Prologue
Easton
The summer before I left Wildwood Meadows, the heat came early.
The kind that made the air heavy and the sawdust stick to your skin. Levi Holt always said you could tell what kind of man you were by how you handled summer work. “If you can sweat through a July afternoon and still be decent company, you’ll make it just fine,” he’d told me once, handing me a hammer.
We were building a porch that day for one of the neighbors off County Road 9. The kind of job Levi liked — nothing fancy, just honest work. He’d driven us out in his old blue truck, radio singing some old Merle Haggard tune, the bed full of lumber and tools that rattled when you drove over the bumps. I remember thinking how steady he looked behind the wheel. Levi was unlike anyone I’d ever known, with a calmness that made me want to be that kind of man someday. He worked hard, not caring if it meant blisters and sunburns.
“Don’t cut corners,” he said, measuring a board. “A man’s work is what stays when he’s gone. Might as well do it right.”
I’d rolled my eyes, fifteen and too full of pride. “You sound like a damn fortune cookie, Levi.”
He laughed, deep and easy. “That right there’s your problem, Easton. You’re in too big a hurry to be older than you are.”
I sank the nail anyway, to prove I could do it just the way he’d shown me.
When the last board was laid, we sat side by side on the new steps, the smell of cedar thick in the air, our boots dusted with sawdust. Levi handed me a bottle of root beer from the cooler, cold and sweating in the heat. “You’re good at this,” he said. “Building things. You could make something of it if you want.”
“Yeah?” I tried to sound indifferent, but my chest had gone tight. No one but Levi Holt had ever told me I could be something before.
“Yeah,” he said again. “You’ve got hands that know how to make something stay standing.” He paused, looking out over the fields. “That’s a gift, son. Don’t waste it.”
I didn’t know then that it would stick in my head for years. It would echo every time I picked up a hammer, every time I tore something down or built something up again.
By the time I graduated, I’d packed up and left Wildwood Meadows, thinking I’d build something bigger somewhere else. I told myself I’d be back for thefollowing summer. I was, once or twice. Then life got away from me. Work. Distance. Pride. I’d wanted to build something for myself to prove I could.
And one day, Levi Holt was gone. An accident. Just like that.
The sound of the phone call still lives somewhere in the back of my skull — Wade’s voice, tight and brittle, saying words that didn’t make sense at first. After that, I stopped coming home. I figured maybe the hurt would fade if I stayed gone long enough.
But grief doesn’t fade. It waits. It builds, like pressure behind a wall you never fixed right.
1
Easton: Present
At the top of the ridge, the Holt farmhouse came into view—weathered but proud. The white paint could use a coat, and the porch boards sagged in places, but the rocking chairs still waited, the barn roof gleaming behind it. Time had left its fingerprints, but the place looked more alive than anywhere I’d lived since.
Before Maggie and Levi, home had been a string of foster homes, mattresses shared with kids whose names I didn’t remember. Before that, a father who bailed and a mother who overdosed. The Holts’ was the first roof that felt like it might actually stay over my head.
I parked in the gravel driveway, killed the engine, and let the silence stretch. The fields were damp and green from spring rain. Memories of Levi hit me hard: his laugh, his calloused hands teaching me to square a frame or sanda board smooth. He was the one who told me I was good at building things. Thinking of him still made my throat tighten.
The porch creaked under my boots. Through the screen door came the smell of coffee and something baking. Hopefully, Maggie wasn’t up on her feet, but knowing her, she probably was.
Voices drifted from inside. The Holts were all here, minus Delphina. My stomach twisted. It had been a long time since I’d walked through that door.
“East!” Sage launched herself from a chair, smile bright enough to burn through the tension. I caught her and squeezed, the familiar calm she carried wrapping around me.
“Hey there.”
“Let me have a turn.” Kipp clapped me on the back, his game warden uniform smelling faintly of pine. “Good to see you, brother.”
“Geez, take it easy. I’m gonna bruise,” I muttered, but my grin was half-hearted. Everywhere I looked were photos of Levi, and grief pressed down again, heavier for the years I’d tried to outrun it.
Wade leaned against the counter, his police uniform shirt buttoned tight even off-duty. He gave me a nod. Chloe crossed over to kiss my cheek, already fussing.
“You look tired,” she said. “Long drive?”
