Chapter 47
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CORINNE WILDE - ONE YEAR LATER
I close the door to the cabin—my door now, our door—and turn the lock. The click settles something deep in my chest, a small anchor thrown into place. The wind howls outside, but in here, there’s only quiet. The good kind.
This house has seen so much noise.
Mom hums in the kitchen. It’s the same tune she’s hummed since I was a girl, something wordless and familiar.
Taylor is upstairs in the loft, singing to herself while she reads next to the window—the very spot where I used to sit and pretend I could hear the trees whisper. Maybe I could. Maybe I still can.
Foxglove is officially our home now. We live here together, the way we promised we would that evening by Grandma’s grave. Three generations of Wilde women under one roof, just as it’s always been—only now, it’s us. Our turn.
Lewis still visits—sometimes with groceries, sometimes to stay for supper. Taylor remains the center of his world. I think I was once, too. Maybe I could be again. But these days, I’m not sure I want to be the center of anyone’s world.
Not after everything.
The idea of marriage feels far away now, like a book I finished long ago and left on a shelf.
I’m happy. Free.
Not free to see anyone else, necessarily. But to see myself. To learn who I am.
Greta comes by whenever she can—often with snacks, always with memories and laughter. Occasionally she’s here when Conrad and Benji stop by, and we have spontaneous picnics in the orchard, drinking fresh cider and staying out late enough for the fireflies to join us.
No one was more devastated to learn the truth about EJ than Conrad, and some days I get the feeling he’s still trying to make it up to us. To pay for his nephew’s sins.
There’s no need, though. Lewis, Greta, Conrad, and Benji have become our family, and even though we aren’t conventional, I like to think that comes with my name.
Wilde women have never been normal, and we’ve learned to embrace the words that were once hurled at us, the ones that haunted us.
Mom is teaching Taylor and me everything she knows—everything passed down from her childhood—and I’m discovering there’s very little her remedies can’t heal.
It’s been fun to discover Foxglove’s secrets, but there’s a peace that comes with knowing they belong only to us. And that they’ll be there to protect us should danger ever come calling again.
I’ve spent more time this year thinking about that night than I’d like to admit. The way Lewis’s blood felt on my hands. The way Taylor sobbed. The way Mom fell—so fast, so sudden. The way she knew what to do. The way she saved Lewis.
The sound EJ made when the knife sank into his eye.
The knife.
Sometimes I wonder if I should have left it where I found it, tucked it back under the floorboard to wait another hundred years or so.
But I didn’t. It lives in the drawer now, cleaned, sharpened, and wrapped in cloth, beside the old herbs Mom now keeps for salves and poultices.
We’re making good use of the hidden space in the cupboard, filling it with recipes and oils of our own.
I can’t explain what happened. Not really.
There are moments when it all feels unreal. How the floorboard came loose just when I needed it. How my hand found the blade without looking. How Foxglove was hiding just what we needed to save Lewis. How the women who came before me knew just what to hide, and where.
Somehow, they planned for everything. It’s impossible, and yet…
When I get too lost in my thoughts, I start to question whether it might’ve been…magic, I guess. I don’t know the answer to that, even now.
I don’t know if I believe in spells, in whispered words under moonlight, in curses or potions. I don’t think I need to.
I believe in tea.
I believe in this house.
I believe in the women who walked these rooms before me—the ones whose names are written on doorframes, carved into stones out by the meadow, whispered in family stories.
I believe in the others, too, the ones who’ve been completely forgotten by this world, though never by this land. Never by Foxglove.
I believe in the knowing. In believing. In trusting myself.
I believe in Foxglove.
And I believe in Wilde women.
We’ve buried husbands and secrets in this soil. We’ve fought off men who wanted to own us. We’ve raised daughters and fed them food and stories, even when we didn’t always believe them ourselves. Even when we wished they were stories we didn’t have to tell.
We stayed, and we survived.
Foxglove may not be everything, but she is our home. She is everything we need, and everything we have ever needed.
This land belongs to the Wilde women.
And we aren’t going anywhere.