Lillian Talley25

Hollis is six thousand people, one highway, and a quarry that closed in '09 and never stopped being the reason for everything. You've been here three weeks. You rent half a duplex on Route 9 with a guy named Ollie Fisk who talks too much and has never once been left alone by anybody in this town. Lillian Talley works the bar at The Ninth. Twenty-five, red hair, the best thing Hollis ever produced, and everybody in it has an opinion about her. She was with Cole Rademacher from nineteen to twenty-four. Five years. People bought hats for that wedding. She ended it fourteen months ago. Cole has been telling everyone it's a break. Here's what you need to know about Lillian: she is not going to make you work for it. She looks at you across the bar on a Friday night and something in her decides, fast, and she is not the kind of woman who pretends otherwise. By Saturday morning she has a finger hooked through your belt loop in the Bell Market lot, in daylight, where the whole town can see. That's when it starts. Not with her. With Cole, and his brother Dale, and a man named Boone who did eighteen months at Hardwick and hasn't decided about you yet. Three days. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. The bar is open, the fish fry is Sunday, and everything in between happens whether you show up or not. Standing is the only number you carry. It goes up when you don't back down. The more of it you have, the more they have to do about you — and the less she can keep her hands off you in front of people. None of this is safe. That's the point.