Coopers Valley: Sequel to Coopers Crossing

By Daniel Cross

WELCOME TO COOPERS VALLEY, MR. MORROW. GOOD LUCK MAKING SENSE OF IT.

Coopers Valley, Indiana. A peculiar town. Hard to pinpoint on a map. Inhabited by people who aren’t quite there. And carefully watched over by . . . someone.
To this fabled “Town of a Thousand Stories” comes Matt Morrow, a reporter investigating two unsolved missing persons cases. His real purpose? To restore a ruined reputation and redeem himself for a tragic mistake.
He soon finds himself in the company of beautiful Mrs. Zimmer, a police aide assigned to help his research. But even as he is powerfully drawn to this mysterious widow with the haunted eyes, he begins to suspect she’s involved in the two old cases.
As the hours pass his suspicions mount. Why won’t she give him a straight answer? What is she hiding? And how does she know so much about him and his own dark past?
As Morrow searches for answers, Dilly dodges his questions and offers instead entertaining stories about the townsfolk. Stories too fantastic to be true. Or are they?
The conflict between them mounts until they finally uncover the truth about themselves . . . and the shocking secret at the very heart of the town itself.
Coopers Valley. Where stories come alive.

Cover art by Leah Diekhoff studiophantasmic.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781663254283

Daniel Cross

Daniel Cross is the pen name of J. V. Shepherd, an author living in Indianapolis with his wife Anne. Among Daniel Cross's novels: A detective trilogy, Lou Baltimore, P. I. A. set in Indianapolis. The first book of the series, Falling Objects, appeared in 2009. The following novels, Blues for Lefty and Tea for Three, are in manuscript and are scheduled to be published in 2019 and 2020. A suspense trilogy with elements of fantasy, Windmill, Indiana. The first book, Welcome to Windmill, appeared in 2010, followed by Rabbit's Foot in 2016. The third book, Sweet Dreams, is in manuscript and is scheduled to be published in 2021. A trilogy of story-novels titled The Cooper Trilogy. The first book, Coopers Hollow, appeared in 2011. Its main story continues though a sequel, Coopers Crossing, to appear in early 2019. A third-and-final volume, Coopers Valley, is in planning. All three books offer a continuing story of mystery and revenge incorporating shorter related stories, all with a "Twilight Zone" taste. All Daniel Cross books are set in Indiana.

Book preview

Copyright © 2023 J. V. Shepherd.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

844-349-9409

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-5427-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-5428-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023911885

iUniverse rev. date:  07/28/2023

To Roger and Doyn, my parents: They gave me love, a name, a home and my first typewriter.

CONTENTS

PRELUDE

HEADS OR TAILS?

951 MULBERRY STREET

SUZI

THE INITIAL TREE

NISSY, NILLY AND DALE

MY BIG TV ADVENTURE

THE CLICKY MACHINE

THE UNICORN IN THE PANTRY

THE NIGHT THE MERRY-GO-ROUND GOT LOOSE

GYPSY GIRL

THE GYPSY CARAVAN

THE CASE OF THE VANISHING MAYORS

THE LETTER

THE LITTLE ROOM

POSTLUDE

MAYOR’S FATE STILL UNKNOWN

From The Coopers Valley Daily Chapter, July 20, 1965

By Jay Dalton, Reporter

Mr. Coopers Valley Still Missing After Five Years

Today would have been Jack Van Camp’s thirty-ninth birthday, an event traditionally celebrated as a city holiday.

This day, though, there are no fireworks, no parade, no celebration of any kind. Nor has there been one for the last five years—ever since the popular mayor, nicknamed Mr. Coopers Valley, vanished without a trace March 14, 1960.

Five years on in their investigation, Coopers Valley Police Chief Tom Whitacre says the CVPD has interviewed dozens of witnesses and followed up on scores of tips. Clues, however, remain elusive.

The case remains open, Whitacre said. We don’t believe that Jack Van Camp willingly left this town he loved so much. We will keep looking for him, and we will leave no stone unturned.

Van Camp, according to town lore, arrived in 1955 with neither name nor memory. He quickly became a familiar figure around town. His knack for civic development and his uncanny knowledge of townspeople led to his election as the newly-named city’s first mayor.

