly drawn into the investigation, she finds herself trading uneasy silences with Dispatch Officer Briggs, trading evidence with the unflappable Medical Examiner Paul Yates, and trading threats with Otis Marling, a man whose family name carries more weight than any badge in town. The deeper she digs, the more the ground shifts beneath her: Helena Velling and her sister Nora move through the case like shadows of a single memory, a mysterious woman in a wide-brimmed hat appears wherever the truth tries to surface, and Ezra Quill, the journalist who should have been her ally, may be protecting a secret of his own. Judge Aldous Trent looms over every conversation, Cassius Reeve's name surfaces in places it should not, and federal agents, tactical teams, and archivists begin circling Bellwood like wolves scenting something rotten underground. Every lead points downward, into a hollow the town has papered over with money, silence, and convenient forgetting. Lillian can walk away, can let Bellwood bury its dead and its living in peace, or she can keep pulling the thread until whatever is hidden beneath comes crawling into the light. The choice belongs to her, and so do the consequences.