Chapter Forty-Four
THE PORCH CREAKED beneath my bare feet as I lowered myself onto the swing. The chain groaned, then steadied, letting me rock slow. Sunlight filtered through the trees, dappling the steps and the patch of grass where the barn leaned tired but proud against the horizon.
The air smelled like rain though the sky was still bright and blue, damp soil and pine tangling together in a way that made me dizzy.
It was the kind of smell that made you feel small, but not in the way I’d grown up small.
Not insignificant. Not voiceless. Small like part of something vast and unshakable, like the land itself might carry you if you stopped fighting long enough to let it.
Zeke had gone into town a half hour ago.
Supplies, he’d said. Fresh coffee for his momma.
He hadn’t kissed me goodbye, but his hand lingered at the back of my neck before he left, thumb brushing once like he wanted to tell me something but didn’t.
The kids were down for a nap, bellies full from lunch and worn out from chasing each other around the barn until they collapsed in a tangle of limbs and laughter.
The quiet sat strange in my bones. Stillness used to mean waiting, waiting for footsteps outside my door, waiting for a voice to call my name, waiting for pain. Now it meant the opposite. Safety. Peace.
And my body didn’t know what to do with it.
The screen door clicked open. Miriam stepped out with a mug in each hand, braid catching silver in the afternoon light. She moved like she had always belonged to this land—bare feet, straight spine, an ease that didn’t need permission.
She passed me one mug and took her seat in the rocking chair beside the swing. It creaked in rhythm with mine, the sound blending into cicadas humming in the trees, a crow calling lazy from the fencepost, the distant churn of the river past the blackberry rows.
For a while, neither of us spoke. The silence wasn’t heavy. It wasn’t demanding. It just… was.
“You good?” she asked finally, her voice even, like she already knew the answer.
I curled both hands around the mug. Let the heat soak into me, scalding my palms just enough to remind me I was alive. “More than I probably deserve.”
Her eyes slid to mine. Not unkind, but searing enough to cut through the flimsy excuse I’d tried to offer. “That ain’t how grace works, sweetheart. You take what peace you can get, and you don’t question why it finally found you.”
I looked out across the field. Grass rolled under the breeze like an ocean I hadn’t been allowed to dream about before. “Sometimes I still feel like I’m dreaming.”
“Doesn’t mean it ain’t real,” she said, sipping her coffee.
I let that sit in me, heavy as the swing beneath my legs.
Then, gentle, like she was unwrapping something fragile, Miriam asked, “That place you came from… the one you ran from. You wanna tell me about it?”
My fingers froze around the mug. She didn’t look at me. Didn’t press. Just kept her eyes on the field like she was asking about the weather.
“I don’t know where to start,” I whispered.
“That’s fair,” she said, slow. “You don’t have to. Not unless you want to.”
The wind shifted, carrying the scent of cut grass from the far end of the yard. I held my breath, then let it out shaky. One word slipped out before I could stop it.
“Fire.”
Miriam didn’t flinch.
“It was always about fire,” I said, my throat raw around the words. “Cleansing. Obedience. We were taught that burning was holy. That the hotter it seared, the closer we got to salvation.”
My skin prickled just saying it, phantom heat crawling over my arms. I tasted smoke that wasn’t there, bitter and burning, lodged in the back of my throat.
“He called himself a prophet,” I went on. “Said he was chosen. Said we were too, but only if we stayed pure in the eyes of the flame.”
I looked down at the coffee, the steam twisting like smoke.
“But we were never pure enough.” My voice cracked. “Especially the girls.”
A memory slammed sharp behind my eyes—skin blistering, his voice booming about obedience, the stink of burnt flesh mixing with incense. The ash mark on my chest still itched sometimes, like my body remembered more than I wanted it to.
Miriam’s gaze turned to me then, certain and unflinching. Not pity. Not shock. Just a weight that told me she understood more than she was saying.
“And Gabrial?” she asked carefully. “He was the prophet. And he chose you.”
“Yes.” My throat tightened. “He said the flame created me for him. That only he could love me.”
The words fell bitter in the air. I forced myself to look up, meet her eyes. “That’s not love.”
“No,” Miriam said. Her voice held steel. “It isn’t.”
Silence stretched again, but it didn’t scare me. It felt like she was holding the weight with me instead of letting me carry it alone.
“You still fear that flame?” she asked after a long beat.
The question startled me. My instinct was denial. But the truth slid out ragged. “Yes.”
She reached across the space between us, her hand warm and solid over mine. Not smothering, not pitying, just steady. “I’m real glad you made it out.”
There was something in her voice then—something old and aching. I looked at her and wondered just how much she wasn’t saying.
“You ever hear of anything like that before?” I asked.
Her mouth curved, small and sad. “We all got ghosts,” she said. “Some of us just learn to walk beside them.”
Her rocking chair creaked slow, like it was keeping time with the words.
I sat back, swing shifting beneath me, chest tight with things I couldn’t name. The wind picked up again, brushing hair across my cheek, carrying the clean scent of pine… and something else.
Smoke.
My breath caught.
I turned toward the horizon. The fields were gold and green under the sun, sky stretching wide, blue and endless. Nothing burning. Nothing wrong.
But the hairs on the back of my neck rose anyway. My heart thudded too hard for the stillness.
Miriam stood, setting her empty mug on the porch rail. “I’ll check on the kids.”
The screen door clicked behind her, leaving me with the creak of chains, the hum of cicadas, the distant sound of cars on the highway.
The air smelled sweet again. Safe.
But I couldn’t shake it. That ghost of smoke. That memory of fire pressing close, reminding me it was never far enough away.