Courtney moved behind him, reached out to touch him with one hand, but drew back at the last moment. “Come back to bed.”

He nodded, a bobbing black silhouette against the blue-black night sky. “In a minute.” He turned to her, his eyes shimmering for a moment, catching the glint of star light. “Why do you think they call it hollow?” His hand rose and pointed to the field across the road.

Zach’s promised one night had become most of a week. Complications with the will, he said. Trying to squeeze the largest sum from the farmland, he said. Desire to know his grandfather’s land before parsing it out, he said. After four consecutive nights of Broughton’s Hollow Diner fare — the leftovers being both breakfast and lunch the next day — Courtney had enough. “I’m going to that little grocery, the one next to the only gas station in this god-forsaken hole,” she told Zach as she left the house.

He shrugged, eyes fixed across the road.

She took the Civic, leaving Zach on the porch with his guitar resting across his lap. He hadn’t played in three days. He hadn’t done much of anything for the last three days except take long walks around the property. Courtney pushed the accelerator into the floor, throwing a cloud of dust in her wake. She eased off as the car began to fishtail. “Careful, careful. Let it go Court,” she muttered to herself.

On the way into town, she passed one of the four churches. It stood like a battered sentinel on the edge of the village. Paint hung in limp strips and the roof over the front stoop sagged slightly. The marquee was empty save for a dangling lower case t and the permanent St. Joseph’s Church inscribed at the top. Courtney smiled as she drove past. Even the churches look dead around here.

The Hollow’s only grocery store was attached to the town’s only working gas station. Another two empty husks stood idle at opposite ends of the town, their abandoned pumps standing at attention like rusty soldiers from a forgotten war. Courtney circled the village twice before mustering the courage to pull into the parking lot at Earl’s Thriftway. Two older men sat on a bench outside the sliding glass door, both with eyes locked on Courtney as she climbed out of the car.