Summary

In Chapter 1, during her morning walk with her dog Charlie, the first person narrator, Vesta Gul, finds a note in the woods behind her cabin, reading: "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body" (1). Yet Vesta can find no body; pocketing the note, she decides it is a prank. On her walk back, she considers who Magda might be, deciding she must be from Belarus, that no one in Levant must like her.

Having moved to Levant from Monolith after her husband Walter's death, Vesta theorizes about the townspeople. They are not the sort of people to wander in the woods. Contemplating Magda's death, Vesta becomes anxious. She feels comforted having Charlie with her; she adopted him after Walter's death. She remembers adjusting to his presence, attempting to train him when he was...