CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Morning sunlight filtered through a canopy of pines, casting dappled shadows on the dirt path beneath Jenna’s feet.
She was walking toward a cabin on a hill, each footfall silent against the earth.
It took several moments for Jenna to realize she wasn’t actually there—not physically.
The edges of her vision shimmered with a soft luminescence that appeared in her lucid dreams.
Where is this? Why am I here?
A cabin materialized before her, familiar but more vibrant than the one she remembered.
The weathered silver boards gleamed in the sunlight, the small porch swept clean.
Smoke curled from the chimney, a thin gray ribbon against the blue sky.
At one side of the house, neat rows of vegetables stretched toward the horizon.
Then she saw a figure stooped among the green shoots, working methodically with a hoe. He wore faded overalls and a checkered shirt, his movements fluid and strong.
Wendell Gillis.
Although she recognized the man tending that garden, he bore little resemblance to the withered shell she and Jake had found dying in that narrow bed.
This Wendell stood tall, his shoulders broad, his hands steady as they worked the soil.
Only his white hair and the lines on his face revealed his advanced age.
“Wendell,” she called, her voice carrying across the garden.
He straightened, turning toward her voice. A smile broke across his weathered face, crinkling the corners of his eyes. He waved in greeting, as if her presence was expected, even welcome.
Jenna moved forward, drawn by the impossible sight of the man she had watched die just weeks ago. As she approached, fragments of another dream slipped into her consciousness—Wendell appearing to her three nights after they had found Piper, his form faint and flickering like a candle flame in wind.
“She’s still in danger,” he had told her then, his voice urgent. “The darkness—”
But his words had been cut short as the dream dissolved, leaving Jenna with only questions and a lingering sense of dread.
Now he waited for her, leaning on his hoe, solid and substantial in the morning light. Jenna quickened her pace, afraid that he would vanish again before she reached him.
“Please,” she said as she drew near, “don’t disappear this time.”
Wendell’s smile deepened, revealing teeth that were remarkably straight and white. “I’ll try not to, Sheriff. Dreams are fickle things, though. Neither of us has full control here.”
“You know who I am,” Jenna said, stopping a few feet from him.
“Of course. You’re Emma’s sister.” He paused, correcting himself. “Piper’s sister. Twins, separated for too long.” He studied her face with clear, knowing eyes. “I finally understand it, know both of your names. You have her eyes. Or she has yours. Hard to say which, with twins.”
Jenna nodded, glancing around the garden.
Rows of tomato plants stood laden with fruit, their stalks secured to wooden stakes with strips of cloth.
Beyond them grew peppers, their glossy skins reflecting the sunlight in shades of green and red.
Squash vines sprawled at the garden’s edge, yellow flowers open to the morning air.
“You’re still watching over her, aren’t you?” Jenna asked, turning back to Wendell. “Even now.”
“I made a promise,” he replied simply. “I knew someone would come for her eventually. I just had to keep her safe until then.” He thrust the hoe into the earth and gestured toward the porch. “Would you like to sit? These old bones appreciate a rest now and then, even in dreams.”
They settled on the porch steps, the worn wood smooth beneath them. Wendell removed a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow, though Jenna noticed he wasn’t actually sweating.
“How did she come to live with you?” Jenna asked. “Piper, I mean.”
Wendell folded the handkerchief carefully before returning it to his pocket.
“She found me. Or perhaps we found each other.” His gaze turned distant, seeing beyond the garden to memories only he could access.
“I was working the land, as you saw me just now, when she appeared at the edge of the property. Thin as a rail, clothes hanging off her, eyes wild with fear and exhaustion.”
He shook his head, the memory clearly painful. “She didn’t speak for three days. Just ate what I gave her and slept. When she finally talked, she called herself Emma. Said she didn’t remember much beyond that name.”
“But you took her in anyway,” Jenna said. “A stranger.”
“She wasn’t a stranger to me.” Wendell’s eyes, pale blue and penetrating, met Jenna’s. “Not in the ways that matter. I recognized what she was immediately. The same way I recognize what you are now.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean, Sheriff. The communications you have with the departed. The visitations in your dreams. The knowing that goes beyond what others can perceive.” He gestured between them. “This conversation we’re having right now.”
Jenna swallowed hard. Few people knew about her ability to communicate with the dead through her dreams. Only Jake, Frank, and now her mother and Piper.
“You have the same gift,” she said as understanding dawned on her.
“Mine goes a bit further than yours,” Wendell replied.
“Always has. I can sense things in the waking world that most can’t—energies, intentions, the presence of those who’ve crossed over.
And I can sometimes reach out to the living who share similar gifts.
” A sad smile crossed his face. “It’s why I lived alone for so many years.
The world gets mighty loud when you hear more than you’re supposed to. ”
“And Piper? Her abilities are like mine?”
“Similar, yes, but also different.” Wendell picked up a small stone from the porch step and turned it over.
