Chapter Twenty-two – Holt #2
The deputy rolls in just as I straighten, lights off, engine low. Good. No performance. No scene. Just a middle-aged man in a tan uniform who knows enough not to trample the area before he’s seen it.
He takes one look at the tracks, and his expression shifts from routine to attentive.
“Anyone touch anything?”
“No,” I say.
Lark adds, “Nothing except the tarp where my contractor Nolan lifted it back into place.”
The deputy nods once and starts his own slow circuit of the gate, the materials stack, the edge of the burned-out carriage house.
He calls something in over the radio about possible scene contamination tied to prior fire damage and requests somebody from the marshal’s office to take a look if they can spare the time before dark.
The next twenty minutes happen in questions.
Who was here and when. Had anyone seen a vehicle on the road.
Had anyone noticed anything missing. Bailey remembers a dark sedan idling near the end of the lane when they arrived, but hadn’t thought much of it because “it’s a road.
” Hadley insists it was weird because the driver didn’t wave when she waved first, which somehow feels like both the least and most useful detail in the world.
Nolan emerges from the back hall midway through it, phone in one hand, expression tight when he sees the deputy. He starts to say something, spots me, thinks better of it, and redirects the whole of whatever that was toward the law enforcement side of the yard instead.
Good decision. I don’t have room for him right now. Not with Lark standing close enough that every time the deputy asks another question, and she shifts half an inch nearer, some ugly protective part of me calms for exactly one second, then gets worse when I notice it happened.
Clouds continue to thicken overhead as the deputy works.
The first edge of storm wind finds the side yard and moves through it, carrying the smell of wet earth before the rain has fully arrived.
It rattles the loose tarp again. Makes the half-burned boards near the carriage house creak softly in the gusts.
Kenzie’s face keeps trying to slide back into my thoughts.
When the deputy asks whether anyone in town has reason to target the property or its owner, my attention goes to Lark first, then away before she can see it.
Her gaze drifts toward Nolan, catches the movement, and narrows just slightly. He notices too.
The deputy finally steps back and dusts off his hands. “I’ll have somebody swing back through after the weather passes,” he says. “In the meantime, keep the side gate secured and don’t leave this area unattended if you can help it.”
If you can help it. That might as well be a challenge in a situation like this.
I thank him, and so does Lark, and the moment his cruiser pulls away the wind picks up hard enough to make the porch chimes at the inn’s front entrance rattle against each other like teeth.
“You’re not staying here tonight,” I say because I can sense that determined tenseness coming off Lark as she wants to protect her inn.
Lark turns to me too fast. “That’s not your decision.”
“It is if somebody is coming around your property after dark and we don’t know why.”
Hadley folds her arms and looks at Lark. “Farm.”
Bailey nods once. Lila already looks like she made that call ten minutes ago. Lark looks at me. And there it is again. That small, impossible moment where choice lives between us and somehow still feels like trust.
“Fine,” she says.
The word should feel like victory, but instead it feels like borrowed time.
The storm hits full on the drive back. Not all at once.
First a spatter of rain against the windshield, then thicker drops, then sheets hard enough that the wipers struggle to keep up.
Nolan stays behind at the inn, insisting he wants to lock up properly and cover what he can before the worst of the weather rolls through.
I do not like leaving him there. I like leaving Lark there less. So I take the win where I can get it.
She sits in the passenger seat with both hands wrapped around the hem of her sweater, staring out into the rain like she’s trying to count all the ways this day could still get worse.
Every now and then, lightning flashes across the low clouds, and her face appears in sharp, pale angles before the dark closes back in.
“She could be setting fires,” she says suddenly.
I know exactly who she means. My grip tightens once on the wheel.
“Maybe.”
Lark’s head turns. “That’s not a denial.”
“No.”
“What does she want?”
The question sounds simple. It isn’t. I can feel all the things living underneath it—the woman, the history, the fact that jealousy sharpens some curiosities into weapons.
I take the next turn slower because the road is slick and because I need the extra second.
“She wanted attention,” I say. “Most of the time that was enough.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It was.”
Rain drums harder on the roof.
The headlights catch the farm gate, and then we’re turning in, tires crunching through mud-soft gravel, the house glowing warm against the dark, like something stubborn enough to hold back the weather by force of will.
