“Nothing better to do. And since Thamina…since your mother died, someone has to watch the place.” He headed over to the bar, ducked under the counter where the phone sat, and then stepped up onto his ledge. He pulled down a big pottery coffee mug, which looked like it had been hand-made.

  “That’s considerate of you,” I told him, moving over to the bar. I wrestled the phone stool around the corner of the bar and sat in it, one foot on the brass railing. As he poured coffee from a thermos jug into the mug, I added, “I could be a tea drinker. My mother was.”

  Hirom shook his head. “I got a sense about what people want to drink. I’m usually right.” He reached under the counter. I heard the distinctive sound of a fridge being opened. He lifted up a carton of cream, and pushed it and the mug toward me.

  “But you only serve beer and a spirit, here.”

  “And pop.”

  “So the odds of guessing what people are about to order are pretty short, aren’t they? One to three, in fact.”

  He headed for the other end of the bar. “I know what they want to drink, not what they’re going to order. Lots of times, it’s not the same thing. But people will settle when they have a real hankering to drink, which most folks stepping in here do have.” He came back with a cloth in his hand, and wiped the counter where coffee had dribbled. “Besides, my beer has something of a reputation. Folks like it. Or get to like it.” He grinned. “A long mugful and they’re converts.”

  “If your beer is like your spirits, that doesn’t surprise me.” I sipped the coffee. It was perfect, and I sighed.

  “See?” he said, with a big smile.

  “Yes, I see,” I agreed, putting the mug down. “Where do you brew your beer and your spirits? At home?”

  “Well, I have a little place in the woods, near here,” he said. “Got a nice little distillery setup, and a big iron pot to brew the beer in. Then the stink of hot hops doesn’t offend the Crossing.” He grinned.

  So did I. I didn’t know what hops smelled like, but I appreciated his thoughtfulness. “You live out there, in the woods?”

  “Most folk say I live right here.” Hirom gave a small laugh. “There’s a bit of a cabin there, where I doss down when I need to, but I seem to get by without much sleep. Too much to do.”

  “Too much to do, here?” I asked, feeling a sinking touch of guilt, that my mother had overworked her two employees.

  “Nah. This isn’t really work,” Hirom said, waving to take in the bar. “I mean real work. Hard work.”

  “You do that as well as work here?”

  “When I can.” He tossed the cloth back toward the end of the counter. It hung just on the edge, then decided to stay there. “I’m a bit of a failure in my family.”

  “You are?” I couldn’t imagine anyone thinking that way about him and I’d know him for a grand total of perhaps twenty minutes.

  “I came to own a forge by way of my father. It’s out in the woods with the rest of my gear.”

  I blinked. “You mean, an actual forge forge, for smithing?”

  “One of those.”

  “Your father gave it to you?”

  “My father died. I’m the only son.” He shrugged. “Metalwork is kind of a thing with my family. My uncles, cousins, they’re all metalsmiths. So was my father.”

  “And you…aren’t?”

  “I’d rather work with wood,” he said flatly. “There’s something about wood.” He smoothed his hand over the counter. The other hand, his right hand, lifted toward the beer barrels.

  “You made the barrels?” I asked.

  “They’re nothing. Wood is warm. Pliable. It bends for you if you know what you’re doing.”

  I studied the barrels. Clearly, Hirom knew what he was doing with wood. “That doesn’t make you a failure in anyone’s eyes…except your family. They really disapprove of you not being a metal worker?”

  “It’s a family thing.” Then he grinned. “I like making whiskey, too. Just as well, huh?”

  “You really serve just beer and whiskey to everyone who comes here?”

  “No one has ever complained,” he said. “Leastwise, not after the first glass.”

  “And you sell enough to cover costs?”

  “What costs? A bit of malt, hops, and wheat. Some barley, rye and corn…and time.” He shook his head. “The bar more than covers costs. The money maker was the dining room, though.”

  “Even with my mother as cook?” I was astounded.

