24. Tessa
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Tessa
I’m pretty sure I haven’t stopped hiding since Juniper House.
After the journal, the map, the signatures, the way the past opened its mouth and swallowed us whole… I’ve needed space. Not from the land issue. That’s everywhere. In my head, in my bones, in every quiet second where I remember Jonah’s name in ink and the way Nash’s face looked when he read it.
Space from my uncle.
So I claimed exhaustion.
Which is technically true, if you count the kind of exhaustion that comes from discovering your family’s righteousness was curated like a museum exhibit.
I stayed in my room, moving slowly and drinking tea while Grandma hovered like I was ten and feverish, and I didn’t even argue, because arguing would require energy I didn’t have.
Thomas has been trying to check in on me, but I haven’t given him anything.
But now he’s out of the house, and honestly, cabin fever might destroy me.
“Grandma,” I tell her as I button up my coat. “I’m going to see Maeve.”
“Are you okay?” She narrows her eyes at me. “Are you feeling better?”
I nod without meeting her eyes. If I catch her gaze, she’ll see right through me, and I cannot have that right now.
“Okay, well, have a good time then.”
Outside, the air has that post-storm crispness. Too clean, too bright, as if the whole world has been scrubbed down and reset.
As if anything could be reset after what I read.
The library bell chimes when I push through the glass doors, and warmth wraps around me like an old blanket. Radiators hum, and the room smells like paper, binding glue, and the faint bitterness of whatever Maeve insists counts as coffee because it’s hot.
Maeve looks up from behind the desk, sees me, and immediately narrows her eyes.
“Oh,” she declares with surprise. “You look stressed.”
I drop my bag onto the chair nearest the desk and lean in, lowering my voice.
“I’m not stressed,” I say. “I’m just… historically inconvenienced.”
Maeve blinks, then her grin widens.
“That,” she says, “is the worst phrase you’ve ever said. And I love you for it.”
I try to smile, but it doesn’t quite happen.
Maeve’s grin fades like someone turns down a dimmer switch.
“Okay,” she says slowly. “That’s not normal. What happened?”
“I need a table,” I say.
Maeve’s eyebrows lift. “A table?”
“Yes.”
She studies me for a beat longer, then nods once.
“Back reading room,” she says. “No one’s there except Mr. Carrack, and he’s been asleep in the genealogy section since 2009.”
I start walking before she can change her mind.
Maeve follows, swinging the gate open behind the desk with a practiced flourish and grabbing her mug like a weapon.
We cross into the back reading room. Long tables, green shaded lamps, chairs that make you sit up straight out of fear of disappointing librarians.
I sit at the far table closest to the window and unzip my bag.
Maeve slides into the chair across from me, setting her mug down carefully.
“Alright,” she says. “Talk.”
I slide my phone across the table and open my camera roll.
Maeve leans forward.
The first photo is the map, unfolded and flattened, pencil lines and shaded pasture, the creek curling.
Then the close-up of the bottom corner.
McCoy. Long.
“What is that?” Maeve whispers.
“My problem.”
Maeve scrolls with two fingers. The journal page fills the screen. Old handwriting, ink browned with age.
Went to Long. Didn’t want to. Pride’s a foolish thing when cattle are dying…
When she reaches the lines about the handshake, her throat works as she swallows.
When she reaches Jonah is dead, her gaze snaps up to mine.
“Oh,” she says. “Tessa. Where did you find this?”
A heat blooms in my cheeks. I’d much rather forget about all of this, but I need to be honest with Maeve. “Juniper House. I went there with Nash.”
“Whoa, really?” She pulls a face. “Then I guess we’re doing it.”
Maeve slips out from the table and heads straight for the card catalog, fingers already moving, riffling through drawers with the confidence of someone who has lived in these cabinets long enough to know which ones bite.
“We’re verifying,” she says, already pulling a card free. “Not digitized summaries. Not someone else’s interpretation. Originals. Indices. The stuff nobody bothers to argue with because it’s too boring.”
My stomach tightens.
“I already know it’s real,” I say quietly.
Maeve glances back at me, eyes sharp. “Maybe. But you need proof that your uncle can’t dismiss as unreliable. Not a journal. Not a story. Paper that went through a clerk’s hands and got stamped and shelved. You need something he can’t bulldoze.”
I swallow.
Because the worst part is… she’s right.
Thomas Long doesn’t lose arguments. He outlasts them. He exhausts them until they collapse under their own effort.
And if I walk into his office with a century-old journal, he’ll call it forged. Or incomplete. Or emotional.
Maeve pulls three index cards and lines them up on the table.
“Okay,” she murmurs. “County recorder index. Water access filings. Early township plats. We triangulate.”
We split up without discussing it… the way people do when the work matters.
I take the plats.
