An early passage
Chapter One
By noon the road had gone white with heat. It ran past the last mailbox, past the field where the grass had burned down to wire, and then it gave up pretending it belonged to anyone.
Mara drove with both windows open. Dust came in and settled along the dash, in the seam of her sleeve, on the back of her tongue. She had not been home in eleven years, but the turn toward the old place arrived beneath her hands before she saw it.
At the gate, the chain hung loose. The house stood beyond it with its blinds drawn, holding the afternoon inside like a secret. Nothing moved in the yard. Even the crows had found somewhere else to be.
She killed the engine and listened. For a moment there was only the ticking of the cooling metal. Then, from somewhere behind the house, came the sound of something dragging slowly through the dry grass.