Marshall lets out a slow breath. “So the queen’s truth…”
“…was kept where the workers rest,” I finish.
Silence settles over the room, thick and electric.
Then Jesse claps his hands once. “Well. Guess we just got outsmarted by a beekeeper and a first grader.”
Caleb beams. “I like puzzles.”
I look around the room again, at the papers, the kids, the way Abilene’s holding the journal as if it’s no longer heavy with grief but alive with meaning, at Marshall already planning logistics, at Jesse grinning because this is probably the best Friday he’s had in years.
And it hits me, sudden and undeniable.
This.
This is what I want.
Not the answer.
Not the mystery solved.
This table.
These people.
The quiet trust that no one here is going anywhere.
“Well,” Jesse says, already standing. “Looks like we know where we’re going.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Abilene
Friday
The honey house smells exactly the way I remember.
Warm wood. Old wax. Smoke that’s soaked so deep into the beams it’ll probably outlive the building itself. There’s a sweetness under it all.
I’ve walked this space a thousand times in my life. As a kid, as a teenager, as an adult who told herself she was only here to work.
But I’ve never walked it like this.
Not with my heart beating in my throat. Not with my grandmother’s riddles echoing in my head.
Not with themaybepressing in on every breath.
The back door is exactly where Caleb said it would be. Plain. Unremarkable. If you didn’t know to look for it, you wouldn’t look twice.
“Grandma,” I whisper, my fingers hovering over the latch. “You were sneaky.”
Behind me, the room is quiet in that careful way people get when they don’t want to spook you. I can feel them there without turning around.
Marshall solid and steady, Jesse vibrating with curiosity he’s pretending to leash, Wyatt calm in that watchful, observant way that makes me feel I won’t fall apart even if I want to.
I open the door.
The storage space beyond is narrow and dim, lined with shelves that bow slightly under the old equipment. Rusted smokers. Empty frames. Crates that haven’t been touched in years.
