Chapter 7
seven
“Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.” - Cormac McCarthy
Frank Leone’s reaction to Jocelyn had been as visceral as it was surprising.
He’d called her Bonnie at first—just like Chief Ward had—as if the name clung to her face the way grief clung to his eyes.
For a moment, she’d felt the old ache of being her mother’s mirror, a truth she could forget in the years away from anyone who had actually known Bonnie Murphy.
Nan was the only one who’d ever said so, and even then, only rarely. When she did, it came with the weight of loss, her weathered hands somehow so silky soft against Jocelyn’s cheek like she was stroking memory itself rather than the girl in front of her.
When Frank whispered Bonnie’s name, pale and stricken, Jocelyn couldn’t help but wonder if he truly saw her or the ghost of the woman he’d once loved. Either way, his rebuff made more sense.
Maybe she shouldn’t have cornered him in public.
Twenty years seemed long enough to wear down grief to something smoother, easier to carry.
One would think. But devotion left sharp edges long after the world expected otherwise—and Frank had been her mother’s boyfriend for two years before the fire took her.
Jocelyn would leave him to his ghosts for now and soothed her bruised pride with the plate Cole had offered on the house.
As she picked at the last of her food, sulking, Cole’s arm crossed into her vision, the tanned skin corded with muscle and veins like a road map that pulled her eyes upward against her will.
He didn’t look at her as he collected Frank’s half-drunk beer, though the slight frown at his mouth betrayed his thoughts.
“Did he pay for that?” she asked.
Cole’s gaze flicked to hers, sharp and brief. “No.”
“Let me cover it. I’m the one who chased him away.”
His mouth curved—not quite a smile, more like the idea of one—and he leaned forward, forearms braced on the bar in a way that crowded the space between them. “Frank comes in here regular enough. I’ll catch him next time. Or I’ll eat the cost. Don’t worry about it.”
Then he took her empty plate, too, disappearing toward the kitchen. The casual kindness scraped at her. She didn’t want to owe him anything. With a stubborn pang, she slapped a twenty on the bar before leaving.
Cole’s gaze followed her out. She felt the weight and the warmth of it even before she turned and caught him. He didn’t look away.
Outside, she drew in a deep breath, though it wasn’t enough to quiet the thrum beneath her ribs.
Cole Hauser carried an intensity that made her chest tight, and she wanted no part of it.
Women in her family had a disastrous instinct for men.
Bad taste, bad timing, bad luck—it didn’t matter which. The result was the same.
Her father, Daniel Abbott, was proof enough. Not a deadbeat exactly, but worse in some ways—willfully oblivious. He hadn’t even known she existed until kindergarten, by which point he already had a wife, a daughter, a whole separate life that had continued to move without Bonnie or Jocelyn in it.
Nan hadn’t fared better. Her own father had been a cruel drunk, and her husband—if you could call that five-minute relationship a marriage—had high-tailed it as soon as Bonnie was born. Generations of Murphy women repeating cycles like a song no one knew how to stop humming.
Wisdom said distance from Cole was safest. Wisdom said to focus on the fire, on the truth. Wisdom was the only thing that ever saved her from her own emotions.
And yet.
Later, in her hotel room, her thoughts circled Frank again, his ghost-struck expression gnawing at her, until sleep pulled her under and into the fire’s red maw.
She woke choking, heart thrashing, and for a moment she was nine again—smoke curling under her door, angry flames clawing between the wood and the floor like a beast looking to devour.
She managed to breathe through it, but the fear still pressed down, an echo that hadn’t dulled with time.
That night, as a child, she’d called for her mama through toxic air, until John Hauser broke through her window, glass raining like stars, and carried her out.
Even now she could feel the rough strength of his arms, the sheer miracle of breath returning.
When the nightmare refused to fade, Jocelyn got up and pulled her battered notebook close. She retraced her notes and timelines like a ritual, pressing facts and memories into place. But each line reminded her of absence and grief.
The day her childhood ended, she hadn’t even been with her mother. Nan had picked her up instead, an apology falling from her lips as soon as Jocelyn had climbed into her beat-up minivan.
“Last-minute change, Honeybee,” Nan had said. “You’re coming home with me.”
Jocelyn had accepted it, content to spend the evening in Nan’s cramped apartment. That was as much a comfort as her own space.
When she’d gone home, her mama had been alone. And sad. Jocelyn remembered asking about Frank. Mama’d brushed the question away too quickly before offering her a piece of fresh-made lemon pound cake. Jocelyn had let it go then—child that she was.
She’d had cake, and Mama had sipped her wine.
And then she was gone.
As an adult, she saw the cracks. The distance. Something had happened, and Frank Leone was the thread she needed to tug.
Cole had said he was a regular at The Hammered Nail, but that was likely an evening ritual. She’d have to bide her time until he showed up again, even if it meant she’d haunt the place every evening until he did.
Part of her wanted to hide in her hotel room forever. She hadn’t missed the looks and the whispers of the locals whenever she went out, but those things couldn’t be a deterrent if she wanted what she came for, no matter how they stung.
Determined to prove just how untouched she could be, she got up, got ready, and found herself out on First Street.
She wandered with no real intention of buying anything, only catering to the need to keep her mind from spinning endlessly over Frank’s pale face and Cole’s weighty stare.
Window displays became her refuge—bright distractions against the burden she carried.
When the bell over a shop door jingled and a couple emerged, voices sharp with an argument, it took her too long to recognize them. Daniel and Lydia Abbott. Her father and his chosen family.