“Was she important?” Lark asks.
I don’t answer right away. The easy answer—the one that keeps things simple—is no, but that’s not the whole truth, and she deserves more than that.
“She wasn’t supposed to be,” I say finally.
Lark doesn’t interrupt. Doesn’t rush me. She just waits, that’s what makes me keep going.
“It started like everything else did back then,” I add. “Easy. No expectations. No reason to think it would turn into anything more than that.”
Rain hits heavier against the windshield, the steady rhythm filling the silence between us.
“At first, it was just… attention,” I continue. “She liked being around. I didn’t mind it. Didn’t think too hard about it.”
I shift slightly in my seat, my grip tightening once on the wheel before I force it to relax.
“That changed.”
Lark’s voice is quieter now. “How?”
I exhale slowly.
“Boundaries stopped meaning anything to her,” I say. “Showing up without telling me. Calling when I didn’t answer the first time. Getting… attached to things I never offered.”
The memory hits sharper than I expect. It’s…uncomfortable.
“She went through my stuff once,” I add. “Nothing important. Just… enough to realize she didn’t see a line between what was hers and what wasn’t.”
Lark’s gaze flicks toward me.
“And that didn’t end it?”
“It should’ve,” I admit.
That’s the part that wedges.
“That version of me…” I shake my head slightly. “I let things slide if it meant avoiding a bigger problem.”
“And then?”
“There was a night,” I say.
The words come slower now. Measured.
“Small thing. Should’ve stayed that way. I didn’t answer a call. She showed up. Turned it into something bigger than it needed to be.”
The truck feels smaller suddenly. Like the past has followed me into it.
“She wasn’t yelling,” I continue. “That would’ve been easier. She just… wouldn’t stop.”
Lark frowns slightly. “Stop what?”
“Pushing,” I say. “Questioning. Twisting everything into something it wasn’t.”
I glance at her briefly.
“That’s when I realized it wasn’t attention anymore.”
“What was it?”
I hold her gaze for a second.
“Possession.”
The word lands heavier than I expect.
“She didn’t want me,” I say quietly. “She wanted control over something she thought was hers.”
The rain softens slightly. Not gone, just quieter.
“I ended it that night,” I finish.
Lark doesn’t respond right away. And for a second, I think that’s it, that the explanation is enough. But then she asks, “Did she take it well?”
I huff out something that isn’t quite a laugh.
“No. But then she left a few months later. I thought she’d moved on.”
A beat.
“She doesn’t seem like the type to let things go.”
Unlike you.
The thought comes fast and quiet. Because Lark doesn’t cling. She chooses. And somehow that makes her harder to walk away from.
“She’s not.”
Silence settles again. Lark looks out the window for a second before turning back.
“Then why does this feel like more than just… history?”
“She doesn’t escalate unless she has a reason,” I say slowly. “And I think someone gave her one.”
Something in her face shifts. Softens a bit. Hard to tell in the dark and rain and the fact that I’m suddenly very aware of how close her hand is to mine on the center console.
Together, we seem to silently agree to dash into the house, both of us wrenching the doors open and running inside.
We make it inside half-drenched in spite of the dash from truck to porch. Mom meets us at the door with towels and concern she’s too smart to dress up as anything else. Rook comes skidding across the kitchen floor like he’s been personally offended by weather and abandonment in equal measure.
The house closes around us, warm and bright and full of storm sounds muffled by good walls.
For a few minutes, there’s motion and noise—wet jackets peeled off, muddy shoes kicked free, Mom issuing orders that are really just care, wearing a firmer voice, Rook shaking rainwater onto everyone and everything like it’s his sacred duty.
Later, when the storm settles into a steady downpour and the lights flicker once but hold, Mom heads to bed, making sure every door is latched and every window is secured.
The house quiets in stages after that until it’s just the weather, the low hum of the refrigerator, and Lark standing in my kitchen in one of my sweatshirts, hair still damp from the rain, looking like she should be exhausted and wired at the same time.
I know the feeling. She reaches for a mug. Then stops halfway. Then starts again.
I watch all of it because I can’t seem to help it when she’s in motion. There’s intention in everything she does, even the small things. Maybe especially the small things.
“You going to say it?” she asks without turning.
“Say what?”
“That you don’t like Nolan staying behind.”