The Space Between Pines
He was still telling himself that when the GPS lost signal twelve miles outside of town.
He wasn't surprised. The town had always existed in its own universe — slightly out of reach, slightly out of time, the kind of place that didn't care whether the rest of the world could find it. He remembered that about it. He remembered more than he wanted to. The way the pines pressed close on both sides of Route 9 like they were leaning in to get a better look at who was coming. The way the sky above the treeline was always a different color here than it was anywhere else — deeper, somehow, more deliberate, like the light had made a decision about what it wanted to be before it arrived.