Claire didn't miss it. She never missed anything. Her chin lifted by a fraction, and she moved to the counter without breaking stride.
"Do you want coffee?" she asked me, her voice steady.
"Yeah."
Ruby materialized from the back like she'd been waiting—which she probably had. Her eyes moved from Claire to me and back again with the efficiency of a woman cataloging information for later use.
"It’s nice to see the two of you out and about," she said as she set two mugs on the counter.
"We've been keeping busy," I said. "Figured we'd stop in for a minute."
"Mm." Ruby poured without being asked, her rings catching the overhead light. "Claire, honey. Word is you've been thorough with Lois's paperwork."
Claire accepted her mug and wrapped both hands around it. "That's the job."
"Of course it is." Ruby set the carafe down with a small decisive click. "Lois was a thorough woman herself. Always said the details mattered." She paused. "Some folks would rather the details stayed filed."
"I noticed," Claire said.
Ruby looked at her for a long moment, then at me, then back at her coffee station. Whatever she'd intended to say, she chose to leave it there. That alone told me something.
We took a table near the back, the same table I'd steered her to the last time, where the wall was behind us and the room was visible. Seemed like more than a few weeks ago that I’d convinced her to have a cinnamon roll with me. So much had changed in such a short time, including the way I felt about the women in front of me.
She settled into the chair across from me, pulled her mug close, and let the quiet settle around us before she said anything. "Ruby’s still trying to warn me."
I didn’t want her to worry. "Ruby warns everyone. It's how she shows she cares."
"This felt different."
I turned my mug in my hands, not wanting to admit it. "Yeah. It did."
The room had eased back into its own conversations, but I tracked the undertow of the occasional glances our way, and the lowered voices that had nothing to do with volume control and everything to do with caution. Claire had grown up with this. I'd grown up with a different version of it, being watched for different reasons, so I knew what it felt like to have a room make a decision about me before I’d opened my mouth.
"Is work still bothering you to come back?" I asked. The question had been sitting in my chest for a few days. I’d been grateful for the time we’d been able to spend together, but it wasn’t enough. I’d never get my fill of Claire Hollister.
She met my gaze, then looked away. "Yes."
"Your life back in Seattle?—"
"Is waiting." She set her mug down. "I gave them a loose timeline when I left. They've been patient."
"But."
"But I’m not done here yet. Lois spent years putting those files together. Whatever she was building toward—the 1912 transfer, the Bible entry, the breeding records that tie everything together—she didn't get to finish it." Claire traced the rim of her mug with one finger. "I'd be walking away from the middle of something."
I understood that. It was one of the harder things I'd ever learned on the job… that leaving a thing unfinished didn't make it stop mattering. It just meant someone else inherited the weight of it, or it sat there and waited.
She was quiet for a moment. "I keep thinking about what she left me. Not just the property. The letter. The files. She could have donated the papers to the county historical society and left me a simple deed. She didn't." Claire looked up. "She wanted me to find this."
I believed that. I'd believed it since the night I watched her half-climb through that window with a cut on her hand and absolutely no intention of asking anyone for help. There was a reason Lois had chosen Claire as executor. There was a reason she'd organized those boxes with tabs and cross-references and careful handwriting, knowing someone would have to sit down and read every page.
Lois Hollister had known exactly what she was doing.
"She trusted you," I said.
"Yeah." Claire's voice was quieter now. "She did."
Across the room, Larry Ingram shifted in his chair, and I heard him mutter something to the man with him. I didn't catch the full sentence, just the tail end about some things being better left in the ground. The other man nodded.
