Chapter Twenty-Seven
? Holly ?
Spring slid over Athens like warm water—magnolia gloss on the air, students sprawled on the quad pretending finals didn’t exist, red and black everywhere you looked.
People talked about summer internships and lake weekends and road trips like the future was a line they could just step across.
I went to class, I highlighted things that were apparently important, I ate french fries out of paper boats and told myself I was keeping it together.
Mostly, I was. Until Friday.
I was home for the weekend—one bag, a plan to raid the fridge and pass out face-first on the couch.
But the house was empty so I got back into Sally and headed to my home away from home.
I barely made it through the door before my mother clocked me like a heat-seeking missile.
I froze, blinking at the unfamiliar sight of her and my father at the kitchen counter.
I had expected them to be home, not here.
“There you are,” she said, relief and steel she had learned from Hannah braided into one voice. “Good. She’s waiting.”
“Who’s waiting? And waiting for what?” I asked, eyeing the casserole she or Hannah had set out like bait.
“For you,” Hannah answered from the hallway, arms crossed, mouth set. “Come on.”
“I—can it be after I eat?” I tried. “Or after a nap? Or after graduation?”
“Now,” Mom said. Same tone. Same steel. Traitor. Hannah was waiting in the hall and smiled broadly when she saw me.
They flanked me—two small, immovable women—and steered me down the back corridor, past the rooms I used to ignore, past the one with the lamp I’d helped pick out, to a door I hadn’t seen open. My stomach cinched upon seeing the light spill out from the open door.
“I’m not ready,” I said, because fear had a way of making you a kid again, hands shaking in a crowded room and trying to make yourself small enough to survive. “Hannah, I’m not—”
“You are,” she said, and laid a hand between my shoulder blades. It felt like a blessing and a shove. “Breathe. Then go in.”
Mom squeezed my wrist. “You don’t have to fix anything,” she said, eyes fierce. “You just have to show up.”
My hand found the doorknob. Cold metal. One breath, then another. I stepped inside.
She was younger than I’d expected. Early twenties, maybe.
Hollowed-out eyes, lip split and eye blooming purple, an oversized hoodie swallowing her frame.
A little girl pressed into her side so tight it looked like she was trying to climb back into her mother’s body.
The child’s hair was damp with sweat; a cheap plastic bracelet dug into her wrist.
“Hi,” I said, and my voice came out steady, which felt like a miracle.
Neither answered. The room hummed with their fear. Lamp light, fresh sheets, a clean towel folded on the dresser—little things that said safe without promising the impossible.
I sank to the floor so I wasn’t towering over them. I set my elbows on my knees and kept my hands where they could see them. “Hello, my name is Holly. Welcome to Willow’s Harbor.”
The little girl’s eyes—big and dark—tracked my every move. The woman swallowed.
“I’m Mara,” she said finally. The name scraped like it hurt. “This is Bean.” The girl pressed harder into her side. “Her name’s Lila,” Mara amended, a tiny apology tucked into the words. “Bean’s what I call her.”
“Bean is a good name,” I said solemnly. “Lila too. Do you want to keep both? Lots of people have two names.”
Lila’s fingers flexed against her mother’s sweatshirt. A nod that was almost nothing.
“Can I sit here?” I asked, gesturing to the wall a few feet away from the bed.
Mara nodded. Her eyes were rimmed red; the skin along her throat was mottled with finger-shaped bruises.
A flash—Maria years ago, clutching Jewel to her chest, the look of a person who hadn’t slept in months.
Me, on a porch in a town that suddenly became foreign, jumping out of my skin when anyone raised their voice.
I settled on the floor, my legs crossed as I leaned against the wall.
Mara watched me cautiously, arms protectively around Lila, but the little girl wouldn’t meet my eye.
“We can talk, or not talk,” I said. “You can sleep. You can shower. We’ve got spare clothes and toothbrushes.
We’ve got locks that don’t have his key. Whatever feels best right now.”
Mara’s throat worked. “What’s the cost?” she asked, and shame bled through the words until I wanted to kill the very word. “There’s always a cost.”
“Not here,” I said. “You owe us nothing.” I tipped my head toward the hall. “Some of us owe the universe, though. This is how we pay it back.”
Silence. The kind in which you didn’t want to breathe too hard in case it broke.
“What happens if—” She stopped. The question was a cliff.
“If he comes?” I said. “Then you’re in the safest place in this county.” I didn’t say the next part—and the men who run this place will make sure he regrets it. I didn’t have to. The walls said it for me.
