Chapter ThreeStill ranting under her breath Clare hunted down her car, now a scarlet '69 Chevy Impala, and wrenched the door open. Turning the engine with a harsh twist of the key, she gunned the throttle, gripping the cracked cover of the steering wheel so tight the jagged edges of the painted chrome rim threatened to cut her hands. The town of Holden was the perfect antidote to the bustle of Worcester. Twenty miles out from the city center, it was an easy commute, no more than an hour on a day of heavy traffic, half that if Clare felt liberal with the gas.
Only six miles from end to end, Holden lay north-west of the city. It lay in a gentle bowl amid the rolling hills of central Massachusetts, the peaks crowned with groves of oak and beech in the early stages of the riot of fall colours
