17. Nash
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Nash
Tessa walks up the porch steps, boots thudding, then pauses at the door.
She hesitates. It’s small. A fraction. A pause in her shoulders. Then she looks at the lock.
Her fingers tighten around the key ring.
“Your uncle comes here a lot?” I ask quietly.
Tessa’s mouth tightens. “I don’t know.”
Then she slides a key into the lock. It turns without resistance.
The door opens with a slow, dry creak that makes the hair on my arms lift.
Tessa steps inside first, because of course she does. I follow, and the house swallows us.
Cold air lives in here. Something deeper than winter cold. The kind that settles in a place that isn’t lived in but hasn’t been abandoned either.
I flick a switch. The lights still work. Someone’s been paying the electric bill. I really think Thomas must be here all the time, but I don’t mention that to Tessa. She’s wound up enough.
The entryway is narrow, hardwood floors scuffed but clean, dust settled in the corners as if it’s been allowed to exist but not to take over. There’s a coat rack with two empty hooks. A faded rug. A table with a bowl on it that probably held keys once and now holds nothing.
The house smells of old paper and cedar.
Tessa shuts the door behind us, and the sound is too final.
I clear my throat. “Okay. Ground rules.”
Tessa turns to me, brows lifting. “Ground rules.”
“Yeah,” I say. “No splitting up. No whispering ‘did you hear that?’ in the dark. And if a doll blinks—”
“If you talk about hauntings one more time,” she cuts in, “I will leave you here and tell the town you got lost in a closet.”
I blink. “I’m just trying to keep us alive.”
“We’re not dying in a Long House,” she says, then adds under her breath, “unless my uncle catches us here.”
I watch her face, the set of her jaw, the way her eyes keep flicking toward the hallway. She almost expects Thomas Long to step out of a wall with a legal document and a smile.
“This place freaks you out.”
Her gaze snaps to mine. “It does not.”
It absolutely does.
“Tessa,” I say, softer. “It’s okay if it does.”
Her expression shifts. I’ve stepped too close to a line she didn’t draw but lives behind anyway. She looks away first, which is answer enough.
“We’re here to find something,” she says, brisk, businesslike. “So we look.”
“Right,” I agree, even though my chest feels tight.
We move into the house.
The living room is to the right. It’s arranged as if someone froze time mid-century and forgot to thaw it.
Couch with straight arms. A coffee table with a stack of old magazines neatly aligned.
A fireplace with a cold, empty grate. A framed photograph on the mantel.
Black and white, a ranch scene, a man in a hat, a woman with a stern face, kids lined up.
I step closer, squinting.
“Is that—”
“Don’t touch it,” Tessa says automatically.
I stop, hands up. “I wasn’t going to.”
She eyes me, waiting for me to lie.
I glance at the photo again. The man’s face is half in shadow, but the shape of his jaw makes my stomach twist.
McCoy? Long? Both?
The house is quiet enough that our footsteps sound rude.
We search.
At first, it’s methodical.
Tessa checks the drawers quickly and efficiently, opening each one, scanning the contents, closing it, then moving to the next without wasting a motion.
I’m slower because my brain keeps getting snagged on dumb things. Such as how the wallpaper in the hallway is faded but still pretty, or how someone took the time to fold a blanket on the back of a chair, even though nobody is sitting here.
We check the kitchen.
It’s small, outdated, but clean. Cupboards with chipped paint. A sink that hasn’t been used in a while because the drain smells dry. A fridge that’s empty except for a box of baking soda.
“Someone definitely comes here regularly,” I finally murmur.
Tessa opens a cabinet, finds neatly stacked plates, then shuts it again with a little too much force. “Maybe.”
“That’s a yes.”
“It’s an assumption,” she says tightly. “Stop assuming.”
I watch her for a beat, then I nod. “Okay. No assuming.”
Her shoulders drop just a fraction. She’s relieved I didn’t push.
But we both know she’s thinking it too.
Upstairs, there are bedrooms.
One with a floral bedspread and a quilt folded at the foot, untouched. Another with twin beds and a dusty toy truck on a shelf. The kid who played with it put it down and never came back.
And then a room that makes Tessa pause in the doorway.
It’s an office.
A desk beneath a window. Shelves lined with books. Boxes labeled in tidy handwriting. A lamp that probably hasn’t been turned on in years.
Tessa stands there, silent, and the silence is different from before. It’s heavier. Personal.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.” A shudder runs through her. “This place is just… strange. But come on, let’s see what we can find.”
Hours pass in a strange, contained way, as if time moves differently in this house.
We open boxes. We flip through ledgers. We find old bills, receipts, letters that mean nothing without context. Most of it is mundane. Household expenses. Repairs. Fence posts. Feed orders.
History in small bites.
