Page 51 of Wild Sanctuary

The silence on the other end is damning.

“June.” I look at the dress, then at the boots, then back at the dress.

“Sadie really does have mono.”

“That’s not what I⁠—”

“The timing just worked out. The universe provides, Daisy.” She delivers this with the serene confidence of a woman who has never once in her life left anything to the universe.

“The universe didn’t drive to a boutique and pick out my size.” I turn one of the boots over in my hand. “Or dig through my old stuff.”

“I’m hanging up now. Wear the dress. The Hendersons need you.” Her voice softens on that last part as she plays the one card she knows I can’t argue with. “And do something with your hair.”

The line goes dead.

I stare at the dress and the boots for a long moment, then carry the whole bag inside, shaking my head. The dress fabric is cool and light against my fingers. The boots are warm and worn and feel like a life I used to have. When I hold the dress up against myself in the mirror, I exhale for what feels like the first time all day.

I strip off my clothes and pull the dress over my head. The straps settle on my shoulders, and the skirt swishes against my thighs—light and pretty against tanned skin and loose honey-blonde hair.

The cowboy boots are next. In theory, they shouldn’t work with the dress, but they do. They ground it, turning it from something delicate into something with roots.

I stare at the girl in the mirror and almost recognize her. The sight makes me smile.

Then I turn to the nightstand, where my hat sits. It’s light-brown felt, shaped by years and weather, and the band is worn soft from use. Dad bought it for my sixteenth birthday—drove all the way to Bozeman because the shop in Blackstone Creek didn’t have the one he wanted. He handed it to me in a box with a crushed corner—he sheepishly admitted that he’d sat on it in the truck—with a card tucked inside in his chicken-scratch handwriting that read:

For my Daisy. So the sun knows who it’s dealing with.

I pick it up and run my thumb along the brim.

The last time I wore it was the summer before he died. We’d ridden out to the ridge, just the two of us, and sat there watching the valley turn gold while the horses grazed. He’d been so much quieter than usual. I know now he was already pulling at threads, already asking questions that would get him killed. But that evening, he just tipped his hat back and said, “Promise me you’ll always fight for the truth, angel. Even when it’s ugly. Especially then.”

I set the hat on my head and look in the mirror one more time.

The dress. The boots. My father’s hat.

I still have no idea what I’m doing. But at least I look like I belong here while I’m not doing it.

* * *

June picks me up in Maggie’s old Jeep, and the drive takes less than fifteen minutes before we’re turning off the main road onto a dirt track lined with apple trees. I smell the orchard before I see it—the sweet, green scent of blossoms, mixed with fresh-cut grass and the faintest hint of wood smoke from somewhere up ahead.

Then the trees open up and my breath catches.

The Henderson fundraiser is set up across a sprawling clearing at the heart of Dawson’s Orchard—an old family-run apple farm that’s been here since before the town had a name. Three marquee tents stretch across the grounds, their canvas sides rolled up to let the warm evening air move through. But it’s the lights that stop me. There are thousands of them. Warm white string lights threaded through every branch, every tent pole, every beam, so the whole clearing glows like something out of a dream. The apple trees at the edges shimmer with them, branches dripping light like they’re holding tiny stars. Paper lanterns in soft gold and cream hang from the tent frames, swaying gently in the breeze.

A wooden dance floor has been laid down on the grass beneath the largest tent, and a four-piece band is playing on a low bandstand at the far end—something slow and warm with a steel guitar and a fiddle that carries across the evening air like a heartbeat. Long trestle tables run in rows, draped in cream linen and dotted with mason jar centerpieces full of wildflowers, while candles flicker alongside them, their flames barely trembling in the still air.

The auction stage sits at the front of the main tent, low enough that anyone standing on it would be at chest height with the crowd. Not a stage so much as a wide raised platform, strung with lights and flanked by tall vases of wildflowers.

People are everywhere. Ranchers in their best pearl-snap shirts and polished boots. Women in sundresses and denim jackets. Kids weaving between the tables, chasing each other through the orchard, their laughter rising and falling beneath the music. The smell of the grill drifts from somewhere behind the tents—beef and woodsmoke and something warm and cinnamon-laced that can only be apple pie.

And in the middle of it all, seated at a table near the front with a tissue pressed to her nose, is Mrs. Henderson. Ed’s beside her, his weathered hand covering hers, his jaw working the way men’s jaws do when they’re trying not to cry in public. Their daughter, Vera, is crouched next to them, pointing at the crowd, saying something I can’t hear. Whatever it is makes Mrs. Henderson look up, and when she sees the tents and the lights and the hundreds of people who showed up on a Friday night for her family, her face just crumbles.

My throat constricts at the sight.

This.

This is the Montana I remember. The one where neighbors drive forty miles on a dirt road to bring you a casserole when your barn floods. Where a town that argues about everything can still agree on the one thing that matters: you don’t let people fall alone.