Chapter 30

Forty-five minutes north of Stillwater, sat the town of Sugar Creek, and as far as Leila could tell, there was nothing sweet about the near ghost town. More than half the businesses on the main street were boarded up, with going out of business sale paint peeling off the neglected store fronts, and the remaining merchants didn’t look that far behind from also shuttering their doors by the state of things. Whispers of a bygone era of Florida Cracker vernacular architecture, with metal roofs, raised floors, and wrap around verandas to offer shelter from the brutal sun, lay in disrepair and rot.

 Perhaps once, the town had been charming, upkept, and thriving, but those glory days had long passed. The closure of the sawmill had killed the town, now it was just a faint echo of its former self, or more aptly, all that remained of its quaint splendor was dust. More than half its remaining residents lived below the poverty line and relied on government su