“He wanted to climb into the ground, reach into the soil. His green eyes had darkened to hazel, and the same urgency, that same tunneling desire, caught hold of her like a fever.”

Catherine didn’t much care for her job. It wasn’t that the squirrels gave her any lip. They had dental plans, 401Ks, and the whole caboodle after all. The Sound, though, that gave her the shudders.

Sometimes in the night, when the dogs stopped barking at the cars along Route 40, the house ceased settling, and the wind came to a rest in the branches of the old maple by the farmhouse, Rachel sensed them.