Chapter 4
CLAIRE
The house felt bigger in daylight. Last night, exhausted and half-limping from my window mishap, I'd only seen the dim hallway and the kitchen.
Now, standing in the middle of Aunt Lois's front room with morning sun cutting through the dusty, cut-glass windows, I could see just how much she'd left behind.
Being executor had sounded straightforward when the lawyer called.
I figured I’d need to sign some papers, close some accounts, donate what needed donating and sell what didn't. But standing here, surrounded by decades of carefully preserved records, it didn't feel straightforward at all. It felt personal.
I pulled the nearest box toward me—West Parcel – Notes—and lifted the lid.
Inside, everything was organized with the same care Aunt Lois had brought to every part of her life. Survey maps were folded into protective sleeves. Photocopies of deeds stacked by date. Handwritten cross-references on index cards clipped to the corresponding files.
She hadn't ignored this land the way everyone in town assumed. She'd studied it.
I flipped through the dividers slowly, scanning dates and property markers I only half-recognized.
The files went back further than I expected.
Some of the older documents were copies of copies, faded and hard to read, but Aunt Lois had annotated them in pencil with notes like Check against county records and Compare to Kincaid boundary claim 1923.
My chest tightened. This wasn't just estate planning. This was research.
I reached a tab near the back labeled Cross-reference – 1912 transfer and pulled it open. The envelope behind it was missing. It wasn't ripped out or stuffed into the bottom of the box in a mess of loose papers. It was just gone.
I checked the surrounding files. Flipped through the dividers again. Even opened the next box to make sure it hadn't been misfiled.
Nothing.
Aunt Lois had never been careless with her records. Every other document in this box was perfectly placed, cross-referenced, and preserved. She wouldn't have left a gap like this unless… unless what? Unless she'd moved it somewhere else. Or given it to someone. Or—
I stopped myself before finishing the thought.
The absence felt deliberate. And for the first time since I'd arrived, the weight in my chest shifted from grief to something else. Something that made me uneasy.
The sound of a truck in the drive pulled my attention away from the files.
My pulse jumped before I could stop it, and I was annoyed at myself for recognizing the engine. I wiped my hands on my jeans and moved to the window just as Torin's truck rolled to a stop next to my car.
He climbed out carrying a toolkit, his movements calm and steady.
I opened the door before he could knock. "Thanks for coming all the way back out here."
"I said I would." He stepped inside and set the toolkit at his feet, then nodded toward the boxes on the table. "Looks like you've been busy."
I followed his gaze to the piles of paperwork. "Turns out my aunt kept better records than the county clerk."
His mouth twitched. "That doesn't surprise me."
I almost smiled.
"Is your car unlocked? I'll go grab that pane."
"Yeah. No reason to lock up way out here."
"You should keep your car locked, the doors too. Never know who might be wandering around, and with you out here all alone…" His voice trailed off, but the look in his eyes told me he wasn't joking.
"Okay, deputy." I couldn't remember ever locking a door during the time I lived in Mustang Mountain. Not unless we were leaving town.
"I'm serious, Claire." His jaw tensed.
"Okay. I'll lock all the doors from now on."
"Good." He left me in the front room while he went out and grabbed the glass, then moved to the broken window and pulled off the tarp I'd taped up last night. Then he studied the frame for a moment before opening his toolkit and getting to work.
I should have gone back to the boxes. Should have kept sorting papers and doing something useful. Instead, I leaned against the wall and watched him.
He handled the tools like he'd done this a hundred times before with a quiet competence that seemed stitched into every movement. He'd always been solid, even back in high school when I barely allowed myself to look at him.
He was older then. Two grades ahead of me and from the wrong side of town, according to people who cared about that sort of thing.
But he'd never looked at me the way other people did. Never treated me like a Hollister problem waiting to happen.
He'd just been... steady.
"You're good at this," I said, more to fill the silence than anything else.
He glanced over his shoulder. "What, fixing windows?"
"Fixing things in general."
He turned back to the frame and fit the new glass into place. "Not everything can be fixed."
Something in his tone said he wasn't talking about windows.
I leaned against the doorframe. "What do you mean?"
He didn't answer right away. Just secured the corners of the glass and tested the edges with his thumb. Finally, he said, "Things people don't want fixed."
"Like what?"
He straightened and wiped his hands on his jeans. "Old arguments. Long memories. Lines drawn so deep people forget why they're there in the first place."
I thought about the missing envelope. About Ruby's questions at the Merc. About the way Mrs. Davis had looked at Torin like she wanted to warn him away from something.
"You think I'm going cause trouble for the rodeo." It wasn't a question.
Torin met my gaze. "I think everyone is expecting you to."
"And you?"
He held my eyes for a long moment. "I think you came back for a reason, and I don't think it was just to sign papers."
My pulse kicked up again, harder this time. "My aunt passed away. I'm here because somebody needed to handle things."
"I know." His voice grew softer. "But it seems like you're already digging in."
