Mountain Glen was about an hour and a half into New Jersey. It lay on the southern fringe of the Catskills, north of the rolling suburban prettiness of Warrenstown and Greenmeadow and the ugly roads that connected them. As I got near, the hills grew steeper, less tame. Scarlet, rust, and orange splashed their sides. Here and there yellow birch leaves still glowed against white bark, set off by moss green stands of pine that seemed permanently in shadow. Yesterday’s heavy clouds had delivered rain up here, and the hollows on the shoulder of the road held puddles that reflected the colors in the hills. Whole stretches of road went by without buildings, without people. The village of Mountain Glen itself was almost not there, only a post office to gather together a collection of houses, cabins, shacks, and trailers strung loosely along wandering roads. The address of Beth Adams turned out to be a wooden structure somewhere between a cabin and a shack, set in a spongy field half a mile past anything that could be called town. I turned in, parked behind a rust-pocked Olds Cutlass that was probably as surprised as anyone every time it found itself running. Mud clutched at my shoes as I walked to the porch, and the steps creaked as I climbed them, to remind me they could collapse whenever they wanted to. There was a doorbell and I pressed it, but I heard no sound and nothing happened. I pressed it one more time, then knocked hard on the door. Immediately from inside I heard a dog scrabbling and barking, but nothing else. I lifted my hand to knock again harder. Before I could, the door opened and a woman’s bleary face appeared. She blinked against the daylight and flinched from my upraised arm.