"Sure enough, as the figure led me through Stain’d-by-the-Sea, I asked myself more and more questions about suspicious incidents I had recently encountered [...] I wondered about all of the closed-up businesses, and where all the shopkeepers had gone when their stores had vanished [...] I wondered how to keep something as fragile and valuable as a rare newt safe in such a ragged and desperate place [...] I wondered about a person who had once loved a man enough to get married and despised him enough to frame him for theft [...] I wondered about a grandfather who liked to joyride, and a grandchild who liked to repair automobiles, and how long they could continue to live in a town that was going nowhere [...] I wondered how desperate you would have to be to live on the outskirts of a town that was almost gone."