He wasn't wrong. I wiped the dust off my hands and glanced back toward the table, toward the gap in the files that still bothered me more than it should. If I wanted to figure out what Aunt Lois's notes meant, I was going to have to ask for help. And Torin was in a position to provide it.
"I think there's something missing in one of the files," I said, then waited to gauge his reaction to decide how much I could trust him.
He paused, his fingers still pressed against the edge of the glass. "Missing how?"
I kept my voice casual. "In the files. There's a divider that Aunt Lois labeled, but the envelope behind it is gone."
He turned toward me then, his shoulders pulling back as his attention locked on my face. The look he gave me said he was still working through what that might mean.
"Who else has been in the house?"
"No one." I crossed my arms. "Just me."
I didn't want to leap to conclusions or turn this into something dramatic when it could just be a simple mistake.
But Aunt Lois didn't make mistakes. Not with family records.
Over the years she'd become the family historian and enjoyed researching the history of the Hollisters all the way back to before they immigrated from England.
If she'd been cross-referencing a land transfer, it mattered.
Torin didn't dismiss my concern. But he didn't make it into a big deal either. "Maybe she moved it somewhere else.”
"Maybe." I didn't believe that any more than he did.
He turned back to the window and tested the seal one more time before stepping back. "Let's give it a few minutes to settle."
I nodded and led him through the kitchen to the back porch, grabbing two bottles of water from the fridge on the way.
The porch steps creaked under our weight, and the land stretched out in front of us.
The fence line cut across the valley, the ridge rose in the distance, and the acres that had been in my family for generations sat in between.
I handed him a bottle and unscrewed the cap on mine. For a few moments, we just stood there in the quiet.
Then I asked, "Do people really believe the Hollisters stole that land?"
He didn't answer right away. Just took a long drink of water and stared out toward the fence.
Finally, he said, "People believe whatever story gets repeated long enough."
That answer sat heavy in my chest. I'd built my career on documentation. On facts that could be proven and verified. Stories without evidence didn't sit well with me. They were too fluid, too easy to twist into whatever narrative served someone's agenda.
If this land was mine now, I had a right to understand exactly what that meant. Not the version people whispered at the Merc or the assumptions that had been passed down as gossip. I wanted to know what really happened.
"What if I want to find the truth?" I asked.
Tension tightened Torin's jaw. He wasn't arguing with me, but he was definitely aware of the lines I was brushing up against.
"You think I should leave it alone," I said.
"I think you should be careful."
"That's not the same thing."
"No." He looked at me then, his expression open and honest. "It's not."
I stepped off the porch, needing to move, needing to do something with the restless energy building in my chest. My foot caught on something at the bottom of the stairs, and I stumbled.
Torin reached for me and caught my arm before I could fall flat on my face. Heat shot through me, and for a second neither of us moved.
His hand stayed wrapped around my arm longer than it needed to. My pulse thudded in my ears as my gaze drifted to his mouth before I could stop myself. It had been way too long since I’d been attracted to someone. And Torin wasn’t just anyone.
The air between us felt charged, the space suddenly too small. I dragged my eyes back up to his just as his grip tightened slightly on my arm, like he’d felt the shift too.
Then the sound of tires on gravel came from the edge of the property. I glanced toward the sound. A truck rolled down the dirt road in the distance.
It didn't stop. Just moved slowly enough that I knew whoever was driving had noticed us. Had seen exactly how close Torin was standing.
He stepped back, his hand falling away. Even through my jacket, I missed the warmth of his touch.
“You keep warning me to be careful,” I said. “Is that the deputy talking?”
Torin leaned against the railing, his jaw tightening. “Partly.”
“What’s the other part?”
His gaze moved out across the land before coming back to me. “The part that knows this town sees everything and doesn’t forget anything.”
I cleared my throat and turned back toward the porch. "You know the fate of Mustang Mountain doesn’t rest on you, right?"
He followed me up the steps. "Feels that way sometimes."
I stopped and looked at him. "Why?"
"Because I’ve seen what happens when nobody steps up."
The weight in his voice told me this wasn't just about me. Wasn't just about a broken window or a nosy neighbor's call, either. It was about the role he'd carved out in this town and about holding things together before they cracked.
I wanted to argue and tell him that wasn't his responsibility. But I'd seen the way people looked at him. Trusted him. Relied on him to keep the peace even when the peace didn't deserve to be kept.
So instead, I just said, "Thank you. For the window."
He nodded. "Lock the doors."
"I will."
"I'll grab my tools and show myself out." He paused at the back door, like he wanted to say something else. But whatever it was, he kept it to himself.
I followed him through the house and locked the door behind him. When his truck disappeared down the drive, the house felt quiet. But it wasn't the same kind of quiet it had been before. Something had shifted, leaving me feeling more unsettled.
I went back to the kitchen table and opened the West Parcel box again. My finger traced Aunt Lois’s handwriting on the empty divider tab. She’d been looking at something. Something important enough to label and organize with the same care she'd given everything else in this house.
For the first time since I’d arrived in Mustang Mountain, it didn’t feel like I was just settling Aunt Lois’s estate. It felt like I was also stepping into whatever she’d left unfinished.