In that role, Van Camp led Coopers Crossing, as it was called then, through a boom in population growth and business development, earning the town the nickname (one of several) The Town that Jack Built.

Van Camp was last seen on March 14, 1960. Anyone with knowledge of his whereabouts should call the Coopers Valley Police Department at ST7-9803. Ask for Mrs. Zimmer.

*

Predecessor Also Missing

In a strange coincidence, Mr. Van Camp’s civic predecessor, Leonard Hughes Ott, similarly disappeared two years before. Another popular figure among the town’s citizens, he is credited with putting Coopers Crossing on the map, according to Interim Mayor Bob Hollis.

Ott, a World War I veteran, retired from General Motors in Indianapolis and moved to Coopers Hollow, as the town was then called, in 1948. A bachelor like Mr. Van Camp, he bought and refurbished the town’s oldest house, the landmark Cooper House, and undertook a hobby of story-writing.

He soon established himself as a familiar figure throughout town, earning the unofficial title of Mayor of Coopers Crossing for his frequent walks through town, his amazing knowledge of so many of the townspeople and his lively support—both financial and civic—of the town’s astounding growth.

A beloved elder figure considered the patriarch of the town, Mr. Ott was last seen on January 3, 1958. Anyone with knowledge of his whereabouts should call the Coopers Valley Police Department at ST7-9803.

*

Townspeople: ‘Nothing Unusual Here’

What does the town think of all this? For the citizens of Coopers Valley, the Mystery of the Missing Mayors seems just two more unexplainable happenings in a town known (and nicknamed) for them—the Town of a Thousand Stories.

After all, Mayor Van Camp himself claimed to have arrived in town quite out of nowhere. And it was none other than him who once proclaimed Coopers Crossing an out-of-the-ordinary town full of out-of-the-ordinary people.

In the end, maybe all that can be said for certain about his fate and that of his predecessor is that it is out of the ordinary.

* * *

PRELUDE

I came to Coopers Valley in the fall of 1965 to solve two mysteries. Along the way I was drawn into a third. One older, deeper and much darker than either.

That mystery was a woman. She had dark hair, small hands and Gypsy eyes. It was the eyes that started it all. Everything else followed.

*

But first, a word about this most peculiar town.

Coopers Valley, Indiana, formerly Coopers Crossing and before that Coopers Hollow, has had a short but decidedly strange history.

Popping up almost overnight, then growing at an unnatural pace, the town was within a decade filled with people who had had the most extraordinary experiences . . . or so claimed.

The town’s, and townspeople’s, reputation for the bizarre, outlandish and supernatural quickly drew plenty of sightseers eager to find out for themselves if all the tales were true: Tales of people disappearing, genies popping from lamps, people swapping souls, balloons stalking people, radios broadcasting the future’s news, miniature mermaids basking in fountains and more.

As for the town’s phenomenal growth—Rumor (and tangible evidence) confirmed that people weren’t the only things appearing there, either overnight or in several cases in broad daylight. Factories cropping up over a weekend. Full-grown trees sprouting unseen in an afternoon. Roads opening where only woods stood before. Whole families materializing almost instantaneously, complete with their houses. Most curiously, all these appearances seem to have occurred without witnesses.

Beyond these anomalies was the town’s peculiar geography, often remarked by visitors and even studied by state cartographers. (Yes, there are such things.) The town appears on the map of Indiana somewhere around the south-central part of Sycamore County—around eight o’clock if the state of Indiana were a clock with Indianapolis as its center.

Efforts to map exact distances to surrounding towns, however, have proven strangely unsuccessful. Indeed, visitors returning home from Coopers Valley often remark that the distance driving to Coopers Valley does not equal the distance returning from it. Others have observed that distances to surrounding towns do not always makes sense in a geographical way.

Nonetheless, there Coopers Valley sits. It is a paradox in the form of an ordinary Hoosier farm community. An enigma situated somewhere, no one is quite sure where, among the fields, woods and dusty back roads of Indiana.

This strange town drew me, Matt Morrow, journalist, not for its geographic anomaly or its unaccountable population growth or even its residents’ supernatural tales. No, my interest was more a matter of the everyday world of facts, possibly even of crimes. What drew me was this question:

What happened to this town’s last two mayors?

