At my age, sleep is something that frequently runs away long before I’m ready to actually get up. Sixty-eight years means a lot of past, and that stuff rises up in those dark hours sometimes—not to mention a laundry list of aches and pains, most of them parting gifts from the chemo two years ago.
But honestly? I don’t mind. Because watching the world wake up, being the only one moving, is one of my favorite things.
The stillness, the quiet. Tiny sounds that get lost when the world is awake and busy and full of noise. I feel like I’m getting to know the hidden underside of things. Learning something secret, mysterious, true.
My friend Sophie would call it a liminal time, probably say it’s something sacred. I just know that I like it best.
Things get busy fast here, once the sun is up. People come to the Old Boathouse to fish, crab, rent boats to go out on the bay. My family keeps nagging me to hire someone to help me for the busy months. But this is my business, my life, and I’m going to do it my way.
Yes, it’s a simple existence. After everything that’s happened that’s exactly the way I want it. I have this place. I have my coffee every morning, and the bay to look out on. And I have my cat, Cricket.
I guess I have Sophie too. She’s the one who gave me Cricket, and she was the first person—hell, the only one—to really welcome me to the village when I moved here a year ago. Not that I cared. I didn’t come here looking for friends. But she wouldn’t leave me alone, and now we’re friends, even though she loves all that woo-woo, hippie-dippy stuff I can’t believe a grown woman can buy into.
But she is also the kindest, most open-hearted person I’ve ever met.
It’s good to have her working with me on finding out more about the boy. I keep reliving that morning, when I pulled him up in one of the crab pots, his pale face framed by long, dark hair, the dark splotches on his skin—lately it’s one of the things that wakes me up in those dark-before-dawn hours.
It’s like he’s calling me to do something.
So I’m trying.
That the sheriff’s office isn’t working harder to identify him, trace his family, figure out why and how he died, is making me crazy. And even though Sophie isn’t really helpful, what with talking about reading tea leaves and using her pendulum to ask her spirit guides about the case, she is a good listener, and she makes me feel calmer when I start going in circles.
Besides, she bakes killer brownies.
GLORIOUS DEBRIS
Genre: Cozy Mystery w/elements of suspense
Release: June 2026
Format: Print, Digital
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop.org | Pegasus
Ann Davenport has endured the worst life could offer, from an abusive father to a joyless marriage. At sixty-eight, newly retired and chasing a fresh start, she settles in a quiet town on the Oregon coast. Free to reinvent herself and leave old wounds behind, Ann discovers newfound happiness-until she stumbles upon the body of a young boy, ensnared in a fishing net. When the police investigation stalls, Ann’s own sense of justice compels her to dig deeper. With Sophie, a local shopkeeper eager to become a friend, Ann discovers unsettling truths about her new community-secrets the police refuse to touch. When a second body surfaces, strangers descend on the town, taking a troubling interest in Ann’s sleuthing. Now, she finds herself caught in a treacherous web of power and crime, her world threatened by those who value nothing, not even human life.
Meet the author
Elisabeth Wathen is a high school English teacher by day and writer by very, very early morning. She is the award-winning author of short fiction, poetry, personal essays and novels. Her latest novel, “Glorious Debris,” published by Vanguard Press, was a finalist for the Killer Nashville Claymore Award in 2024, in the Cozy Mystery category. A vagrant who’s lived in Oregon, California, Virginia and New York, she lives in an historic (and possibly haunted) farmhouse in the Catskills with her husband and dog.