Chapter Forty-One
Elise
The quilt had become too large for any one table. I was still trying to understand the blueprint of it, but maybe the final shape of it didn’t matter as much as the love put into it.
I sat cross-legged on the floorboards near the edge of the growing quilt, a needle in my hand and two pieces of fabric balanced over my knee. I wasn’t good at sewing. This wasn’t a matter of low confidence; it was a fact. My stitches were uneven, inefficient, and structurally questionable.
But no one cared. Firebrook Valley didn’t demand perfection. It valued presence.
Brady’s mother passed behind me and rested a hand briefly on my shoulder. The contact was light. Warm. Gone almost before I could react.
“You’re doing beautifully, Elise,” Beth said.
I glanced up at her. She looked tired. The kids were beginning to as well. Soon, it would make sense for some of the parents to return and tuck their children away, but no one seemed ready to give up, not even for a few hours.
“Thank you,” I said.
Her hand squeezed once, then she moved on to refill lemonade cups.
Across the room, Mabel stood near the counter, speaking softly with some of the teenagers who were beginning to get cranky as well. Whatever she was saying seemed to soothe them. She was someone who didn’t command a room so much as convince it to stay upright.
I’d never seen anything like it.
I checked my phone again, even though I knew Brady would text me if there was news. No messages at all. Not one from my father. Nothing from Keaton. No unexpected ping from any search I had left quietly running in the background of my phone.
Nothing.
I bent over the quilt square again and pushed the needle through the wrong layer of fabric.
“Miss Elise,” a young girl said. “That one is upside down.”
“Oh, you’re right.” The front door opened before I could undo my stitch, and a rush of chilly air moved through the room.
The chatter quieted instantly as all attention turned to the doorway. Tim, the chief of police, stood inside the threshold with his hat in his hand. Brady appeared beside him.
My heart lurched so hard my needle slipped from my fingers.
Brady’s jacket was damp at the shoulders. There was mud on one knee of his jeans and a faint scrape along the back of one hand. His face was pale beneath the harsh café lights, his eyes red around the edges but completely focused.
He looked around the room until he found me. My breath caught.
The chief of police slapped his hat against his leg and announced, “We found Evan.”
For one impossible second, no one moved. No one breathed.
Then his voice broke through again, louder this time. “He’s alive.”
The room came apart.
Sound exploded around us. A girl screamed in pure relief then started crying.
Two boys jumped up so fast one of them knocked over a wooden chair.
Someone clapped both hands over their mouth.
A toddler, sensing the shift without understanding it, began laughing and bouncing in place.
Beth let out a heart-wrenching sound of relief that almost had me in tears.
When her balance wavered, Mabel rushed forward and guided her safely to a chair.
“He’s alive,” Beth whispered.
“He gets to see the quilt!” the little girl beside me shouted.
That did it.
Children surged toward the fabric, talking over one another, pointing at their squares, and arguing about whether they needed more glitter now that Evan was definitely coming home.
A teenager wiped her eyes with the heel of one hand and immediately began organizing the younger kids back into their places.
I remained frozen where I was, lost in the hungry gaze of the man I didn’t want to imagine living my life without.
Mabel’s voice rose, steady and practical. “All right, then. Let’s clean this place up and head home. We’ll finish the quilt tomorrow.”
The children reacted as if she had issued a sacred mission. The room began breathing again.
But Brady had not moved. Neither had I.
Beth stood and tugged me along to where Brady and the chief were standing. “Where is he?” she asked urgently.
Brady stepped forward, resting a steadying hand on his mother’s arm. “He’s being flown to the hospital. Nora’s on her way. Dad’s been notified and is coming from the house. Bella will already be there.”
Beth nodded, but her face had gone entirely white. “What happened to him?”
“We don’t know yet, but we will.”
She pulled him down and held him tightly. Brady closed his eyes and hugged her back, one hand pressed flat between her shoulder blades like he needed to feel her breathing too. I looked away because the intimacy of the moment felt too tender to witness directly.
Brady released his mother but kept a grounding hand on her arm.
“He’s hurt,” Tim said, keeping his voice low enough that the younger children couldn’t hear. “Pretty beaten up. He doesn’t remember much.”
Beth’s eyes filled with tears. Brady winced, as if every word Tim delivered was a physical cut.
“He was found off the old service road,” Tim continued, his gaze shifting to Brady. “Thanks to Brady.”
My attention snapped to him.
His expression tightened. “It was a guess,” he said.
“The right one,” Tim added.
A few adults nearby had heard enough to turn toward Brady with expressions of approval. He looked profoundly uncomfortable under the attention.
“We thought we’d cleared that area, but hadn’t gone far enough back,” the chief said.
Brady looked toward the door, his focus already pulling away toward the hospital. “We need to go.”
“Cars are outside and waiting,” Tim said.
Beth turned toward Mabel. “Are you okay if we just—?”
“Are you kidding?” Mabel said. “Go.”
Beth hesitated only long enough to kiss Brady’s cheek, then hurried out the door with the police chief.
Brady and I stood there, both breathing heavily. The question left me before I could stop it, too raw, too full of everything I was afraid to hope for.
