Chapter One
“Hey, sweetheart, I could use another.”
“Still not my name, Sal.”
The old man didn’t bother to look abashed by Ruby’s reminder. She stood behind the bar, hands on her hips, waiting for him to correct himself. Like most of the people here, Sal was a regular at the only bar in town. They hadn’t even bothered to name it. The sign out front just said Bar in flickering red neon. Sal had been coming in every evening since long before Ruby was born, but she’d be damned if she was going to let him get away with calling her sweetheart.
“It’s a term of endearment,” he argued, pushing his empty pint glass toward her with a grin he probably thought was charming. Maybe it had been once. It was not tonight. The grin peeped out from beneath Sal’s bushy, gray moustache just like his twinkling eyes peered out from beneath bushy, gray brows. His face was creased and weathered, and he rarely wore anything other than flannel, like almost everyone else in this joint. It was impossible to say how old he was. Ruby had never asked.
She frowned. She was not in the mood for flirtatious old men. But to be fair, she never was. She pushed the glass back.
“Try again.”
Sal’s laugh quickly turned into a wheeze. “You’re always so serious, Ruby. Must be’cause you’re from away,” he said.
From away. An incredibly Maine term she’d been hearing for years. From away. As in not born here. It didn’t matter that she’d moved to Maple Hollow when she was eight. The year her life changed forever. The year her parents died and she and her twin sister, Lena, came to this odd little town to live with their great-aunt Millie.
She’d been here for over twenty years now and still the locals loved to remind her that she was from away.
Macy came up beside her, cutting into her conversation with Sal.
“No way,” she said, wiping her hands on the dish towel slung over her shoulder. Macy had been managing the bar for as long as Ruby had worked here. She wasn’t much older than Ruby, and she was a solid three inches shorter, but nobody messed with her primarily because she had the power to cut them off. Both from drinks and access to town gossip. A fate worse than death around here. “You know I was born and raised right here in the County, and I won’t let you get away with that sweetheart shit either.”
The County. Another thing Ruby had had to learn when she moved here. Maine had sixteen counties, but Aroostook County was the only one referred to as such. So far north that it was often mistaken for Canada, the County was quite an adjustment for Ruby coming from the suburbs of Boston. When she’d first moved into her aunt’s cottage at the edge of the woods, Ruby felt like she’d moved into a fairy tale.
In those early days when she was too devastated to speak, too sad to move, she’d sit in her aunt’s overgrown backyard with Lena beside her, staring into the trees, making up stories in her head about who or what might live in the darkness.
Unfortunately, life here wasn’t anything like the stories she’d loved to read as a kid. If fairy tales had taught her anything it was that the only positive that could come from her parents’ tragic death was the promise of adventure. If she had to be an orphan, she should at least have been allowed some intrigue, some mystery to solve, or journey to go on, or … or … something. That was how her thinking had gone at the time.
Now, of course, she knew that life wasn’t a fairy tale and that you were more likely to see a moose in these woods than a witch. Becoming an orphan was actually just really tragic, and life in Maple Hollow was in fact quite dull.
Despite the rumors that ran rampant through this bar about creatures that prowl the woods at night, she knew the sad truth: fairy tales weren’t real.
Ruby scanned the dimly lit bar as Sal chuckled at Macy’s comment. There was a decent crowd for a Friday night in early October. Summer usually attracted some out-of-towners, in for the weekend to camp or hike. They’d get tourists for maybe another month, to ooh and ahh over the changing leaves, but once the first snow hit, this place would get even more insular.
It was no wonder the townies loved to share stories about overgrown wolves and their encounters with them through the years. There was literally nothing else to talk about. And nearly everyone had a story about being out hunting or fishing and running into one of these deadly creatures. As they told it, they always barely escaped with their lives.
It was all nonsense, of course. Just stories to tell to pass the long winter days. Almost as exaggerated as the size of the fish they caught. Ruby had stopped believing them a long time ago.
She took stock of tonight’s customers. A couple of booths were filled with regulars, laughing and talking over each other, and there were a few old stragglers like Sal at the bar. A table of hikers were drinking and eating their fill before heading back to their campsite for the night. Ruby figured they were her best shot for a good tip.
