Chapter Twenty-four – Holt
My house has always been quiet in a way the main farmhouse never is.
That used to be the point. A little place tucked off the side of Otter Creek property, close enough to the family land that I could walk to the barn in under two minutes, far enough that I could shut the door and hear my own thoughts for once.
When I first moved into it, I told everyone it was about independence. Space. Growing up.
The truth was simpler than that. I wanted one place that belonged entirely to me.
No brothers walking in without knocking.
No Hadley sprawled across my couch, eating my food and pretending that wasn’t theft because she shared blood with me.
No Mom opening the fridge, sighing at the lack of produce, and reappearing the next day with enough groceries to feed a minor league baseball team.
No version of myself reflected back in people who had known me too long to let me hide behind whatever mood I happened to be wearing that day.
Now the place is quieter than it’s ever been, and somehow it no longer feels like peace.
I unlock the front door just after sunrise and step inside to the faint smell of coffee grounds and clean laundry soap, to the shape of a life that still looks mostly the same if I don’t examine it too closely.
My boots hit the floorboards with the same old sound.
My keys land in the dish by the door. My duffel drops onto the chair in the living room where it always does after shift.
But all I can think about is the inn. About Kenzie walking into that front hall like she had every right in the world to stand there.
About the way Lark’s voice had sharpened when she told me and then gone quiet again the second she realized just how much it got under my skin.
About the promise she made in the barn with her hands curled in my shirt and that look in her eyes that said she wasn’t bluffing when she told me she wasn’t leaving.
The house should feel warmer with that memory in it. Instead, it makes everything else sharper.
I move through the kitchen on instinct, opening the fridge, staring into it without seeing much beyond eggs, leftovers, mustard, and the pie Mom shoved in there two nights ago, as if she expected emotional distress and planned for it with sugar.
There’s a note on top of the pie container in her handwriting.
Eat something green today.
I close my eyes for half a second and laugh softly into the quiet. The sound stills almost immediately when I hear a car crunch over gravel outside.
Not Mom’s SUV. Hadley’s Jeep.
Because apparently, none of the women in my life have any regard for reasonable boundaries anymore.
I don’t bother opening the door before she does it herself.
“Holt,” she calls as she lets herself in, “before you say anything, I brought breakfast and gossip, and one of those is for your own good.”
I lean one shoulder against the fridge and watch her come in, carrying two paper bags and a drink tray, sunglasses pushed up into her hair, a grin already threatening at the corners of her mouth.
“I’m afraid to ask which one.”
“The breakfast,” she says immediately. “The gossip is for me.”
I snort, and she beams like she won something.
Hadley moves through my kitchen like she partly owns it, setting the bags down, pulling containers out, wrinkling her nose at the state of my counter even though it is objectively clean, and then glancing at me in a way that says she can tell I’m tired but plans to be annoying first and sympathetic later.
“You look bad,” she says.
“Good morning to you too.”
“It is good,” she says, nudging a takeout container toward me. “I got your favorite.”
I look down and find breakfast hash from the diner, extra hot sauce, and a biscuit big enough to count as emotional manipulation.
“That’s low.”
“That’s family.”
She grabs the coffee meant for me and takes a sip before handing it over like she’s doing me a favor. I should kick her out. Instead, I take the cup and sit.
Hadley does not show up this early unless she thinks something matters. She drops into the chair across from me and watches in complete silence until I take the first bite, which tells me Mom was absolutely involved in this operation.
“Mom send you?”
Hadley shrugs one shoulder. “I volunteered.”
“That’s not a no.”
“That’s because it’s not a no.” She takes her own breakfast sandwich apart with the kind of concentration normally reserved for delicate surgery. “She worries. I meddle. Everybody contributes.”
I eat another bite before answering. “You’re all exhausting.”
“Still here, though.”
I look at her over the rim of my cup. “What do you actually want?”
She leans back, unoffended. “An update.”
“On what?”
