Gwendy's Magic Feather

34

FORTY-EIGHT HOURS OF LAZINESS (she tries to tell herself she wasn’t actually being lazy, she was simply relaxing and decompressing—but she’s not buying it) is all Gwendy can tolerate. On Wednesday, she wakes up at dawn and goes for a run.

A sleety, granular snow is falling and the roads are slick with ice, but Gwendy pushes forward, the hood of her sweatshirt cinched tight around her face. Running through downtown Castle Rock is usually a comforting experience for Gwendy. She jogs her normal route—down Main Street, avoiding the unshoveled sidewalks, past the Common, the library, and the Western Auto, circling the long way around the hospital and heading uptown past the Knights of Columbus hall and back toward View Drive—and she feels a sense of rightness in her world, a sense of belonging. She’s traveled all over the country for her work—first as an ad exec, then as a writer/filmmaker, and finally as a public servant—but there’s only one Castle Rock, Maine. Just as her mother had told the stranger in the black hat at the mall, this is home.

But something feels off today.

This morning she feels like a visitor traveling through a foreign and unfriendly landscape. Her mind is cluttered and distracted, her legs sluggish and heavy.

At first she blames this feeling on the way her phone call with Ryan ended the night before—so abrupt and unsettled. After hanging up, she cried herself to sleep with worry.

But when she passes in front of the sheriff’s station as she makes her way uptown, she realizes it’s something else entirely. For the first time, she understands how much she’s dreading the difficult task that awaits her later that morning.