Chapter Nineteen – Rowan
The house is too damn quiet.
Not just empty, not just still—but bone-deep quiet.
The kind that crawls inside your chest and settles between ribs.
The kind that echoes when you walk down the hall and realize no one’s humming in the next room.
No one’s stealing your flannel shirts or leaving coffee mugs in odd corners of the house.
Just me and the silence. And that wouldn’t have been so bad… before her. Ivy’s been gone a couple of days, and it already feels like the walls are closing in.
I shovel feed into the troughs out back, the chickens kicking dust up around my boots like they haven’t missed a beat. The horses nicker in their stalls. The calves stretch and grunt under the morning sun. Life on the farm keeps moving, but I don’t. Not really.
Crew’s somewhere around here, training in the south pasture.
I saw him stretching before sunrise, earbuds in, and that determined look on his face like he’s got something to prove.
He hasn’t said much since she left either, but I’ve caught him watching me.
Waiting. Like he knows something I haven’t said out loud yet.
I toss the last bucket of feed into the trough and head back toward my house to rinse off.
The kitchen still smells faintly like coffee and citrus, as if the memory of her is clinging to everything.
I don’t touch her mug. I just stand there, staring at it like it might explain why the hell I feel like I’m missing a limb.
I don’t even realize I’m gripping the back of the couch until my fingers brush something soft.
A notebook.
It’s small, bound in cracked leather, the edges worn like it’s been in and out of too many bags. I lift it slowly, careful like it might break, and flip it open.
Her handwriting is neat, loops and slants that still feel chaotic in a way that’s... Ivy.
Some pages are lyrics I remember—songs I’ve heard her hum under her breath or strum on the porch steps. But one page is different.
New.
I scan the lines, and my throat closes.
I keep chasing ghosts with dirt under my nails Searching for truth behind calloused veils He doesn’t see it yet— The way he’s already mine But I’d wait in silence If it meant one more time.
My hand tightens around the paper.
It’s about me. It’s always been about me.
She came back, again and again. She chose this place. Chose me, even when I pushed her away, even when I gave her every reason not to. And now she’s gone again—because I couldn’t say what I wanted out loud.
I snap the notebook shut and head for the door, heart pounding like I’m about to break into a sprint. Because I remember something. Something old and half-forgotten.
The shed.
It’s barely more than a frame and a roof on the far side of Otter Creek Farm, but tucked behind it—buried under dust and canvas tarps—was the start of a stage. My dad built it for one of the county fairs and said it was for the "next Coral Bell Cove talent showcase."
We never finished it. But now? Now I know exactly what I’m building it for.
The door to the old shed sticks, swollen from humidity and years of neglect. I put my shoulder into it, the wood groaning like it remembers me. Dust spills into the light, the smell of old pine and rust curling in the air.
I haven’t been in here since before the county fair stopped using volunteers for staging. But it’s all still here. Stacks of old boards. Crossbeams leaning in a forgotten corner. Buckets of bent nails and sun-bleached canvas shoved behind a half-broken ladder.
And in the back, under a fraying tarp—what I came looking for. The old stage frame. The bones are solid. Weathered, but strong, like they’re waiting for a second chance.
I drop to one knee and tug the tarp free, exposing warped planks and forgotten dreams. My fingers run over the wood, memorizing each knot and splinter like they might tell me what to do next.
I haul the first support beam into the sunlit clearing behind the shed, my boots kicking up dry dirt. The old fairground stage isn’t much—just a raised frame and a few crossbars—but it’ll be something. It has to be something.
If not, she’ll have a place to sing when she comes back.
If not… at least I’ll know I tried.
By noon, I’ve cleared the worst of the debris, sweat dripping down my back as I sand the first plank clean. My shoulders burn, but I keep working. Keep moving. Because if I stop, I’ll feel the silence again.
I pull my phone from my pocket and stare at the empty thread for a full minute. Then on instinct, I snap a photo of the half-cleared frame. Just enough sunlight. Just enough shadow.
No caption. I don’t send it.
Instead, I scroll to her name, thumb hovering over the keyboard.
Me :
Hope Nashville’s treating you okay.
Simple. Safe. I send it. No typing bubble. No read receipt. Just silence. I toss the phone onto a toolbox and grab a hammer.
The rhythm of work is the only thing that drowns out her voice in my head. That, and the echo of the song I haven’t heard yet—but already know by heart.