She gives me a flat look. “Please don’t make me list your problems alphabetically before caffeine.”
I stare at her. She stares right back. Then she lowers her voice just a little. “Kenzie.”
I set the cup down carefully.
“How do you know?”
Hadley’s mouth tightens. “Because she stopped by the main house last night.”
That gets my full attention.
“What?”
“She didn’t come in,” Hadley says quickly. “Just sat at the end of the drive for a minute like a creep and then drove off. Mom saw the car from the kitchen window.”
Every muscle in my shoulders goes hard.
“What time?”
“Late enough that normal people were in bed.”
Kenzie knows exactly where the main farmhouse is. She knows the whole property. That shouldn’t be new information. It still hits like a warning shot.
Hadley must see something in my face because some of the easy humor falls away. “She didn’t get out. She didn’t talk to anyone. But it was weird.”
Weird.
That word feels insultingly small for the shape of the dread settling under my ribs.
I drag a hand over my jaw and look toward the window, toward the stretch of wet grass between my place and the larger house in the distance.
Everything out there looks so normal in the morning light.
Fences. Trees. The lane curving out toward the road.
The calm of it feels like a lie now that I know she was sitting out there in the dark watching.
“She ever do anything like this before?” Hadley asks quietly.
I take too long to answer. Because yes and no are both wrong.
Kenzie’s chaos never used to look like this. It used to be smaller. More personal. A dozen late-night texts in a row when I didn’t answer fast enough. Showing up at a bar when she knew I was there with friends. Turning every boundary into a dare just to see whether I’d hold it.
“She liked attention,” I say finally. “And she didn’t love hearing no.”
Hadley huffs softly. “That’s a very polite way to describe a woman parked outside our mother’s kitchen at midnight.”
I don’t answer, because there isn’t a better one that doesn’t involve language Mom would absolutely hear through the walls by some supernatural gift mothers have.
Hadley folds her arms across the table. “You need to tell Lark about the house.”
“She already knows Kenzie’s in town.”
“That is not the same thing.”
The problem is that every new detail feels like handing Lark one more reason to pack up and prove she was right not to trust any of this. Not me. Not the farm. Not the impossible, reckless thing between us that somehow started feeling real before either of us said it out loud.
And still keeping things from her is its own kind of lie. I push my breakfast away half-finished, appetite gone.
Hadley notices. She reaches across and taps the container lid with one finger. “Mom is going to know you stopped eating after three bites.”
“Mom knows too much.”
“She carried you for nine months. It’s in the manual.”
I stand before the conversation can turn into whatever version of sisterly emotional ambush she has planned next and take my plate to the sink.
“I’m going to the inn.”
Hadley makes a small, displeased sound. “You’re also sleeping sometime before that.”
“I slept.”
“Which means you passed out in a chair for an hour after shift. That doesn’t count.”
I rinse the fork and set it down harder than necessary. “I'm good.”
Hadley grabs the trash, gathers the empty cups, and heads for the door with the self-satisfaction of a woman who knows she’s been useful and plans to hold it over my head later.
At the threshold, she pauses and glances back.
“Hey.”
I wait.
Her voice softens just slightly. “Be careful with Lark.”
The warning catches me wrong. “From me?”
“No,” Hadley says. “From thinking you don’t deserve the good thing when it shows up.”
The screen door bangs shut behind her before I can answer. Long after Mom knocks once and opens the door a minute later with a bowl of cut fruit because apparently she and Hadley formed a tag team overnight, and I’m the unsuspecting victim.
She stands in my kitchen, taking in my face with one calm sweep, and says, “You’re going to forget oranges exist if I let you.”
I take the bowl because it’s easier than fighting.
Mom sets an envelope beside it. “And this was slipped under your front door mat.”
I look down. No return address. Just my name. Everything in me stills. Mom sees that too. Her brows draw together, but she doesn’t touch it. Doesn’t ask first. Just waits.