The map drawers resist me, wood swollen with age, and when one finally gives, it exhales dust like it’s been holding its breath for decades.
The paper inside is thin, almost translucent, edges feathered.
Pencil lines curl and wander, hand-drawn by someone who never imagined those lines would still be hurting people a hundred years later.
I spread one flat on the table and anchor the corners with weights.
There it is.
The creek.
The curve I know by heart now.
The winter pasture shaded faintly, almost apologetically.
Names penciled in the margins.
McCoy.
Long.
Not enemies.
Neighbors.
Maeve wheels the microfilm reader over like she’s rolling out heavy artillery.
The machine hums when she switches it on, a low mechanical sound that feels older than electricity. She feeds the reel carefully, fingers precise, then begins scrolling.
The images flicker, upside down, sideways, blurred, before snapping into focus.
Columns.
Dates.
I hover beside her, breath shallow, watching the light spill across the screen.
She scrolls. Stops. Scrolls back.
Her posture changes.
She stills.
“Oh,” she says.
My chest tightens. “What?”
She scrolls again, slower this time, then taps the screen with one finger.
“There,” she says. “That’s not the agreement.”
I lean in.
A filing.
A claim.
McCoy.
A date that drops into my stomach like a stone.
It’s not the handshake.
It’s not the promise.
It’s the moment after.
The moment fear gets translated into paperwork.
Maeve pulls the reel free, labels it with a slip of paper, then cross-checks the index card in her hand. She moves back to the shelves, retrieves a bound ledger with a cracked spine, and opens it to the exact page like she’s done this a thousand times.
Her finger traces a line.
“Here’s where use becomes ownership,” she says quietly.
I stare at the ink, at the way a clerk’s neat handwriting turns a shared winter solution into a legal border, at how easily fear becomes certainty once it’s written in a book and given a number.
Maeve exhales slowly.
“Your family narrative…” she says.
I look up.
She meets my eyes.
“…is incomplete by design.”
Maeve taps the margin once.
“I’m not saying your family lied about everything, but…”
“They did,” I reply flatly.
Maeve winces. “Okay. Maybe. But more accurately? They told the version that let them sleep at night.”
My throat tightens. “My uncle will lose his mind if he knows I have this.”
Maeve snorts softly. “Your uncle loses his mind if a McCoy sneezes.”
“That’s not…” I start, then stop, because it’s painfully accurate.
Ring, ring…
I jump. The sound of a shrill phone in the middle of a quiet library damn near knocks me off my feet.
Ring, ring…
I stare at Maeve in wide-eyed shock.
Ring, ring…
Then I realize it’s my phone.
I grab it and stare at the screen.
“Shit,” I hiss. “It’s my uncle.”
I stare at it for another beat, then swipe to answer, forcing my voice into calm.
“Hi…”
His voice comes through crisp and clipped, with no patience for my tone. “Where are you?”
“In town.”
“Where?” he repeats, as if the first question is a warm-up. “I thought you were sick.”
I glance at Maeve, who is watching me like I’m about to defuse a bomb.
“At the library,” I say.
“Why?”
“I’ve come to see my friend.”
Another pause.
“Well, now that you’re so much better, you need to get back to our plan.”
My stomach tightens.
“I’m working on it,” I say evenly.
“I need updates, Tessa.”
“I’ll have them,” I say. “When they’re real.”
“You’re stalling.”
I keep my expression neutral even though my pulse is sprinting.
“I’m being thorough,” I correct. “You taught me that.”
A beat.
Then, colder, “Don’t get clever with me.”
“I’m not,” I say. “I’m doing the work.”
His silence presses through the phone.
Finally, he says, “Right, well, I’ll see you at home.”
He hangs up before I can respond.
I lower the phone slowly.
Maeve stares at me, eyes huge. “Wow, he is… tough.”
I roll my eyes. “Tell me about it.”
Maeve hesitates, then asks carefully, “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next,” I admit. “If I tell my uncle, he’ll weaponize it. If I don’t, I’m… betraying him.”
Maeve’s gaze holds mine.
“Or you’re protecting the truth,” she says.
“And what if the truth ruins everything?”
“Buckhorn’s already ruined,” she teases. “It just hides it under chili cook-offs and Christmas lights.”
A laugh tries to escape me. It comes out thin.
“Also,” she says teasingly, “you went to Juniper House with Nash McCoy. And now, your uncle is basically ordering you to spend more time with him…”
I go still.
“And you’re… not turning into a rage monster,” she continues.
My cheeks warm. “Don’t.”
Maeve leans in, delighted now.
“Oh my goodness,” she whispers. “You have a face.”
“I always have a face.”
“You have a face,” she insists. “A face that says something happened.”
I open my mouth, then close it again because I don’t know how to say it without making it real.
“Tessa,” she says quietly, “did something happen?”