“Why are you still here?” I asked, barely above a whisper.
For one breath, he said nothing. Then he answered with four words that seared straight through me. “I’m waiting for you.”
“For me?” I whispered.
He gave one short nod.
That was all. No grand speech. No explanation. No promise we were fixed. No declaration that everything between us had been repaired by terror and relief and a room full of quilt squares. Just a nod.
It shattered my remaining walls anyway.
I launched myself at him.
Brady caught me against his chest with a force that drove the air from my lungs.
His arms locked around me, one hand bracing the back of my head, the other hard against my spine.
I held him just as fiercely, my fingers twisting into his jacket, feeling the cold dampness of the fabric and the single tremor that moved through him before he tamped it down.
“I’m like ninety-eight point five percent certain I love you,” I said into his chest.
His mouth pressed against my hair. “You know I’m not good at math. Let’s just call it a hundred.”
I shuddered against him, acutely aware of the children and the watching adults in the room, keeping myself from wrapping around him completely the way I was yearning to.
Then he eased back, his hands remaining steady on my waist. “I’m pretty certain I love you too.”
“I think they’re going to kiss again,” a child said in a stage whisper.
I laughed out a sob. “No, we’re leaving.”
Mabel appeared beside us with my coat and bag, because of course she had them ready.
“Brady,” she said, “tell Evan I’m saving cookies just for him.”
Brady sniffed. “I will.” He took my hand and began to lead me out, pausing at the threshold to look back at the room. “Everyone . . . I don’t even know how to begin to express how grateful I am. Thank you.”
A warm murmur of responses followed us out, a few adults who had returned already telling him to get moving before he started a chain reaction of crying.
The night air hit hard, cold enough to make my lungs seize. The black SUV waiting at the curb looked too polished and too heavily guarded to belong to anyone local. A man in a dark jacket opened the rear door before we reached it.
“Dominic’s?” I asked.
Brady nodded once. “He said he’d handle everything. I’m too tired to ask him what that means.”
The door closed behind us, sealing out the noise of Mabel’s diner and replacing it with the quiet scent of leather and the low hum of a vehicle already moving before I had fully settled into the seat.
Brady was beside me, one hand braced on his knee, his fingers flexing before he reached across the gap for mine. Our fingers laced together.
For the first minute, neither of us spoke.
Firebrook Valley blurred past the tinted windows in fractured pieces: porch lights, police lights, dark storefronts, and clusters of neighbors turning as the SUV passed.
Farther out, searchlights still combed the ridgeline, as if the mountain had not yet received the news that Evan had been found, but word would spread.
“How are you?” I asked quietly.
Brady let out a breath that almost became a laugh but broke before it reached his mouth. “I don’t know.”
It was the most honest answer possible.
I wrapped both hands around his. “That’s probably normal.”
His eyes stayed on the road ahead. The driver took a hard turn onto a darker road, jostling my shoulder against Brady’s.
“How did you know where he was?” I asked.
Without looking at me, he said, “Locals were searching like people who know the area. Trails we use. Barn roads. Places Evan might go if he got loose. Places we all think of because we grew up around them.”
I stayed quiet, letting him talk.
“Dominic’s people were searching like operators,” he said, his voice dropping. “Heat signatures. Movement patterns. Roadblocks. Trunks. Watching for people trying to leave.”
“And you?”
“I stood where they found his phone.” My grip on his fingers tightened.
“There was blood near the barn,” he said, his voice lower now.
“His phone had been found in the gravel. Everyone kept looking toward the mountain because that’s where you’d hide someone if you know Firebrook Valley.
Deep timber. Old trails. Places no one sees unless they already know where to look. ”
“But that isn’t what you thought.”
“I thought maybe we were making it too personal. Or too local.” His mouth twisted slightly. “Whoever took him might not know Firebrook Valley at all. They might only know enough to get in and out.”
My heart began to beat a faster rhythm against my ribs. “So you thought like an outsider.”
“I tried.” His eyes remained fixed on the road ahead.
“Someone looking at a map. Someone who needed a spot that looked empty, boring, close enough to allow for a quick escape, but far enough to feel hidden. A place that wouldn’t mean anything to a local.
So I used the GPS and looked for spots that were open but completely easy to overlook. ”
Like the ordinary service door Brady had chosen at the facility because everyone else would overthink the reinforced entrance. The mechanical answer hidden inside something completely plain.
I turned fully toward him on the leather seat. “You’re brilliant, Brady.”
He shook his head once, a quick rejection. “Don’t.”
I touched the side of his face gently until he turned to meet my gaze. “Don’t what? Recognize a pattern? You succeed where others fail because you trust your instincts.”
He winced. “I got lucky.”
“No,” the word came fast. “I did. When I met you.”
Brady let out a long breath and pulled me against him, cradling my weight while nuzzling his face into my hair. “We’ll get through this.”
I buried my face in his chest and prayed he was right. Everything about this trip was an unmapped crisis, a sudden structural failure with no warning, and I had never handled those well.
But I’d waited my whole life for this. So, yes, there were unknowns I had no idea how to protect us from, but I wasn’t afraid.
And I wasn’t alone.