The skull, for better or worse, wasn't alone. It sat atop what appeared to be an entire, long-dead body.

"Holy shit," whispered Sarah when no one else reacted.

That drew Officer Quinn out of their own momentary silence. "All right everyone. This is now officially a crime scene. I'm going to need to take a statement from all who were present at the initial discovery," they said, still halfway crouching to look into the void, before turning to Sarah. "And you need to leave."

"But--"

"No buts. I'm sure Jane can drive down to get you. Do you need me to--"

"No, it's fine," she waved them off, recognizing the tone of an adult who wouldn't change their mind. "I can get home by myself."

Sarah reluctantly left the room, taking one last look over her shoulder at the scene. With the high contrast between the bright sunlight filtering in to illuminate Alex Quinn and the dark shadows covering the fireplace flanked by the three workers, it was like a Renaissance painting come to life. Art history had always been one of her favorite subjects, and knowing what was hidden within the walls, it was a perfect study in symbolism.

Stepping out of the house, Sarah breathed in the crisp November air. It smelled of dry leaves and fog, stirring within her thoughts of Starbucks pumpkin spice latte commercials and girls in wide-brimmed hats, cable-knit sweaters, and knee-high boots. It was fair enough to say this place wasn't her past or her future, merely her present.

At the end of the walkway, she almost turned right, but then had second thoughts.

She guessed that Jane's house was more-or-less the same distance away as the hardware store, just in the opposite direction. Her bike had to have been repaired by now, and with nothing else to do, she might as well go and pick it up.

A good twenty minutes later, Sarah was internally scolding herself for the decision.

Without a sidewalk after the first block, she was relegated to trudging along in the wet leaves on the edge of the single-lane country road. The walk was also making her sweaty, which--coupled with the low temperatures--ended up cooling her down. And as a lifelong Cali girl, she did not like to be cold.

All the while, she kept thinking about the dead woman behind the fireplace mantel.

There was no confirmation as to the identity of the person who once walked thanks to the bones that were now crumpled in a dark, cobweb filled crevice. Even so, Sarah was sure that it was a woman.

A daughter. Perhaps a sister. Maybe even a wife.

But a woman, she was certain. Because it was women who most often met with a violent end. It was women who were abused. It was women who ended up dead.

Who had she been? Had she been missed? Was someone out there still hoping for her to return one day? There were too many questions, and no use for speculation. Hopefully Officer Alex Quinn would find the answers. After all, the hard part--discovering the remains before the whole house was pulled down--had already been achieved.

Could that have been why Sarah had felt drawn to the place from the first moment she'd laid eyes on it?

Impossible. The mere thought of it was absurd. Almost as absurd as city-girl like her setting out on this stupid walk.

Passing cars were few and far between, but Sarah eventually found herself wishing that one of them might carry a familiar face. At this point, she was too proud to call Jane, but she would have accepted a ride even from Caleb.

Of course, he would have had to be willing to offer one, and the more she thought about it, the more Sarah began to doubt whether that would even have been a possibility. She'd totally flipped out on him last night, and one thing she knew about boys was that they did not like drama.

Hahahaha. All she was these days was drama. Guess she could forget about getting anywhere now with the school quarterback.

By the time Sarah finally arrived at the New Bedford town square, she was ready to puke her guts out. This was definitely farther than Jane's house would have been. Thankfully, Truman's Hardware and Bicycle Repair shop was not only open, but they also had her bike ready. Mr. Truman brought it out from the back room himself, and he even peppered the handoff with a few bicycle-themed dad jokes.

How did the barber win the bike race? He took a shortcut. Comedy gold.

By the time Sarah wheeled her bicycle out of the hardware store, she not only had a cheesy grin on her face, but she had also almost forgotten about the earlier macabre find. If only the plastic skeletons--along with the copious amounts of pumpkins, hay bales, and other rustic kitsch--the Fall Fest decorating committee had begun putting up across the street didn't bring it all back.

Small towns sure liked to be extra around the holidays, didn't they? Well, the joke was on them because there was no way she'd be getting suckered into it all.

Sarah gave a disapproving smirk before looking for the best way to get out of there without her aunt accidentally seeing her. Jane was there somewhere and if she had her way, she'd probably recruit her to hang fake bats or something. But as her gaze passed from the carpenters putting up carnival-style booths to a florist truck delivering dozens of potted mums, Sarah froze in her tracks.

Past all of the hubbub, in the middle of the park in the focal point of the square, was an octagonal gazebo. It was one of those iconic, white structures that featured heavily in every Hallmark Christmas movie where the heroine and leading man usually had their first kiss. But instead of a romantic couple in a heated embrace, the gazebo held a lone woman.

Sarah should have just gone. She had no reason to stay, really. But there was something about that woman that made her pause. With her dark hair in large ringlets and wearing a polka-dotted dress with elbow-length sleeves and a flared skirt, t-strap heels and lace gloves, she looked like she'd just stepped out of a pin-up calendar.

Was there a vintage photo-shoot nearby? Or had there been a performance of Guys and Dolls at the local theater that just let out? Sarah couldn't see a photographer or camera equipment, and there were no other costumed players milling about who could have explained the woman's out-of-place appearance.

But it wasn't just her anachronistic look that was odd; it was the fearful way she gripped one of the gazebo's columns, practically hiding behind the vertical beam that drew Sarah's attention. It was an action she could feel in her soul, and whatever had spurred it, Sarah knew it couldn't have been good.

Sarah squeezed the bike's handlebars even harder, the rubber coating of the grips digging into her palms.

Someone should at least go and check on the woman, see if she was okay. Yet no one besides her even appeared to notice the figure cowering in the gazebo. Were they all so preoccupied with their own little to-do lists? Or were they just so numb to the feelings of someone besides themselves to even care?

Sarah's stomach turned at the thought. The reason didn't matter. The story was always the same. And she'd been on the receiving end of such indifference enough times to know that she couldn't not act.

Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she slowly psyched herself up to cross the street when her phone rang.

"Damn it," she mumbled, looking up and digging the device out of her pocket. Forgetting to screen the call, she automatically hit the green "accept" button. "Hello?"

"Hi . . . hi, Sarah. I'm so glad you picked up. I actually didn't think you would," said the man on the other end with hesitant relief.

"Okay?" she replied, not recognizing the voice and wanting to get to the point.

The man laughed nervously. "Oh right. Sorry. I should have started with introductions. It's been a while, I guess," he said, beginning to ramble again. "This is your father. I heard about Mom--"

Sarah snatched the phone away from her ear and slammed her thumb on the red icon to end the call. It had only taken a split second, but her hand was already shaking as her anxiety spiked. That fucker. How the hell did he have the audacity to contact her? And now, of all times?

She had no father. At most, he was a sperm donor who knocked up her mom and disappeared pretty much as soon as she'd been born. After a few years, not even Child Services or whoever was responsible for getting him to pay child support was able to track him down. Occasionally he'd send a twenty in an envelope, which Mom would give to the first panhandler she'd see even if they could have used it to buy dinner that day.

"If he won't properly be a part of your life, then he doesn't get to make himself feel better by throwing a few bucks at us when it suits him," she'd say, ending the conversation before it even began.

The last smoothed out bill came from a return address in Colorado a year and a half earlier. It was a tenner.