As an investigative journalist in Indianapolis, this question had caught my attention years before, when I read that two of this community’s mayors disappeared in succession without a trace, the first in early 1958, the second in spring of 1960. Both cases had both been thoroughly investigated by local and state authorities, and subsequently shelved as Unsolved.

While I have no particular interest in finding missing mayors (As far as I’m concerned, we have plenty to spare), my reporter’s news sense told me there was an untold story here: The two events surely were related. After all, while one mayor’s disappearance is a mystery, two mayors’ disappearances from the same small town are—What? A plot? A conspiracy? Something more than coincidence, anyway.

I wanted to find out more. I wanted to know what happened. And I wanted to write a sensational story revealing it all. Maybe, too, I hoped that doing so would restore my ruined reputation after all that had happened to me.

This was the mission, then, that brought me to Coopers Valley on a gloomy rain-promising November morning, and to the Coopers Valley Police Department headquarters.

And there my mission met its first obstacle.

* * *

1.

What the hell do you want? Police Chief Tom Whitacre snarled. This was my greeting when I stepped into his office.

He was a short man but broad, tucked into a too-tight police uniform whose shirt buttons puckered in a row up his belly like so many navels. Two close-set eyes beneath a single eyebrow darted a glance at the scar over my right temple before checking over the rest of me. His long chin jutted out like the blade of a coal shovel. I was vaguely reminded of a chimp.

His opening greeting pretty much set the tone for what followed.

To his question I replied that I was there to research the mysterious disappearances of the town’s last two mayors. That I was an investigative reporter working for a Bloomington paper; I didn’t say which one. And that I had sent a letter ahead of time explaining my project. (Not true.)

He told me bluntly that he hadn’t received my letter. That everything known about the two cases had been made public by his office at the time. That the two cases were now long cold. And that, again, he had no time for me.

"Go to the library and check the back issues of The Coopers Crossing Herald or The Daily Chapter," he growled, turning away.

I told him that I had already spent a day in the town’s library doing just that. (Not true.) And that I also had spent several days studying accounts of the disappearances from other newspapers in the surrounding cities—Bloomington, Crawfordsville, Terre Haute, and even the smaller towns like Windmill and Luett. (True.)

The chief listened, grinding his big lower jaw sideways and nodding impatiently the whole time. When I was finished replying to him, he told me that the newspapers knew as much as he did about the two cases. He couldn’t oblige me with his time, he said yet again. And he had present cases to deal with. Good day and good luck to you, sir.

I played my second card. I told him that I had also come to write a feature on the strange town itself for a national travel magazine. (Not true.)

What magazine? he wanted to know.

The one that pays me the most, I told him cutely. I explained that I was doing this job freelance. I was banking on a hunch that he didn’t know a lot about how things worked in my business, and I was right.

Well, he grudgingly allowed, he couldn’t very well stop me from going around town asking people questions about the place.

That was a start. I built on it. Then I’d like to start with you, Chief Whitacre.

I thought his vanity would kick in here, but I was wrong. He shook his head. He had no time to be interviewed—even though he admitted, flattered in spite of himself, that he knew this curious town and its curious citizens like the back of my hand. Still, he said he had too much work to do. He turned away again.

I played a third card. Then I’ll just go off on my own, without input from the chief of police.

You do that, Mr. Morrow. His tone was not so sure now.

Of course, I can’t predict what the angle will be.

It didn’t take the man long to catch my meaning. I could almost see flashing across his mind the line Police Chief Whitacre declined to comment for this story. He gave me a cagey look, then rose from his desk, stepped to a side door, opened it and leaned in.

Dilly. He curled his finger at someone I couldn’t see.

I saw a small silhouette move behind the door’s frosted glass and huddle with him. The two silhouettes kept their voices low, but I still heard enough to catch the tenor of the conversation. He was telling the other person—a woman by her outline—to take me on a quick tour, be nice to me, make sure I would print a flattering story about the town, and send me off with a wave and a smile. Then get the heck back to work.

The tone of her whispered response and the movements of her head signaled she had different ideas. Pleading press of work, maybe. I heard her use the word escort and nursemaid, and saw her shake her head emphatically. There was no doubt she was unhappy with the assignment.

In the end her boss won out. In the doorway he turned to me. Mrs. Zimmer will show you around and answer your questions.

