Behind her, the church bell rang five times.
The sound rolled through Red Creek as Clara stood motionless beside the empty stall.
Then a familiar voice spoke near her shoulder.
“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
Clara spun.
Sheriff Amos Rusk stood beside the counter, broad-bellied and silver-haired, one hand resting above his gun belt. He had served Red Creek since before Clara was born. To most people, he was dependable and fatherly.
To Clara, he was the man who had raised her after her father vanished.
She forced her fingers to relax around the button.
“A customer bought everything.”
Rusk glanced at the money.
“That customer paid too much.”
“He seemed generous.”
“Generous men are usually hiding expensive sins.”
The sheriff studied her face.
“What did he say?”
“Nothing important.”
Rusk’s gaze remained fixed on her for a beat too long.
Then he smiled.
“You should go home before dark.”
Clara nodded.
Rusk walked away, but not before glancing toward the road where the stranger had disappeared.
Clara waited until he turned the corner.
Then she opened her fist again.
The silver button gleamed in the dying light.
On its reverse side, scratched into the metal, were three words:
**MIDNIGHT. OLD MILL.**
Clara’s heart hammered.
The camera seemed to follow her without interruption as she gathered the money, closed the stall, moved through the fading market, and climbed the narrow stairs to the room she rented above Mrs. Hale’s laundry.
Inside, she locked the door.
Her room contained little: a bed, a washbasin, two dresses, a stove, and a wooden chest that held everything she had left of her childhood.
Clara dragged the chest into the open and lifted the lid.
At the bottom lay a folded gray coat.
Her father’s coat.
She pulled it free and searched the brass buttons.
Every button bore the circle and lightning bolt.
One was missing.
Her knees weakened.
For twenty years, Clara had believed the missing button was lost the night her father disappeared.
Now it had returned in the hand of a stranger.
She sat on the floor, clutching the coat.
A memory rose inside her.
Her father kneeling before her.
Rain rattling the window.
His hands holding her shoulders.
“If I do not come back, Clara, trust no one who tells you they know what happened.”
“Not even Sheriff Rusk?”
A long silence.
“Especially not him.”
Clara’s pulse stumbled.
She had buried that memory beneath years of grief. As a child, she had convinced herself she misunderstood.