Prologue

Eldridge Falls is still the town that hums quietly under its breath. A place that wears normalcy like a pressed Sunday dress—lawns trimmed, porches painted, neighbors waving with hands that know when to hold back. On the outside, it is all pleasantries and potlucks, the kind of town where everyone knows just enough about each other to make small talk sound easy.

But if you’ve lived here long enough, you know better. You learn to hear the spaces between words, the pauses that stretch too long. You understand that this town runs on the unsaid.

Secrets are its currency. And no one pretends otherwise for long.

At the center of it all stands the college annex and its library, a building older than the town’s memory. Its stone steps sag with the weight of decades, its windows narrow and watchful, its halls carrying the faint smell of paper, dust, and something else that lingers—something that feels like waiting. The shelves here lean in toward each other as if they have overheard too much, their spines bent beneath the burden of confessions no one dared to speak aloud.

By day, the library plays the part of a sanctuary. Students drift in with earbuds tucked tight, laptops glowing, and notebooks scrawled in hurried ink. The ambitious gather here, the ones who dream of escape routes, résumés, and futures far beyond Eldridge Falls. The anxious come too, those who find comfort in the hush of turning pages and the scratch of pencils that drown out the noise of their own minds. During the day, the library is safe. Predictable. Harmless.

But by night, the building changes. Its shadows stretch across the floors like they own them, swallowing the safe corners and soft light until everything feels sharpened. The silence no longer soothes. It watches. It waits. Every creak of the wooden floorboards, every soft click of the old radiators, every draft that curls through the cracked windows feels amplified, as though the building is daring someone to break the quiet. The air itself grows heavy, and the stillness is no longer protection—it’s an invitation.

Maya Rivers came to Eldridge Falls not to be noticed but to vanish. She wanted nothing more than to be another name on a roster, another girl at a desk, another shadow slipping between the shelves. Anonymity was the goal. Safety was the prize. After what she left behind, she craved routine, order, and the kind of quiet that didn’t ask questions.

For a while, she managed it. She became a creature of habit, a girl defined by her schedules: coffee at eight, lectures at ten, work-study hours in the library until the sun dropped low enough to spill red through the stained-glass windows. She told herself she was steady. Untouchable. Invisible.

Until one night when the library stopped being safe.

Until the stillness fractured.

Until she realized someone else was already waiting in the dark.

Someone who saw her more clearly than she wanted to be seen. Someone who understood that disappearing was just another way of admitting you wanted to be found.

This is not a story about studying. It’s a story about surrender. About what happens when a quiet town reveals the secrets it’s been keeping, and when a girl who came to vanish instead finds herself exposed. Eldridge Falls may look peaceful from the outside—but its shadows hold the kind of truths that can undo you.