Chapter 5
Church bells rang again, signaling the end of service.
In an hour, the O’Haras would gather at their farmhouse for Sunday dinner, the table groaning under Anne’s cooking, the house filled with the chaos of family.
Dylan had heard Sophie describe it with the reverence usually reserved for sacred rituals.
Her phone buzzed. A text from Aidan: Found something about the well in my grandmother’s diary. Want to see?
Her heart did that stupid skip it had been perfecting since yesterday. She stared at the message, thumb hovering over the keyboard. The smart thing would be to wait until Saturday. Keep the boundaries clear. Maintain the fiction that this was just about helping with his grandfather’s puzzle.
She typed: When?
After dinner? Around 3? Everyone will be in food comas by then.
Three o’clock. After church, after Sunday dinner, when the family would be scattered between naps and football. A safer time than joining them for the meal itself.
I’ll be there, she sent before she could think better of it.
Dylan returned to her painting, but her mind kept circling back to yesterday.
The way Aidan had moved through his family’s history with such reverence.
The way he’d looked at her when she’d solved the first part of the riddle.
The way Patrick’s clue had felt like more than just directions to a hiding place.
By the time three o’clock approached, she’d finished the last wall and stood in the center of her transformed space. The warm terra-cotta made the room glow even in afternoon shadow, made it feel like somewhere a person might actually live rather than just exist.
The drive to the O’Hara ranch took her through quiet Sunday streets. Most of Laurel Valley observed the Sabbath in some form—shops closed, families gathered, a collective pause in the week’s rhythm. Even the tourists seemed subdued, as if the town’s reverence was contagious.
The O’Hara house sprawled across its hilltop, the gray stone and white paint gleaming in afternoon sun. The white fences lined the paddocks where horses grazed, and the barns with their dark green roofs looked like something from a painting—Rural Paradise, oil on canvas.