The sun is just starting to tilt westward, casting long shadows over the clearing behind the equipment shed. The old fair stage is still mostly bones—rotting planks, half-buried supports, and rusted nails waiting to bite. But the bones are solid enough to stand on. Solid enough to rebuild.
I tug my cap lower and shift the plank into place, sweat clinging to my back and arms. The ache in my shoulders is welcome. It gives me something to do. Something that isn’t thinking about the silence Ivy left behind.
I grab the hammer, swing, and drive the nail home. The sound cracks across the clearing like thunder.
“Thought I might find you here.”
The voice—low, gravelly with age and too many years shouting over tractors—belongs to my father.
I don’t turn. Not right away. My father, Mason Wright, doesn’t fill silences unless he has to. He’s a man of fences and hay bales, long pauses and looks that say more than most people’s words.
“Didn’t know I was lost,” I say eventually.
He steps up beside me, glancing at the beam in my hands. “You’re not.”
I finally look over. He’s holding two bottles of water, one of them extended my way. His ball cap is sweat-stained at the brim, jeans coated in dust, his button-up rolled at the sleeves. The same uniform he’s worn since I was old enough to walk behind him in the fields.
“Thanks,” I mutter, taking the bottle.
For a few minutes, we stand there. Me drinking. Him studying the stage like it holds answers. Or maybe like he’s trying to remember the last time this thing stood proud.
“You working on somethin’?” he asks eventually.
“Yeah.”
“Fair coming back to town?”
I shake my head. “No.”
He nods slowly, then looks back at me. “That singer girl. Ivy.”
My throat tightens, but I force the cap back on the bottle. “What about her?”
“You building this for her?”
I pause but don’t answer.
He doesn’t press. Just watches me with that look—steady and unreadable, like the sky before a storm.
“She’s good for you,” he says after a while.
I blink. “You don’t even know her.”
“I know you.” He kneels beside one of the crossbeams and runs a calloused hand along the grain. “Been a while since I saw you build something for someone.”
“I’m not—” I start, then stop.
Because I am.
I’m building this with her in mind. Every board. Every goddamn nail. I’m putting together something better than the mess I made with my words. With my fear.
I’m building something that might show her what I haven’t said.
My father looks up at me from where he’s crouched. “You want her here when it’s done?”
I nod once. “Yeah. I do.”
He nods, like that’s all he needs to know. Then he pushes to his feet, slow but steady, and picks up the other end of the beam I was about to lift.
“Then let’s finish it.”
We work in silence for a while. The kind of silence that builds things. That settles over sweat and shared effort and a lifetime of knowing when to speak and when to let your son breathe.
Later, as he loads his tools back into the truck, Dad looks at me over the open tailgate.
“She comes back,” he says, “you oughta tell her.”
I frown. “Tell her what?”
“That you’re not building a stage.”
I stare after him as he drives off, the truck kicking up dust along the old gravel path.
Because he’s right. This isn’t just a stage. It’s a promise.
By the time the sun sinks behind the tree line, I’m covered in sweat and sawdust, arms heavy from the work. But it’s a good kind of tired—the kind that fills you up instead of emptying you. The kind I only seem to find when my hands are building something that matters.
I drop onto the tailgate of the truck and crack open the water bottle again. The clearing is still. Crickets have started their nightly choir. Somewhere down near the creek bend, a bullfrog croaks.
My phone’s still in my pocket, pressed warm against my thigh. I pull it free and swipe the screen.
No new messages.
Just the same old wallpaper—an aerial shot of the ranch fields—and the last text to Ivy, still unopened.
That little gray bubble mocks me.
I don’t know what I expect. She said she’d be busy. Said she’d come back. But the longer the silence stretches, the more my chest hollows out.
I tap open the camera and snap a quick shot—nothing posed, just my chest dusted in sawdust, arms crossed, the line of the stage's skeletal frame blurred behind me.
Me: Hard work looks good on me, huh?
I stare at it for too long before I hit send.
Then I type another.
Me: Was thinking about your camp idea today. That napkin sketch keeps rattling around in my head.
Still no response.
I let the phone fall beside me on the truck bed, the metal cold under my thighs. The wind shifts, and I catch the scent of lilac and old wood—faint, but unmistakable. It smells like the cottage. Like her skin when she stood close enough for me to breathe her in.
I lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees, fingers laced together. My head hangs heavy between my shoulders.
I miss her.