The Hollow Meridian

Three hours from Bangor, the fog swallows Route 9 whole and Margot Kline pulls her mother's Volvo onto the shoulder, wipers beating a stubborn rhythm against the murk. She was told Ruth died two days ago. She has just arrived to claim the estate. The house sits on the hollow meridian, a line drawn through this coastal Maine town that divides it into two halves that have not spoken in twenty years. No map marks it. No one explains it. But Dale Fitch, the constable who met her at the airport, won't meet her eyes when he says the words, and Cal Brennan, the town's only mechanic, has already flagged her as the one who crosses. Inside the house, Margot finds Ruth's study locked, her desk scattered with half-finished letters addressed to people who appear in no phone book, and a brass compass that points not north but toward the meridian line. Dr. Alan Petrov, who treated Ruth in her final days, claims the old woman was a cartographer of something that wasn't land. Simone Duval, a French-born widow next door for thirty years, says Ruth made everyone here afraid of where they stood. Gerald Voss and Owen Harwick, the town's two oldest men, refuse to cross the line to hand Margot the deed. The fog lifts on the third day. What the hollow meridian actually divides becomes clear: not a town, but a promise Ruth Kline made to a man named Marcus Fell, a promise Ray Sutter and Dr. Lena Marsh have spent two years keeping buried. Margot can burn the letters and drive away, or she can cross the line and read them in full. If she reads them, the two halves of the town will finally be forced to meet, and the meeting will not be quiet.