  Hirom leaned on the bar with both elbows. “This is the Crossing,” he said, in the same tone that everyone had used to say that to me, so far. As if I was missing vital information. “Any paying guests have to eat here, because there’s nowhere else. So that’s breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.”

  “Snacks, too?” Snacks never made back their costs.

  “And people passing through nearly always stop here for a drink and something to eat,” Hirom went on.

  “Passing through to where?” I asked. “The road here only goes to here.”

  “The road you used?” Hirom smiled. “Once, a long time ago, it used to go all the way through to just south of Richville. But I meant the other road. We get travelers walking or riding the greenway most of the year except for deep winter.”

  “And solstice,” I murmured, remembering the recently departed guests. “What is the greenway?”

  “The other road,” Hirom said. “The intersection out there,” and he tilted his head a little, in the direction of the road past the inn. “That’s a crossroad. Rural route 224, and Haig Way.”

  Haig Way. Haigton. Haig Town. I nodded. “This town was formed to serve the greenway?”

  “That’s generally what most people think. There are no records we can find. No one even knows for sure how old the settlement is. But it’s old. Very old.”

  “And the inn is, too,” I surmised. “So this greenway. Haig Way. Where does it go to? From? Why do people walk it?”

  “There’s some strange folk out there,” Hirom said, with a smile. “Hikers walk trails all the time.”

  “It’s a hiker’s trail?” It was beginning to make sense, now.

  “More or less,” he said. “A few miles north of here and just off the greenway, there’s an outcropping of rock, rising up out of the ground like a giant’s finger. It’s worn smooth by the elements and there’s nothing on it, no carvings, no graffiti even, but some folks want to visit it, anyway. Put their hands on it and pray or whatever they do when they’re moved.”

  “Over a rock?”

  “They say it heals people. Or makes them feel better, at least. Oh, there’s all sorts of stories about the Finger.”

  “Folk tales…” I sipped the exceptional coffee. “So that draws the hikers.”

  “And day trippers and tourists, sometimes. You can walk the greenway all the way from Emeryville on the Oswegatchie River to Trout Lake, up north. Some people with very old memories say that the greenway once stretched much farther than that, but now all that is left is this little stretch.”

  “Nothing about this came up on Google Maps, when I was driving here.”

  Hirom grimaced. “We’re a bit forgotten, here. But word slowly passes. And this place…” He looked up at the ceiling, then back at me. “It gets by.”

  “I see.” I put the coffee down reluctantly. “Hirom, I need to find someone in the town to work as a cook here. Who in town knows everyone and could tell me who might be able to cook? And I need to prod the Sheriff’s department into dealing with my mother’s death. Is there an authority here? A spokesperson for the town?”

  Hirom grinned. “Same person for both questions.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “Olivia Desmond. She’s the mayor and the Crossing’s busybody.” Hirom closed one eye in a slow wink. “She’ll get you sorted out, no problems.”

  Chapter Nine

  Olivia Desmond lived right across the street from the inn. Her house, Hirom told me, was right on the corner and unmissable. A house on any corner is pretty obvious, so this time, I chose to believe the “unmissable” description. I pulled on my cotton jacket, and wished it was a down-filled parka. I’d bought it for winters in L.A., which were a different species to winters in upstate New York.

  I waited until it was fully light, so it was shortly after eight in the morning when I stepped outside and adjusted to the cold, then moved across the road.

  I hadn’t been able to pay a lot of attention to the town when we had arrived yesterday. I had been too busy looking for the hotel, and then looking for somewhere to park, after that.

  Now I looked around with sharp interest. My mother had lived here for twenty-nine years. I had been twenty-three and married for two years when she moved here with my father. I grew up in Yucaipa. My parents moving across the country to a hamlet I’d barely heard of, to live with my grandmother, who I had never met, had been a shock. Only, my mother had always hated the heat and the dryness of California.

  I still didn’t know what my father had thought of moving here. I have always assumed, as he disappeared a few weeks after moving here, that he had stated his opinion by his actions.

