Various interesting things

Chapter One: The Parcel at 2:17 At exactly seventeen minutes past two, the dead watch began to tick.

The rain had been falling over Bellhaven since before dawn, polishing the cobblestones until the old

The first time my mother called me selfish, I was eight years old. My younger brother, Julian, had torn

The string quartet was halfway through the final movement when the youngest violinist lowered her bow.

The string quartet stopped in the middle of a note. For one suspended moment, the unfinished melody seemed

Chapter One: A Face That Should Not Have Existed Chicago had learned how to look away. People hurried

PART ONE: THE SOUND THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN THERE The baby had been silent for four minutes.

Mara Ellison kneanged its tempo before anyone else in the ballroom noticed. The violins softened by half a breath.

The watch lay beneath a walnut cabinet in the oldest corridor of Ravensmere House, hidden behind a curtain

A second earlier, the wolf observation deck had been filled with ordinary weekday sounds: children arguing