The night sounds suddenly felt louder somehow.
Crickets.
The faint metallic creak of fencing somewhere down the hill.
“It had to be fast,” Izzy murmured.
Caitlin looked over at her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Izzy hesitated. “It feels interrupted.”
That word settled strangely over the table.
Interrupted.
“Like she meant to come back,” Caitlin said softly.
“Exactly.”
A chill moved unexpectedly through Izzy.
Maybe it was the way nobody at the table immediately spoke.
Caitlin’s fingers tightened around her napkin. “This was her whole life. Her work. Her… love story.” She glanced at Izzy. “You read that letter. That wasn’t casual.”
Izzy nodded, throat a little tight. “She finally felt like she belonged somewhere. And then it just… stops.”
Burke finally broke the silence. “Story is, Clara and Sam Talley were serious,” he said. “Everybody thought they’d end up married.”
Izzy looked at him. “Then why didn’t he go looking for her?”
“He did.”
Grant’s voice was low beside her.
She turned toward him.
“For a long time,” he said.
Something in the way he said it made her chest tighten.
“Then why did people think he had something to do with it?” Izzy asked quietly.
Grant dragged his thumb slowly along the neck of his beer bottle.
“Depends who you ask.”
That got her attention.
Izzy watched him carefully now.
“In town,” Grant said, “some people thought Sam lost his mind after she disappeared.”
“Others,” he added, “thought grief wasn’t the only thing eating at him.”
“Oh my God,” Caitlin whispered. “You don’t think he hurt her.”
Out beyond the pastures, something metallic clanged once in the darkness.