  Examining Haigton Crossing with an unbiased gaze might give me some hints about why my mother had stayed here, and why my father had not.

  The main road, which was Route 224 on the other side of the intersection, but was Main Street on this side, was comfortably wide and normal. The snow had been cleared off it, lingering only in the gutters. It didn’t have a yellow line down the middle. The asphalt was without potholes, although it was cracked.

  The inn was on the northwest side of the intersection, facing the sun, which was just peeping over the treetops and the roofs of the houses across the road. On the other side of the intersection, across from the inn, was an old building that looked like it might once have been a community hall. The roof had a sag in it that looked mortal, and the windows were covered in sheets of chipboard. There was no sidewalk or gutter on either side of the building, just a smooth snow blanket to the edge of each roadway.

  On the southeast corner of the intersection, there was nothing but patches of snow, dead weeds that thrust up in clumps, the last summer blooms dry and drooping from their fronds, and saplings holding up a thin covering of snow. Some time in the last few years, that corner of the intersection had been cleared of mature trees. The true tree line started fifty yards back.

  I could see nothing through the trees, for early morning shadows were thick beneath their boughs. Wide conifers were intermingled with the bare boughs of deciduous trees. I had no idea what type of trees they were. I have never been a gardener, and beyond a tree being evergreen or not, I was ignorant. But they were tall, and in summer, they were probably shady. Right now, the pine trees provided the only color.

  The houses directly across the road from the inn were small and I suspected they were very old. They looked a lot like the long streets of tract houses you could find in the really old L.A. suburbs, but even smaller. The lots were tiny—unless the back yards extended a lot farther than I could see. But the roofs of the houses in the next street looked to be close.

  The house on the corner had an old-fashioned loopy iron fence running along the sidewalk, one that I could have stepped over without too much effort. Behind the fence, under the snow cover, which was still thick because the house would keep it shaded during the day, were lumps and bumps that were probably pretty flowers and shrubs in summer.

  An opening in the fence allowed visitors onto the path that ran up to the porch, which was a low wooden deck with a steel roof curling over it. The back end of the roof had a thick layer of snow, and wood beams supported the front end. The beams each had curling wood brackets on either side. It wasn’t Victorian gingerbread, but it was close. It had been painted white and the gutter was dark green. So was the roof that covered the bungalow.

  I crossed the road, while glancing at the houses next to the mayor’s. They were all the same vintage and style. Small, old, but livable, with porches and steel roofs, and some of them had shutters beside the small windows. The walls of all the houses appeared to be rendered and painted. No modern siding showed anywhere, not even older wood siding.

  The mayor’s porch was closed in. Half-walls on the bottom, and windows across the top. The door was all glass.

  When I reached the door, a woman opened it and held it wide. “You must be Thamina’s daughter.”

  “Anna. You’re Mayor Desmond?”

  “Oh, I’m just Olivia to locals, dear. Come in.”

  I didn’t point out I wasn’t local. Annoying someone you wanted a favor from wasn’t smart. Instead I gave her a tight smile and stepped in as instructed.

  Farther along the porch, one of the men who had been sitting around the table in the bar last night was now perched upon an overturned plastic bucket, his hands moving among trays of seedlings sitting on a low table. He had greyish brown skin that still looked deeply wrinkled, even in the better light coming through the windows. His hair was grey, too, and stood up from his head in waves. He nodded at me.

  “This is Wim, my husband,” Olivia Desmond said, shutting the glass door and cutting off the cold air playing against my back.

  I hid my surprise. “Hello, Wim.” Olivia Desmond looked to be in her mid-forties, but Wim looked much older.

  The porch was a year-round living room. Rugs covered most of the floorboards, which had been sanded and varnished. The actual front door was solid wood, painted green, with windows at the top, and it was closed. It was directly opposite the glass door I’d just stepped through. Small windows were on either side of the central door.