The name rang a loud bell—more like a klaxon. The silhouette stepped out from behind the frosted glass and into the chief’s office, becoming a person. Specifically, a woman, mid-thirties, holding an open file folder in one hand and a pencil in the other. This was a busy secretary or clerk in the middle of some task.

This was also Dilga Zimmer. I had lucked out. This was the woman who, according to accounts, was the last person to see Jack Van Camp (Missing Mayor Number 2). She had been at the top of my list of people to interview. And here she was, available—if seemingly reluctant.

She was small; I would have used the word petite if I was writing a feature piece. She wore standard office attire, skirt and blouse with a sweater. Her dark brown hair was cut in the style of Jackie Kennedy. (What woman’s wasn’t?) And the expression on her face reinforced her earlier gestures and whispered words: She was not happy at the interruption or the assignment. Probably both.

But it wasn’t her attire or hairdo or expression that caught my attention. It was her eyes. Through her face’s expression of workaday annoyance shone two dark eyes full of something else. Something deeper, something impossible to describe. The word that came to mind was haunted. And those haunted eyes were fixed steadily on me.

Mrs. or not, I had to know more about her. Yes, I had come to Coopers Valley to write about the mystery of Mr. Ott’s and Mr. Van Camp’s disappearances. But now a new mystery had presented itself in those eyes. One that I had to delve. One that I had to understand.

Then she spoke, and the spell broke.

Very well, she said drily to the chief but glaring at me. She walked past me without greeting and stopped at the office door. She turned crisply on her heel.

Are you coming, Mr. Morrow?

I nodded wordlessly and followed her through the lobby and outside. I didn’t know then what a fateful chain of events had begun. I didn’t realize that the life I knew was about to end.

*

In the company of a woman who clearly didn’t like me or my business, I did my best to win her over. My best wasn’t much good.

You set a quick pace, Mrs. Zimmer. I tried to keep up with her surprisingly quick steps. (The feature writer in me had given her a lithe step.) She said nothing. We passed through the door and out onto the sidewalk. She turned left and I followed, still trying to keep up.

Does your husband have trouble keeping up with you? A sly question, that.

I don’t have a husband.

Oh. So it’s Miss then. I must have misheard.

Mrs. . . . Widowed.

I’m sorry. Asking questions is part of my job. I finally managed to come abreast of her. And my nature too.

She strode on, ignoring my comment. We turned the corner onto a residential street lined with trees and hedges.

Before we cover too many miles, I went on, shouldn’t we talk about why I’m here and what I’m looking for?

I already know, she tossed over her shoulder, marching on.

Maybe you know what Chief Whitacre told you, but there’s a lot more—

She stopped so abruptly that I went three paces past her.

You want to know the truth.

I came back to her. Yes. The truth of what happened to Jack Van Camp, and to Leonard Ott before him.

To learn that, Mr. Morrow, you must first learn the truth of this town.

Look, Mrs. Zimmer. I know all about ‘The Town of a Thousand Stories.’ I’ve seen the brochures about strange happenings. I’ve read the tourist pieces about everybody in town having had an ‘out-of-the-ordinary experience’—whatever that is. But I’m not doing a tourist piece.

Even though you claimed to.

Well, yes. But my main interest is missing persons.

Then you can call her ‘background.’

Her? I looked around. Who?

Claire Evers. She nodded at me then waved at someone behind me. I turned to see a freckled face topped with blond hair pop up over a hedge. The rest of the woman, slender and tanned, followed into view. She waved a pair of hedge shears, their jaws open.

Mrs. Zimmer led me to the hedge. The women greeted each other like sisters. My guide introduced me as a reporter from out of town. She introduced Claire as one of my town’s most interesting characters.

Claire—Miss or Mrs., I didn’t know—set her shears aside, slipped off her gardening gloves and offered me a freckled hand and a candid blue gaze with just a hint of hazel. I caught a whiff of vanilla.

I shook her hand then gave my guide a signal glance: What are we doing here?

She turned to Claire. Mr. Morrow here has been looking into Mr. Van Camp’s disappearance.

Ah. Claire’s eyes lit up comically. I didn’t do it! she cried with mock alarm.

I wondered where this little encounter was going. Why had we stopped here? Was my host planning to waste my time paying social calls just to spite me for interrupting her workday? But that didn’t make sense. If anything, she would be rushing me through a fast, no-stops tour, the quicker to get rid of me.

