Her smile flickers on instinct, then fades quieter. Heavier. She pulls off her veil and stands, brushing grass from her knees.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.”
I hop the fence and walk over slow, careful not to spook the bees or her. They don’t buzz louder when I get close. Just keep doing what they’re doing.
Smart creatures.
“You alright?” I ask.
She nods. Then shakes her head. Then huffs out a breath that’s almost a laugh. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
Fair enough.
I gesture toward the hives. “They seem settled.”
“They are,” she says. “They always calm me down. Even when everything else is… loud.”
I nod. “So, what’s going on?”
She sighs heavily. “I finally met the writer of the letters.”
Shock reverberates through my system. “You did?”
“I did,” she says. “Her name’s Evelyn Mercer.”
“Whoa.”
“She knew my mom,” Abilene continues. “Really knew her. Not the version people talk about. The real one.”
My chest tightens. I stay quiet. Let her set the pace.
“She wrote the letters,” Abilene says. “All of them. After she found some letters Mom wrote to her when they were young. She didn’t know how to come to me directly, so she… nudged me.”
I grunt softly. “Hell of a nudge.”
“Yeah.” She exhales. “I was angry at first. Still am, a little. But mostly I’m…” She searches for the word. “Relieved.”
I tilt my head. “Relief usually comes after pain.”
She gives me a small, tired smile. “You noticed.”
She crouches again, fingers tracing the edge of the journal. I follow her down, settling on my heels a few feet away.
“There were three stories tangled together,” she says. “That’s what Evelyn said. The rivalry. The inheritance. And the fire.”
I keep my face neutral, but my jaw tightens at that last word.
“The rivalry wasn’t about land or money,” Abilene goes on. “It was about people. My mom. My aunt. The men they loved. Hurt feelings that got turned into gossip because this town doesn’t know how to let private pain stay private.”
I snort under my breath. She’s not wrong.
“And the inheritance…” She swallows. “Grandma Mabel maybe had one. Quiet. Old family line. Everyone kinda assumed it was something valuable. Jewels, probably.”
“Assumptions are cheap,” I say. “They spread easy.”
She nods. “My mom heard the rumors. Thought if she could find something valuable, she could leave. Start over. Give me a safer life.” Her voice wobbles, just barely. “She wasn’t chasing wealth. She was chasing freedom.”