  Beside the front door was a pot-bellied stove, with a black metal chimney running up through the ceiling. Through the front grate, I could see red-orange flames dancing and I could feel the good heat from where I stood by the glass door. The chill reached through the door and played against my back and calves. The heat against my middle made the chill feel even colder.

  Olivia Desmond moved over to a low armchair in the corner opposite her husband and his table of seedlings. She settled in the chair and crossed her legs, then waved me toward a pouffe that I suspected she had been using to prop up her feet. “How are you settling in?” she asked, as I obediently sat upon the pouffe.

  I felt like my knees were up by my ears, but it was better than standing and it put my eyes on the same level as Olivia’s, for she was not a large woman.

  Her hair was a dark chestnut brown. She wore it with a side part, and the rich waves hung to just above her collarbones. The ends curled under into a near-roll. It was a very old-fashioned style, but it suited her round face, soft pale skin, and the perfect cupid bow of her lips. She’d painted her mouth a bright red, which went well with the bright yellow cardigan she wore buttoned up and tucked into her brown, pleated skirt, which hung around her knees and upper calves. Underneath the cardigan, she wore a brown shirt that was a lighter shade than her skirt. It had a collar and a tie made of the same material, tied in a big, loose bow. The ends were tucked under the cardigan edges. Her shoes were square heeled loafers, the heels stacked by an inch.

  Everything about her was soft and pretty. She carried some extra weight, which merely rounded out any sharp angles. She looked perfectly coiffed and turned out, which made me feel itchy, in my travel-stained jeans and wrinkled jacket. I made myself let go of the fronts I was trying to straighten. “I don’t need to settle in,” I said, answering her polite question. “I’ll be heading back to Los Angeles. Which is why I came to speak to you.”

  “I see.” Olivia gave me a small smile. “That explains the rental car. But not why you came to see me.” One strongly curved and artificially thin brow lifted in query.

  “I have a couple of questions. Hirom, the barman—”

  “Yes, Hirom Addelburn.”

  “Hirom says you know everyone in Haigton Crossing—”

  She laughed.

  “That isn’t true?”

  “My dear, everyone knows everyone in Haigton Crossing.”

  “I know it’s a small town.”

  “Smaller than you think. Just how many of us do you think there are?”

  I lifted a hand, in a half-wave toward the houses to the right and behind this house we sat in. “Judging by the houses, a couple hundred, maybe?” I’d never stopped to estimate a population based purely upon appearances, before. “The highway sign by the intersection says a hundred and something. I don’t know how old the sign is, but even if it’s only a few years old, the population has probably increased since then.”

  This time, both Olivia and Wim laughed. It was a merry sound, but I didn’t feel like smiling. I waited them out, then lifted my own brow in query.

  Olivia touched her fingertip to the corner of her mouth, which was still curved up into a smile. “Let me see.” She held up her hand and touched the same finger to the tip of each finger on that hand, as she spoke swiftly. “There is me and Wim, and Hirom Addelburn. Then Ben, Harper and Broch. Trevalyan and Juda….” She paused with her fingertip on the second circuit of her hand. “Wim, who have I forgotten?”

  “Frida,” Wim said, without looking up.

  “Oh yes. The poor dear. Frida.” She touched another fingertip. “Then there was your mother, God rest her soul, which made ten. But now there is you and your daughter. That makes eleven.”

  I could feel my jaw trying to sag and held my teeth together while I stared at her. “Nine people? That’s all? But…all the houses….”

  Olivia nodded. Her expression was sad, but resigned. “The settlement has been in a spiral since the First World War. It had one hundred and ninety-five souls, then. That’s when the houses were all built. America was building houses everywhere for the returning soldiers and their new families, even here in Haigton. But by the end of World War Two, there were only sixty-eight of us left.”

  “But…the road sign…” I could feel my brain twisting on its stalk.

  “From the last census taken of the Crossing,” Olivia said, sounding exactly like a mayor should. “We’ve been overlooked by census-takers since then, but as we know exactly what our population is, we don’t mind.”