I slide one finger under the flap and open it carefully. Inside is a single photograph of the back side of my house, taken from the tree line, dated yesterday.
No note.
No message.
No threat.
Nothing except proof that someone has been close enough to watch.
Mom’s silence sharpens into something protective and dangerous. “Holt.”
I can’t seem to get enough air into my lungs. Because this is no longer weird. This is a line crossed so far past normal I don’t even know where to start counting it back. And the first thing I think of is not myself. Not the house. Not the family land.
It’s Lark.
If Kenzie has been watching the property, then she has watched Lark here too. Watched her step out of my truck. Watched her come and go from my house. Watched enough to build her own ugly version of the story. Unless it’s not Kenzie and it’s someone closer to Lark—Nolan.
“I need to go,” I say.
Mom doesn’t argue, not once.
She just nods and says, “Then go.”
I call Mac on the drive, explain as much as I can without driving into a ditch, and he gives me exactly what I expect: a curse, a warning not to touch anything else if more turns up, and the promise that he’s notifying the deputy and the marshal before I even finish the sentence.
Then I call Lark. She answers on the second ring, voice tight from effort or work or both. “Hey.”
I skip hello entirely. “I’m coming to the inn.”
The line goes quiet.
“What happened?”
“Not over the phone.”
She sighs. “Holt.”
I grip the wheel tighter. “Just wait for me.”
The inn is damp with heat and sunlight by the time I get there, every open window pulling in the smell of the sea and wet wood and renovation dust. Nolan’s truck is in the drive.
So is Lark’s. Bailey’s SUV too, which means Hadley wasn’t subtle after all, and Bailey is almost definitely playing backup under the excuse of a coffee drop or bookstore errand or something equally transparent.
I park hard enough to make the tires skid slightly on the gravel and head for the door. Lark meets me halfway again, and that alone tells me she knows this is bad.
“What happened?” she asks.
I don’t answer with words. I hand her the photograph. Everything in her face changes. But I watch the color leave her cheeks, and the set of her mouth tighten around something colder than fear.
“What is this?”
“It was in my mail.”
Her eyes snap up to mine. “Today?”
“Yes.”
A long silence opens between us while wind moves through the porch chimes at the front of the house, and somewhere inside the inn, Bailey says something too far away to make out. Lark looks back down at the photograph.
“This isn’t just me anymore,” she says quietly.
No, it isn’t. It hasn’t been for a while, but this makes it impossible to pretend otherwise. Nolan comes to the door then. He sees the look on both our faces and stops.
“What now?”
I don’t like the roughness in my own voice when I say, “Someone was watching the farm.”
Nolan’s expression goes flat and cold in a way I’ve never seen before. Not jealousy. Not ego. Just calculation and concern. For once, I don’t hate him for being there. That probably means things are worse than I thought.
Lark hands him the photograph. He studies it for half a second, jaw hardening. It’s clear my initial thoughts that it might be him were incorrect. Or he’s really good at masking his emotions.
“That’s not yesterday’s weather.”
I blink.
He points at the tree line in the picture. “Ground’s dry. That was before the storm.”
Meaning Kenzie has been close longer than we knew. Meaning this isn’t a random escalation. Meaning she took the photo before she showed up at the station, before she stood in the inn doorway and smiled at Lark like she had every right in the world to do it.
“Don’t,” she says.
“I’m not going after her.”
That’s a lie for later, maybe. Not for now. Lark’s gaze holds mine like she knows exactly how thin the difference is.
“We do this right,” she says.
Nolan, unbelievably, backs her. “She’s right.”
For once, I don’t argue. Because the truth is, if I move on instinct right now, I’ll make it worse. Mac’s voice, Mom's silence, Hadley’s warning—everything lands at once and holds.
Do it right. Protect her by thinking, not by burning. The problem is, I’m running out of patience for thinking. And Kenzie is running out of time to learn what happens when people stop mistaking restraint for weakness.