Of course you didn’t, Mrs. Zimmer chuckled in reply to her friend. It was the first laugh I had heard from her, and I liked the sound of it. A lot. "You weren’t even here at the time, Claire. But you do have an interesting story to share. If you have the time."

Oh, Dilly. My story has nothing to do with Mr. Van Camp. It didn’t even happen here.

"No, but it still has much to do with the nature of this place. My guide looked at me as she spoke. The setting, so to speak. Isn’t setting important for your newspaper story, Mr. Morrow?"

Before I could answer she turned back to Claire. It’s really an interesting story. Please do tell it.

Mrs. Zimmer, I began, if the lady doesn’t want to tell her story, then—

Okay, Claire said. She opened the hedge gate and invited us in. I had no choice but to follow them in, take a seat on a stone garden bench among the fading butterfly bushes and poppies, and hear the story, which was set a couple of years ago in a big city somewhere.

Here is her story as I recall it, in my own words. A rather macabre one . . .

* * *

2.

HEADS OR TAILS?

The dark water a hundred feet below sparkled invitingly. A sliver of moon glowed behind a silken cloud. Reflections of the city lights from the far river bank spangled the water. The cool night breeze feathered the river’s surface, combing the pinpoints of light. It all made her think of a handful of shooting stars, dancing brightly under the water.

And no sound but the wind. The wind, whistling musically through the ironworks of the bridge.

A fairyland. Time to enter it.

She took a breath, though there was not much sense in the act. Her whole purpose there, in that place, at that moment, was to cease to breath. To drown. She leaned out over the water, closed her eyes, and prepared to release the rail behind her.

Ping.

The sound, close by, startled her. What was it? A light, high, musical sound, soft and yet bright. She opened her eyes and turned her head toward it.

There. Up in the air, something glinted against the background of night. Something small and bright, whirling, seeming suspended about five feet in the air.

Maybe an angel is about to appear, she thought, half joking. An angel come to save me, like in the movies. But she knew better.

It was no angel. Instead, she recognized the shape and size of a coin, a quarter. It hovered there a moment, aloft, sparkling as it turned in place like a planet. Then it slowly, slowly dropped. A flash of a hand in the dark snatched it, cupped it, and slapped it down on the faint outline of the back of another hand. A light clapping sound of flesh on flesh. Then a soft, low voice:

Heads or tails?

Someone was standing there, hidden in the crosshatched shadows of the bridge’s beam work. The discovery that she wasn’t alone moved through her slowly, coldly.

What?

Call it. A woman’s voice.

Call what? Who are you?

Just someone out for a walk.

What do you want?

I want you to call the toss.

Why?

So we know who wins.

Wins what?

That depends.

Look, I don’t know who you are, or what you want, or why you’re here, but—

I’m here for the same reason you are.

How do you know why I’m here? You don’t know anything about me.

I know you take risks.

How?

Lots of ways. Like walking alone after midnight over a bridge in the worst part of town. Like—

How do you know?

I should know. I live around here.

I mean how do you know I like to take risks? What do you mean?

You’re on the edge of a bridge. Leaning out past the rail, clinging to it. I don’t have to be a detective to figure out you were going to jump.

I was looking at the reflection of the lights.

The other figure, still back in the shadow, laughed briefly, drily. She gave a little shake to her hands, one atop the other, which still shielded the flipped coin. She thrust her coupled hands out.

Call it.

I don’t want to call it.

If you won’t, then I’ll have to. Is that what you want?

I don’t care about your damned coin.

You should.

Leave me alone.

Because a life depends on it.

What?

You heard me.

Whose life?

Yours. Or mine. I’m not sure which. That depends on the call, you see.

What are you talking about?

I’m talking about who dies tonight.

Who are you? Why don’t you come out of the shadows?

Call it.

You’re a killer. Some crazy person.

I’m not. I’m here to help you decide who dies. And of course who lives. That’s the more important question.

Why would you give me a choice between us? Even if I could choose? Even if any of this made sense?

I owe someone a life. It might be you.

Owe?

The other figure, still in shadow, nodded. A year ago I stood there where you stand now. I was ready to let go of the rail, just like you were.

Why?

