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Eleanor's bedroom is more of a wing. More than a wing, even—it's a whole fuckin' apartment tucked inside this mansion like a secret the house is keepin' from itself.

Those fancy slidin' barn doors segregate it from the rest of the house—thick timber panels on iron hardware, the kind of thing you spec out of a catalog and pay too much for, and they don't squeak, don't stick, don't have a single scar on 'em. I slide 'em open and they go easy, smooth as a lie, glidin' on their track like they been oiled every week whether anyone's comin' or not.

Savannah reaches in ahead of me and flips a switch, and the place lights up—not bright or harsh—just that low, warm, golden glow that was picked out very deliberately to be the kind of light you want to be seen in. Photographs warm. Photographs soft. Even in here, even in the room Eleanor kept for herself, the light is a performance.

Immediately to the left, there's a kitchen. Small one. Not like the commercial spread downstairs with its granite and its custom cabinetry and its appliances that cost more than my trailer. This one's tight. Compact. Built for one person who actually cooked in it, not for a photo shoot. The stove is cast iron, old as sin, the kind of thing you'd find in a farmhouse that predates the county lines.

Burners blackened from real use. Not staged, or styled, or positioned for a camera angle. The fridge is rounded at the corners, hummin' low and steady like it's been runnin' since before I was born and plans to outlive me too. The cabinets are plain pine with iron hardware, and the countertop is butcher block worn smooth in the middle where someone stood and chopped and stood and chopped, day after day, year after year, until the wood remembered the shape of the labor.

Everything about this kitchen looks like a remnant from some other life, some other woman. All things original to some other house. The cabin that stood here before this one did, probably. The ghost footprint of whatever structure sat on this land back when it was just dirt, and fence posts, and ambition. Frontier style. Every piece of it carried forward and kept, not because it was valuable but because it was hers and she didn't owe anyone an explanation for it.

That's what I'm lookin' at. A woman who built an empire out of image and then tucked a whole other life behind barn doors where the followers couldn't reach.

And there's a stack of wood by the stove—split clean, bark still clingin' to the edges, piled neat as scripture in a rack made of black iron. Could be art. Could be fuel. Could be both. In a house like this, with a woman like Eleanor, you never know which thing is real and which thing is just arranged to look that way.

And across from the kitchen is a bathroom. Decorated in the same classic hashtag Montana style.

Deeper down the hallway there's a room to the left and Savannah tilts her head to indicate, and says, "That was the nursery."

Which stops my brain for a moment. Trying to picture a nursery next to Eleanor's bedroom. Close enough that gettin' up in the middle of the night didn't involve a road trip across a mansion. It's an office now, the door half-open and lit up only by the moon.

Two separate seatin' areas and then the main bedroom beyond that, all dressed up in rustic farmhouse accents. And I'm standin' at the threshold of it all just takin' stock, the way you do when you walk into a space and you can feel it's been lived in hard by someone who's now gone.

When we finally get to the bedroom suite, I am unsurprised by what I see. Not exactly. More like I'm confirmed.

Downstairs, the whole place gives dynasty rancher. Lots of rock, lots of air, lots of light. High ceilings and wide open spaces designed to make a person feel small in the best possible way, like standin' at the base of somethin' ancient and knowin' you're part of it. The top of a great family tree, all spread out and reachin', every branch heavy with the weight of what the Ashbys built, and bought, and bled for. All branded with their name.

But up here, where all that air and light should continue, where it should just keep goin' the way money usually does—expandin', claimin', fillin' every goddamn corner—it just ends.

It stops. Like the house ran outta breath. Like the tree is upside down and this is the root system. The part that lives underground and does the actual work of holdin' everything together while the branches up top get all the sunlight and the praise.

Low ceilings. Not crushin' low, but low enough that I'm aware of them. And the logs are thinner up here with thick chinkin' between 'em. Cream-colored against the dark wood, parts visible where it's been patched and re-patched over the decades.

The floorboards are wood, of course. Everything in this fuckin' house is wood. But these are old pine planks, each one at least a foot wide, maybe wider, laid down in a time when trees were bigger and patience was cheaper. Smooth and sanded to a dull glow, the grain runnin' long and dark in places like rivers on a map nobody reads anymore.

They're beautiful, I'll give them that. But they are a long, long way from perfect. The kind of floor that remembers every boot that ever crossed it. The kind of floor that creaks not because it's broken, but because it's talkin'.

"Wow." Mercy says it quiet. "This is… kinda crazy." She turns to Savannah, her head tilted the way she does when she's workin' somethin' out. "Are you sure this was your mama's bedroom? Because…" She pauses. Looks around again. "I dunno. She never struck me as a 'Little House on the Prairie' kinda lady."

I scoff. Can't help it. "How the hell would you know what she was like, Merce?"

Mercy props the shotgun against the wall and crosses the room to an old rockin' chair sittin' in the corner. One of those hand-carved ones with the wide arms and the spindle back, the kind that's been sat in so many times it's worn smooth in the seat and dark at the edges where fingers have gripped.

She drops into it like she owns the place. Pulls her knees up to her chest, boots and all, tuckin' herself into a ball the way she does when she's decided she's done movin' for a while. Yawns big enough to show every tooth in her head. Closes her eyes.

"What do ya mean, how would I know?" She shifts in the chair. It creaks under her like it's agreein' with whatever point she's about to make. "Her damn pictures are all over the place, Legion. All over this town. All over the internet." She yawns again, smaller this time. "And in not a single one of them—not one—is she wearin' her hair in braids."

"This is the original cabin that stood here before the mansion was built," Savannah explains. "My grandmother kept it just the way it was and turned it into her bedroom. Eleanor inherited it, so she can't take credit."

"But she didn't change it," Mercy says through another yawn.

"You're right," Savannah agrees. "She didn't. She just slipped right in and took her place."

"And so will you," Mercy whispers.

Savannah looks at me like she's tryin' to figure that out in the moment. But I shake my head. "Let's get you cleaned up."

"Can you go get me some clothes?" Savannah asks, walkin' into the ensuite bathroom and flippin' on the light. I catch a glimpse of an ancient claw-foot tub. "Just any old thing. Something I can sleep in?"