“Your sister was lost when she found me. Not just physically, but in her soul. The voices and visions had overwhelmed her, convinced her she was a danger to those she loved. She was looking for someone who could help her make sense of what was happening. And she was drawn to me, just as I was drawn to her.”
“Did she tell you anything else about where she’d been all those years?” Jenna leaned forward, hungry for any information that might fill the twenty-year void in her sister’s life.
Wendell’s expression grew troubled. “Not much. Just fragments. She spoke of living on the streets sometimes. Of shelters and kind strangers. Of running whenever the darkness found her again.” He sighed deeply.
“She mentioned a place called the Lost and Found Collective, and someone named Jill who helped her escape from some bad people. But the memories were jumbled, like pieces of a puzzle tossed in a box without the picture to guide them.”
She recognized those pieces—the woman named Jill she had rescued from human traffickers back in July, who had mistaken Jenna for her sister before slipping back into incoherence; the commune called the Lost and Found Collective …
But these fragments from Piper’s past paled against Wendell’s previous warning, the urgency in his voice when he’d spoken of danger still hunting her sister.
“The last time I saw you in a dream, you said Piper was still in danger. You mentioned darkness before you disappeared. What did you mean?”
Wendell was quiet for a long moment.
“It’s hard to put into words,” he finally said. “Your sister’s gift is... difficult. While yours manifests primarily in dreams, letting the departed come to you in a controlled way, Piper’s communications often happen when she’s wide awake. And they’re not always with the dead.”
“What do you mean?” Jenna asked.
“Piper is sensitive to violence, to rage, to darkness in the living. She feels it like a physical presence. When someone nearby harbors murderous thoughts or has committed violent acts, she experiences it—sometimes as voices, sometimes as visions, sometimes as physical pain.” Wendell’s voice dropped lower.
“She feels it happening, Sheriff. Present tense. In the here and now. And that’s far more terrifying than communicating with the peaceful dead. ”
Jenna thought of Piper’s sudden trance-like state at their childhood home, her utterance of “Red is for rage” just before Jake’s call about Derek Sullivan’s murder. It hadn’t been coincidence.
“That’s what happened the day I brought her home,” Jenna said. “She sensed a man’s murder.”
"And your sister's connection to these events runs deeper than you realize." Wendell's smile was sad. "The darkness I warned you about—it's found her again. Or perhaps it never truly left."
“How can I help her?” Jenna asked, desperation edging her voice. “How can I help her remember who she is, what happened to her?”
“You already possess something that might help,” Wendell said. His gaze grew distant, as if seeing something beyond the physical world. “An object she once carried. Metal, tarnished with age. And at its center, a rounded face of opal set into the metal.”
The description struck Jenna with sudden clarity. The brooch she had found in the well in Whispering Pines Forest back in July. She had worn it briefly before storing it away in her bedroom drawer.
“The brooch,” she whispered.
Wendell’s form began to waver, the edges of his being growing indistinct. The garden beyond him seemed to recede, colors bleeding into one another like watercolors in rain.
“No,” Jenna reached for him. “Not yet. I have more questions.”
But her words were lost as the dream collapsed around her. She fell through darkness, grasping at fragments that slipped through her fingers like smoke.
Jenna’s eyes snapped open. She lay in her bed, the ceiling fan turning lazily above her. Her alarm clock read 5:30 a.m., its red numerals the only light in the pre-dawn darkness.
The brooch.
She sat up, switching on her bedside lamp.
The sudden light made her squint as she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and padded across the room to her dresser.
Beneath a stack of folded t-shirts lay a small wooden box, its lid inlaid with mother-of-pearl in a simple geometric pattern.
Jenna lifted it out and carried it back to the bed, where she sat cross-legged with the box in her lap.
Inside, nestled in a square of black velvet, lay the brooch exactly as Wendell had described it.
Ornate and aged, its metalwork fine but tarnished, with a rounded opal face nestled into the weathered metal.
She had found it in a well in Whispering Pines Forest, drawn to the location by another dream.
At the time, she had felt strangely compelled to keep it, to wear it.
But after several days, the urge had faded, and she had put it away.
Now she lifted it from its velvet nest, surprised by its weight. The opal caught the lamplight, reflecting it in flashes of blue and green fire that seemed to move within the stone. It was beautiful in its antiquity, a piece from another era.
And somehow, it was connected to Piper.
Jenna turned the brooch over in her palm.
Had Piper once owned this? Had she dropped it in that well?
Perhaps the brooch was the key to all those lost years.
Piper had been existing as “Emma” for so long, disconnected from her true self, her family, her history.
She deserved to have those pieces of herself returned.
It was too early in the morning to disturb Piper and her mother. But soon Jenna would show the brooch to Piper. She would watch her sister’s face for any sign of recognition, any spark of memory. And she would be there to help Piper face whatever darkness those memories might contain.