Collin's father had gone missing at sea just one year before their move to Autumn Hills, and it was then that Collin began to understand his strange talents. His father had visited him clearly in his thoughts and spoke to Collin, telling him of his last trip to sea and how his ship had sunk in a storm miles off the coast. Unable to comfort his mother, Collin sought to work in a profession where he could help those in pain... specifically the pain of loss.

This pain that he could not assuage in his mother, he would seek to lessen in his fellow towns people. He became the town undertaker and began to deliver comforting messages from the departed... messages that would let those still among the living rest easier knowing that their loved ones had moved on peacefully to the other side. In 1872, he spoke to a young woman named Bridget Avers who had just lost her mother. He attempted to comfort her and let her know that there was nothing that she or her father could have done to prevent the death of her mother.

Later, in the fall, the mayor of Autumn Hills passed on and Collin tried to comfort the mayor's wife. She did not react well and had Collin imprisoned in the psychiatric center on Buckman's ridge so that he would not touch anyone else with this strange gift. It was there that his faith fell away and the voices and thoughts of the criminally insane would poison his open mind.

Bridget, learning of his imprisonment, would seek to free Collin with the help of his twin brother Sloan. It was with these events that Autumn Hills course through history would be forever changed.