Her pulse kicked hard, and she ducked into the nearest boutique, slipping behind a mannequin like a child hiding from monsters. It wasn’t fear so much as unwillingness. She had no energy to confront the people who had built a life around erasing her.
From her hiding place, she watched them pass, their clipped words heavy with a kind of practiced resentment.
Not a rare fight, then, but the sort of chronic friction that wears people down grain by grain.
A strange pang stirred in her chest—anger, pity, maybe both—but she stuffed it down and turned away.
Might as well get something out of this turn of events.
The boutique smelled of warm vanilla, enveloping her in sweetened nostalgia.
It was her mother’s favorite scent, and that detail alone softened her enough to step toward the racks.
She let fabrics whisper through her fingers, indulging in the quiet pleasure of texture and color, until a voice startled her.
“Hello! Sorry for keeping you waiting!”
Jocelyn turned, heart stumbling, and froze. The woman who entered from the back carried her own ghost—familiar but altered by time. Natasha Abbott. Her half-sister.
They stared at each other, the moment stretching like warm molasses.
“Um, hi,” Natasha said, her voice unsteady.
“Hi,” Jocelyn echoed.
Memories sifted up like dust motes. They’d gone to the same school for a time but had never spoken beyond the unavoidable. Lydia had seen to that. And now, here they stood, grown, opposite in almost every way except for the faint trace of Daniel Abbott in their long frames.
The contrast between them struck Jocelyn hard: her own chestnut hair, her mother’s brown eyes, against Natasha’s salon-gold waves and pale blue stare. Two women made from different halves of a man who had never known how to hold them both.
“What brings you in?” Natasha asked, smiling with a practiced warmth that didn’t seem false but did feel… cautious.
Jocelyn hesitated, then gestured vaguely toward the door. “I was just…”
Natasha’s brows rose when she didn’t finish.
Jocelyn waited another beat but couldn’t bring herself to lie. “Hiding.”
“Hiding?” Natasha repeated.
She exhaled. “Yeah. From… your parents.” Her fingers curled into her palms. “They were arguing.”
Natasha sucked in a breath, her cheeks flushing. “Oh.”
“I didn’t want to make things weird…er.”
Natasha reached up to tug on a shiny gold hoop at her earlobe. “Well, they make it weird enough for everyone.” Her mouth tipped sideways. “They do that. A lot.”
The honesty loosened something in Jocelyn, but not enough to quiet the ache beneath it. She wanted to say more, to explain herself, but words tangled.
Natasha, thankfully, shifted the conversation. “Anything strike your fancy? I can help you find something.”
The moment rebalanced, and Jocelyn let out a breath. “I haven’t had a chance to really look yet.”
Natasha moved easily, flipping through a few pieces on the rack, glancing at Jocelyn sidelong. “I’ve got some linen pants in longer inseams. Figured you might understand the struggle.” She gestured down her body.
Jocelyn gave a startled laugh, surprised at how natural it felt. “Yeah. We definitely have that in common.”
The words hung between them, heavier than they sounded. A reminder of what they shared and what had always separated them.
“That would be great,” she hurried to add.
Natasha nodded with a smile and headed back to where she’d come from. Jocelyn released a captive breath. After twenty years, this was a hell of a way to run into her sister.
A sister who was a stranger.
Circumstances had made it impossible to have a relationship before, but it hadn’t stopped her daydreaming as a kid.
Connection had always been something she’d longed for and feared in equal measure, and this was no exception.
This time, the stakes were higher, and she was just waiting for it all to come crashing down.
“I can get you a dressing room to start,” Natasha said, walking back with a couple of pairs of beige colored pants draped over her arm. “I guessed on size since I forgot to ask, but I’d imagine it’s close to mine.”
Jocelyn nodded as Natasha led her to the dressing rooms. She slipped inside wordlessly, closing the door, and changed slowly, letting the fabric slide over her skin, airy and soft.
The pants fit perfectly, and with that came the sharp pang of recognition—same body type, same bloodline.
She stared at her reflection, unsettled, feeling both invaded and exposed.
By the time she stepped back out, Natasha had drifted behind the counter, busying herself with hangers.
Jocelyn held up the pants. “I’ll take these.”
Natasha beamed. “Great. I’ll give you the employee discount.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Jocelyn protested. “Won’t you get in trouble with your boss?”
Natasha’s laugh was light, real. “I am my boss.”
The revelation knocked the breath out of Jocelyn for a moment. “You own the shop?”
Her shoulders scrunched in a self-deprecating shrug, but her smile was quiet pride.
“That’s… amazing,” Jocelyn said softly, meaning it.
Natasha beamed at her again.
Jocelyn paid quickly, too aware of her own awkwardness.
“Thank you,” she said, taking a hold of the bag as Natasha passed it over. Her fingers wrapped tight around the shopping bag as if it could anchor her.
“Anytime,” her sister said, the sincerity plain in her steady gaze.
Uncertainty pirouetted through her like an untrained dancer, but she headed for the door. The bell jingled again as she stepped outside, and she nearly dropped the bag.
Lydia Abbott stood in front of her.
The other woman’s surprise smoothed in an instant into a practiced grace, that mask of southern poise Jocelyn had hated as a child. Behind it, though, Jocelyn saw the flicker—the same one she’d seen years ago, every time Lydia had looked at her like a problem that wouldn’t disappear.
For one breath, Jocelyn thought she might crumble under the collision of past and present. But then she lifted her chin, bracing herself like she always had.
“Hello, Lydia.”