The Quiet Season

She runs this town. She can't run from this. Chief Marguerite Vance has kept Ashton Falls quiet for six years — no scandals, no leaks, no mistakes. Then one night in October undoes it. By November she's pregnant, and the only person who knows is Dean Kowalski, the tow-truck driver she arrested nine years ago, who has somehow become the one person she can't lie to. She tells nobody for four months. The select board starts asking questions. Her mother arrives with a suitcase. And a teenager vanishes from the high school on the coldest week of the year. A town of three thousand people needs its chief at her best. It turns out they need her whole, too. Some women choose a family. Some choose a life. Marguerite Vance is about to insist on both.