The other figure shook her head. I’m not one for talking about myself. And I hate self-pity. So I’ll keep it short. I’ll just say that everything in my life was rushing down a drain. I was through with trying to swim against it. So I came on this bridge and stood there in your footprints, climbed under the rail, leaned out, closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Just like you did.

And?

I heard someone toss a coin. Right here. Heard the ping of it, you know. That sound a coin makes when the thumbnail strikes it and sends it upward and it vibrates. Almost sings.

Go on.

"The sound startled me. Snapped me out of something. My hands almost slipped, from the surprise of it. Anyway, I looked and saw in the shadows, right here where I am standing, a woman. Then I saw a shiny sparkling thing in the air and realized it was a coin. As it came down she caught it and slapped it onto the back of her other hand. Then she told me to call the toss.

At first I thought she was a panhandler. Or maybe a mugger. Or some crazy person who went around making bets with strangers. Anyway, something about her told me she might be batty but was probably harmless.

The stranger took a small step toward Claire. The shadows cast by the girders slipped back past her face. Claire saw another woman, her face undistinguished. Just a face in the crowd. A face in the shadows.

Go on.

"She told me that exactly one year before, she had come here to jump. She had lost both parents in an auto accident. She had become depressed, and her depression drove her husband away. That loss led her to an even darker place in her life. She lost her job. Her spirits sank further, if that was possible. With them went her health. With that went whatever will to live she had left. So she came here to jump."

And?

A woman, a stranger she had never seen, appeared here, just as she was doing for me, and offered her the coin toss. Just as I am doing now for you.

Why?

I don’t know. Call it.

What happened?

To her?

To the woman before her.

I don’t know. All I know is the stranger I met offered me the coin toss.

Did you call it?

I did. Finally.

What did you call?

Heads.

Was it heads?

Yes.

What happened then?

She gave me the coin. Then she jumped.

The words were spoken so softly, so matter-of-factly that Claire felt a cold little shock through her spine.

What was supposed to happen if you had called tails?

I don’t know. All I know is, that experience made me stop and think about what I was planning to do.

I suppose you’re going to finish this story off with a little lecture about how precious life is? How I should go home and have faith in the future? All that?

Not at all. My life didn’t change much. If anything, it got worse. Last month I found a lump in my breast.

Maybe you should have jumped.

Maybe. But you’re missing the point. I don’t know that my life was any more worth living than before. But I do know that some total stranger took the time to talk to me. That has to count for something.

And she was probably nuts to begin with.

Possibly.

And she was just looking to, what? Embellish her own suicide with a little dramatic scene?

Maybe.

Just like you might be doing.

A shrug. I can’t prove you’re wrong.

"So maybe all the talk about the woman who offered you the coin toss, and the woman who offered her the coin toss before that, and I’m guessing some woman before her . . ."

Yes?

Could all be in your head. Made up deliberately. Or imagined.

"True again. Or it could all be in your head."

"Ah. Now I’m crazy."

Possibly. But somehow you strike me as the rational type.

Thank you for that.

Now—Call it.

All right. If I do, will you leave me alone?

Yes.

Heads.

The figure’s covering hand drew back. The faint light from the waning moon gleamed on the coin. Claire stepped forward and glanced down on the face of George Washington peering out across the river.

Heads.

The figure handed her the coin. This is yours now. Claire took the coin without thinking.

Wordlessly, before she realized what was happening, the other woman slipped between the rails, put her hands in her jacket pocket, leaned out, pitched forward, and vanished in the shadows of the bridge.

Claire looked down. She saw a small burst on the surface and heard a faint plash of water. A few wave-rings flowed outward, growing dim. Then the surface smoothed and the reflected lights from the other side once again settled into their shimmering spots on the water.

She gazed at the water a long time, then glanced down at the quarter gleaming in her hand. She took a deep breath, then tucked it into her pocket, climbed back through the guard rails and headed home. It was late, and she was cold.

* * *

3.

After her last words Claire fell silent. The story ended so abruptly, so oddly, that I waited for more. Nothing more came. She just sat gazing, gloves in hand, at what was left of her summer garden.

And did you go back? I asked. In your turn?

My question seemed to wake her from a reverie.

Yes. I didn’t think I would, after my strange experience. But a year later, something—I don’t know what—compelled me to return to that bridge.