Tessa sits cross-legged on the floor at one point, flipping through a folder of photocopied deeds with a speed that makes my head spin. Her braid slips over her shoulder. There’s a smudge of dust on her cheek.
I have a sudden urge to wipe it off with my thumb.
Which is wildly inappropriate.
Also dangerous.
So I don’t.
Instead, I lean against the desk, pretending my heart isn’t doing something idiotic.
“Why did your uncle keep you away from this?” I ask. The question has been chewing at me since the porch.
Tessa doesn’t look up. “Because he thinks I’m easily influenced.”
“That’s laughable.”
“It’s not,” she says quietly, and the tone makes me pause. “He’s been telling me since I was twelve that I’m… soft.”
My chest tightens. “Soft?”
“Because I care,” she adds.
I stare at her, the way she holds the papers, holding herself together too.
“Caring isn’t soft.”
Tessa’s eyes flick up to mine, and I think she’s going to snap at me.
Instead, she looks away again, jaw clenched. “Tell my uncle that.”
“I will,” I say, without thinking.
She snorts. “You’d last ten seconds.”
“I’d last twelve,” I argue.
That gets her. A tiny twitch at the corner of her mouth. Not a smile. But close.
And the fact that I can make that happen, here, in this place that makes her tense, hits me hard.
Because I like it.
I like her.
And that’s a problem I don’t know how to solve.
We take a break in the kitchen because even Tessa Long can’t outdo the human body forever. We sit at the small table, a distance apart that might as well be a lie.
I pull two water bottles from my truck bag and hand her one.
She takes it without looking at me. “Thanks.”
I lean back in the chair, listening to the quiet, the wind outside, the house settling.
“So,” I say, because silence is dangerous. “How come you never told me you alphabetize everything?”
Tessa’s head snaps up. “How do you know that?”
I grin. “Maeve told Faith, Faith told Rose, Rose told my mom, my mom told Boone, Boone told me. Buckhorn’s basically a group chat with extra steps.”
Tessa looks mildly horrified. “Maeve told Faith?”
“Yep.”
“That traitor.”
“She said it affectionately,” I offer.
Tessa narrows her eyes. “Did she also tell them I collect old maps?”
“Oh, definitely.”
Tessa’s mouth tightens. “Wonderful.”
I can’t help it. I laugh.
She glares at me.
“What,” I say. “It’s cute.”
“It is not cute,” she says immediately.
“It is,” I insist. “You’re like a—”
“Don’t,” she warns.
“A tiny historian dragon,” I finish anyway, because I’m suicidal.
She stares at me for a long beat. “You’re unbearable.”
“I’ve been told,” I say, smiling.
Her gaze remains on my mouth for half a second too long.
My smile falters.
So does my breathing.
Tessa looks away as if she didn’t do that. She didn’t just make my stomach drop straight through the floor.
We go back to the office.
The sun shifts outside, light changing through the window. Dust motes float through the room.
Tessa stands at the shelves again, scanning, then moves to the desk beneath the window.
It’s old, sturdy, the kind of desk built to survive wars. There’s a blotter on top, a pen holder, and a stack of yellowed paper.
No obvious secrets.
Tessa opens the top drawers. Empty. A few paper clips. A dried-out ink bottle.
She checks the left. Nothing.
I check the right.
Nothing.
She exhales through her nose, frustration sharpening her whole posture. “There should be something.”
“You think there should be something?”
She pauses, mouth firming. “I know my uncle wouldn’t care about this place if it was just furniture.”
Fair.
I step closer, look around. “Maybe it’s not in here.”
“It is,” she says, certainty flashing, and it’s the first time I’ve seen her absolutely sure all day. “It has to be.”
She runs her fingers along the desk edge. Then her eyes narrow.
“What?”
She crouches, leaning toward the underside of the desk.
“There,” she murmurs.
I crouch beside her, and I see it: a narrow drawer, almost hidden, wedged beneath the window ledge. The wood blends in, the seam too tight unless you’re looking for it.
Tessa’s fingers curl around the tiny brass pull.
I watch her profile. The line of her cheekbone. The way her breath catches.
“This is it,” I say softly.
Tessa swallows. “Yes.”
Then she yanks the drawer open.
It slides out with a dry scrape.
Inside, lying flat as if placed carefully and never touched again, is a leather-bound journal.
The leather is cracked with age. The edges are brittle. The spine is worn and stained as if someone held it with dirty hands in bad weather.
Beneath it is a folded map. Hand-drawn. Old paper creased and thick, the kind that doesn’t tear easily.
And right there, visible even before Tessa picks it up, are two names written in careful pencil along the bottom corner.
McCoy.
Long.
My pulse stops.
Then starts again too fast.
Tessa lifts the journal first, careful even though she pretends she isn’t. The cover gives slightly under her fingers. It might crumble.