Excerpt from Long Black Veil by Jennifer Finney Boylan, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"I want a kitty, can I have one?" said Benny.

"What?" said Maisie. She wasn't certain whether he was serious. Sometimes her little brother had sudden whims. "Do you think you're old enough?"

"It's a lot of responsibility, taking care of a cat," added Tripper. With his forefingers the boy picked at the cuticles of this thumbs.

There was a small wound on each thumb where he'd made himself bleed.

Quentin and Krystal stopped singing and stood still. Slowly, the

others came up behind them. There they were: the eight of them, gath­ ered together like the members of an a cappella group. Before them rose the high walls of old, abandoned Eastern State Penitentiary. There were arrow-slit windows, turrets at the corners. A central guard tower, covered with rust, looked down upon the ruins.

Tripper raised an eyebrow. He hadn't expected it to be quite so gruesome. Quentin pointed excitedly. "The entrance is around the side." "Entrance?" said Casey.

"We don't have to go in," said Quentin. "Just look."

Herr Krystal nodded. "Hermann Hesse said that the eyes of oth­ers are our prisons, their thoughts our cages." He was tall and thin and infirm, like a human who had somehow come down with Dutch elm disease. Even though he wasn't the boys' teacher anymore, Krystal acted a lot of the time like he was still taking attendance.

"I need me fuckin' snorkel," said Wailer. "It's got so bloody deep."

They walked up the block toward the prison's old stone gates. As they walked, Maisie imagined the Rosalyn Tureck version of the Gold­ berg Variations in her head, which she preferred to the Glenn Gould, on account of the groaning. Over the years, the Bach had been the music she turned to in an emergency, producing in her a calm in the face of chaos. But staring up at the towers of the old penitentiary, the Bach wasn't much help. There were some things that music was no match for, and a horrible abandoned prison was one of them.

They reached the gates. Clouds gathered in the sky above them.

Benny looked fearfully toward his sister.

"Maisie," he said, his voice trembling.

There was a creak as Quentin pressed forward on the iron door. Gently, it swung open.

For a moment they all stood there in silence, looking at the long

stone room just beyond. There was light at its far end, where a small set of stairs led out into the old prison yard. Twenty pairs of eyes peered back at them.

"Miao," said the creatures.

 

Chapter 2

Cold River, Maine

September 2015

The house was dark. "Gollum," I said.

He waddled over and looked up at me with his sad, bulbous eyes. His tail thumped once against the tile floor.

"Good boy," I said, and kneeled down to hug him. He groaned piteously.

"Come on," I said, "let's go up." I left my suitcase at the bottom of the stairs. The old black lab—eleven years old now—followed me up the steps, then doddered over to our bed. Jake wasn't in it, off at a fire I figured. Gollum jumped in, as if it were the last action he would commit upon this Earth. The dog glanced at me with his rheumy, grateful eyes, then lay his head down on my husband's pillow and moaned. Gollum, Gollum.

A pair of loons called to each other out on the lake, the bird-world equivalent of a married couple's late-night argument—the male laugh- ing, the female responding with a melancholy hoo. It wasn't hard to translate: I'm here, I'm here, are you listening, I'm here! And the reply, Yeah, I know where you are.

I crossed the hallway to the room where our son, Falcon, lay in his bed fully dressed, arms spread like a man on the cross. His mouth was open. I stood in his doorway. It wouldn't be long now before he graduated, another nine months, and then Jake and I would be alone in the big house. On his desk Falcon's schoolbooks were piled high. His French horn lay by the foot of the bed, the case open, a music stand over by the window.

Excerpted from Long Black Veil by Jennifer Finney Boylan. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.