“Okay, Miss Ruby Bellerose, would you please get me another?” Sal said now, batting his eyelashes and over-exaggerating every word of his request.
“Happy to,” Ruby said, taking his glass and grabbing him a fresh one. “That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”
“Harder than it should have been,” he said as she slid his new beer in front of him. “Thanks, sweetheart.” He winked and Ruby just shook her head. Why did she even bother? Sal was never going to change. No one around here ever did.
“Take a break from this old pain in the rear and bring these drinks to table three,” Macy said, playfully bumping her hip into Ruby’s.
“Sure.” She hoisted the tray onto her shoulder, leaving behind one pain only to encounter a table full of them.
Except, instead of a formerly charming old man to deal with, she was now dealing with a group of her old classmates, people she’d grown up with, people who’d never bothered being nice to her a day in their lives.
She lowered the tray and passed out drinks under the watchful gaze of Trina, the former homecoming queen (which wasn’t saying much since there were all of sixty-five kids in their graduating class), Kurt, the quarterback of the football team (again not saying much, as they had to combine with three other local schools just to have enough players to form a team), Kai, one of his many formerly jock friends, and Shreya, whose father owned Into The Woods, the camping supply store on the edge of town (in a place with minimal wealth, she had some money which was enough to make her feel important). In the world’s smallest town, this crew was the cream of the crop. Which again was not saying much.
Ruby didn’t bother with small talk. Or a smile. She wasn’t getting a tip from this table anyway.
Trina smirked as Ruby turned to walk back to the bar. “How sad is it that she still wears all black?” she asked the table, loud enough for Ruby to hear.
“It’s like she’s still in mourning,” Shreya said with a giggle.
“You guys are such bitches,” Kai laughed.
“Her parents died like twenty years ago. You’d think she’d be over it by now. She needs therapy or something,” Trina said, and Ruby wasn’t even tempted to turn around. It didn’t matter anyway. These people had made up their minds about her years ago.
She was the new girl, the sad girl, the weird girl, the goth girl.
She’d learned not to care what they said about her a long time ago. Did she wear a lot of black? Sure. She liked it. Was she sad her parents died? What kind of sociopath wouldn’t be? Was she weird? Not any more than anyone else in this damn town. Did she occasionally like to read horror novels in the cemetery? Everyone needed a hobby. And she’d outgrown that particular one a while ago.
Anyway, she wasn’t concerned with what Trina and her crew thought of her. She’d become like the wolves in the woods, just another story to tell and retell.
But what did stop her in her tracks was the sudden change in topic.
“Did you hear about Lena, though? She’s gone full crazy.”
Ruby spun on her heel, her black skirt twirling around her thighs. “What did you just say?”
Trina’s grin grew. “Oh, sorry, Ruby, it’s just that I heard your sister hasn’t been well.”
“My sister is fine.”
“Then why did she quit her job at the preschool?”
“She needed a change.”
“No one’s seen her around town lately.”
“So what?”
Trina shrugged. “We’re just worried about her.”
“Bullshit.”
Shreya gasped like she was offended by Ruby’s crass language, as though Bert at the next table over wasn’t describing his latest knee surgery in graphic detail loud enough for the entire bar to hear.
“I heard she had to quit her job because her eyes rolled back in her head and she started speaking in tongues. In front of the children,” Shreya whispered as though that would soften the blow of this particular rumor.
That was not what happened.
Not exactly.
“Jesus, who even cares. Leave her alone.” Kurt came to Ruby’s defense. Unfortunately, his help came with a leering look at her tits. Kurt was no hero. If Ruby had a dollar for every time he hit on her when he came in here with his buddies, she’d have enough cash to get the hell out of this small town. Sadly, Kurt was not only ready to cheat on his wife, he was a shitty tipper as well.
But Ruby took the opportunity to slip away while Trina was glaring at her husband for admonishing her, and Shreya and Kai were trying to pretend things hadn’t just become super awkward.
Because if there was one thing Ruby did not want to talk about with anyone, it was her sister.
To find out what happens next in Big Bad Wolf, you can purchase the book here, in paperback or eBook format.
Big Bad Wolf : ©️ Laurie Gilmore 2026