Lila shifted, the bracelet cutting deeper into her wrist. I held out my hand, palm up. “May I?”
She stared at it. At me. Her chin lifted a fraction, fragile and brave. She gave me her wrist.
“Do you want to keep this? Or I could get you a kit to make a brand new one?” I asked, sliding the bracelet off gently and laying it on the nightstand, before rubbing at the red mark from the too-tight band. “Sometimes it helps to pick one thing to control today. This could be the thing.”
Another almost-nod before she looked up at her mom and back at me. “Mine’s too small.”
“Well, we’ll just have to fix that then,” I said, like it was a secret. “If you want, I’ll get you some markers and you can draw what you want it to look like.”
The smallest sliver of a smile, gone as quick as it came.
We sat like that awhile. Mara’s breathing slowly came down out of panic pitch.
Lila’s gaze drifted to the bracelet, to the door, and back to me.
I told Bean about my ridiculous purple pen with the feathers on top and how it made me look unserious in lectures.
I told Mara there was a shower at the end of the hall with new shampoo still in the plastic and a towel she didn’t have to give back.
When Mara’s hands started to shake, I showed her how I counted my breath on my fingers—one to five, then five to one—until the shaking eased.
A knock landed soft against the doorframe. Maria slipped in, Jewel’s old stuffed rabbit tucked under her arm, her mouth gentle. “I thought someone might like a friend.”
Lila’s eyes widened. She reached without thinking, then snatched her hand back like she’d done something wrong.
“For you,” Maria said, and set the rabbit on the bed like a ritual. She tapped the rabbit’s worn ear. “Her name is Poppy. She’s very brave. And she is great at keeping secrets.”
Lila reached again. This time she kept the rabbit.
Something uncoiled in my chest.
Hours blurred. Hannah drifted in and out, quiet and efficient, dropping a phone on the dresser that no one else had the number to, a Ziploc with travel-sized soap and lotion, sweats in two sizes.
Mom appeared with soup and crackers and that look that could hold a drowning person up by force of will.
August knocked once—respectful—and told Mara his name like a promise.
My dad came by with a tote of stuff the hospital had donated to Willow’s Harbor.
I tried like hell not to cry. Not in front of them, at least.
By dusk, Mara had showered. Lila had drawn a small lopsided star on my wrist. I pretended it hurt and she pretended not to laugh.
I helped Mara braid her damp hair because my hands needed something to do and because sometimes the only thing that said “you are safe” was a stranger’s fingers moving gently through your hair without taking anything.
“Why are you doing this?” Mara asked, when the braid was done. Not suspicion anymore. Simple confusion. “You don’t even know us.”
I thought the way my skin sometimes remembered hands that weren’t careful.
About Maria’s hands shaking while she warmed a bottle and Diego pretending not to see.
About Jackson’s palm on my knee under a table—the way I jolted, the way he backed off slow, the way I dragged his hand back because my fearful heart recognized him as safety.
“Because someone did it for me,” I said. “And because I know what it’s like to believe you’re not worth saving. You are.”
Mara’s mouth trembled. For a second I thought she’d shatter. She didn’t. She nodded. “Thank you,” she whispered, like the words were a foreign language. We looked at each other, and I swear I saw myself reflected in her eyes. One survivor to another.
“Sleep,” I said, and stood before I cried. “I’ll be right outside.”
I found Hannah in the hall, back to the wall, eyes soft and sharp at the same time.
“I didn’t break them,” I whispered, shaky laugh lodged in my throat.
“You won’t,” she said. “You’ll make mistakes. You’ll say the wrong thing sometimes. We all do. But you won’t break them.” She nudged my shoulder with hers, small and solid. “Welcome to your first intake, Harbor Holly.”
“Don’t call me that,” I muttered, but the smile crawled up anyway.
Monday morning, Athens sparkled like a postcard and I drove back in for a study group I was definitely not prepared for. When I cut across campus, Dalton was pretending not to hold court in front of the dining hall, hood up, signing a jersey like he hated it.
“Don’t start,” he warned when he saw my grin.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said. “How much are you charging per autograph these days? I’m keeping a ledger.”
He groaned. “My life is misery.”
“Uh-huh. You love it.”
He fell into step with me, tugging my tote higher on my shoulder like I wasn’t carrying half the library. “You good?”
It was the way he asked that did me in—throwaway tone, eyes doing a full scan. But for once, I could say yes without lying. I nodded.