34. Tessa
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Tessa
The fluorescent lights in the Town Hall records office hum softly overhead as I turn another page in the Juniper Creek property file.
The thin paper whispers against my fingertips while survey notes, boundary maps, and decades-old amendments spread across the desk in front of me as the scattered evidence of an argument no one has fully examined in half a century.
My eyes burn, though I continue reading.
The clock on the wall says 8:47 p.m., which means the rest of the building emptied hours ago. The cleaning crew has already passed through, and the hallway outside sits so quiet that the old structure occasionally creaks as it settles into the cold night.
I should go home.
Instead, I flip to the next page.
Juniper Creek. Boundary adjustments. Easements granted and amended, and quietly forgotten.
For years, I believed that if a person studied something carefully enough, the truth would eventually emerge in a clear and orderly shape. Information, after all, is supposed to produce clarity.
Tonight, it produces little more than a growing pile of unanswered questions.
I lean back slightly in the chair and press my fingers against my temples, realizing with a dull sense of recognition that for the past eight days I have been extremely productive while accomplishing almost nothing.
Work has always been my most reliable form of control. Give me a system, a set of procedures, and a problem that can be broken into steps, and I will solve it… or at the very least convince everyone around me that I am close.
Emotions, unfortunately, refuse to follow procedural logic.
My gaze drifts to my phone sitting beside the file.
I stare at it longer than necessary.
The thought arrives quietly, unwelcome but persistent.
Call him.
The idea is so simple it almost feels absurd. A conversation would solve at least part of the uncertainty currently occupying my brain. Nash has never been particularly mysterious when given the opportunity to speak for himself.
I could ask him what he meant.
I could ask him whether he regrets saying it.
I could ask him why the memory of Old Mill Road keeps replaying in my mind every time I close my eyes.
Instead, I pick up the phone and unlock the screen.
His name sits near the top of my recent messages.
My thumb hovers over it.
I imagine what would happen if I pressed it.
He would answer. Of course he would answer. Nash McCoy has never been the type to ignore a confrontation.
He would probably say my name in that slightly exasperated voice he uses when he already knows I’m about to complicate everything.
And then I would have to explain why I ran.
I would have to explain why the words I love you felt less comforting and more like a crack opening beneath my feet.
I set the phone back down.
Some problems, it turns out, cannot be solved with a conversation you are not ready to have.
The screen fades to black.
The silence in the office deepens, though it never stays silent for long in Buckhorn. Even late in the evening, someone eventually wanders through Town Hall looking for a permit form or a misplaced document.
Right on cue, footsteps echo down the hallway.
A moment later, the door creaks open, and Virgil Tucker leans inside, his heavy coat preparing him to leave. “Evening, Tessa. Just on my way out.”
“Evening, Virgil.”
He glances at the files spread across my desk and whistles softly. “Looks like you’re trying to solve the whole McCoy mess by yourself.”
“Just reviewing the records.”
Virgil nods, though his expression suggests he’s less interested in the paperwork than the gossip attached to it.
“Well,” he says, shifting his weight, “seems pretty obvious what happened if you ask me.”
That sentence has become Buckhorn’s favorite opening lately.
“And what would that be?” I ask carefully.
“The McCoys knew,” he says with quiet certainty. “They’ve had lawyers and surveyors crawling around that ranch for years. No way they didn’t realize they were pushing onto Long land.”
Behind him, another voice joins the conversation. “That’s not true.”
Clara Jenkins appears in the doorway carrying a bakery box under one arm for the Mayor, her cheeks pink from the cold.
“The McCoys built that ranch fair and square,” she says. “Everyone knows the Longs have been waiting decades to take something back.”
Virgil snorts. “That land was always theirs.”
Clara shakes her head. “If it was, why didn’t anyone say anything before now?”
Their voices bounce off the office walls, each statement delivered with absolute conviction.
I close the file slowly.
“Neither of you are entirely correct,” I say.
They both look at me.
Virgil folds his arms. “Alright then, Tessa. What’s the truth?”
It is the same question I have answered a dozen times this week.
“The truth,” I say carefully, “is that land disputes rarely unfold in a straight line. Families make informal agreements, survey markers shift over time, and records from fifty years ago often leave out the details people assumed everyone already understood.”
Virgil frowns slightly. “So the McCoys didn’t know?”
“I’m saying,” I reply, choosing each word with care, “that it’s entirely possible they believed the land was theirs.”
Clara tilts her head. “But the Longs were wronged?”
“Possibly,” I say.
Virgil looks dissatisfied. “That sounds like a lawyer’s answer.”
“It’s a historian’s answer.”
Neither of them seems particularly comforted by that.
Virgil shrugs. “Well, folks around town have already made up their minds.”
“I’m aware.”
Clara shifts the bakery box in her hands.
“Still,” she adds gently, “it must be nice knowing the truth is finally coming out for your family.”
I hold her gaze. “It isn’t that simple.”
She smiles politely, the kind of smile people use when they intend to disagree without arguing.
“Well,” she says, “people are talking.”
Of course they are.
Virgil tips his hat before stepping away from the door. “Night, Tessa.”
“Good night.”
Clara also disappears down the hallway to see the mayor as planned.
Their voices fade as they continue debating the issue outside the office.
I sit there staring at the closed door.
Buckhorn has turned the McCoy ranch proposal into its favorite kind of spectacle: a moral debate disguised as a land dispute, with every conversation sharpening the story into something simpler and louder than the truth has ever been.
Everyone has chosen a side.
In one version of the story, the McCoys built their success on stolen ground and protected it through charm and influence.
In the other, the Long family has spent decades nursing a grievance that refuses to die.
Both stories are tidy.
Both stories are incomplete.
And every time I try to complicate the narrative, the response is the same polite nod followed by a quiet return to the simpler argument.
Exactly the outcome my uncle would prefer.
I rub my temples and gather the files into a tidy pile.
For eight days, I have told myself that patience was the responsible choice, that stepping carefully would prevent the situation from escalating, and that silence, at least temporarily, would allow the facts to emerge on their own.
Silence, however, has a way of creating space for other people’s stories.
Buckhorn has never struggled to fill empty space.
By the time I leave Town Hall, the streetlights are already shining against the snow. Most of the businesses on Main Street have closed for the evening, their windows dark and unwelcoming. Just like my mood.
The Long House greets me with its usual stillness when I arrive.
Inside, the lamps are already lit.
My grandmother sits in the front sitting room with a book open on her lap when I step through the door. She looks up immediately, her expression sharpening with the kind of quiet attention that has always made me feel slightly transparent. “You’re late.”
“Work,” I say, setting my bag down beside the chair.
She studies my face before responding. “You look tired.”
“That’s true. I am.”
I lower myself into the chair across from her, resting my hands loosely in my lap while the room settles into a comfortable silence.
Eventually, I say, “The town has turned this into a spectacle.”
Her brow lifts slightly. “That seems inevitable.”
“Everyone is debating the rivalry as if it were a courtroom argument,” I continue. “McCoys as thieves. Longs as victims. The entire history reduced to two positions that fit neatly into conversation.”
“And you disagree with both.”
“Yes,” I reply. “Because it isn’t that simple.”
“No,” she agrees calmly. “It never was.”
I hesitate before adding, “Every time someone asks what I think, I try to explain that both families carry some responsibility for how things unfolded, and that the truth is likely more complicated than anyone wants to admit.”
“And does anyone listen?”
I consider the question.
“Politely,” I say.
Her mouth curves faintly. “Which means they do not.”
I exhale slowly.
“I thought staying neutral would help,” I admit. “I assumed that if I didn’t escalate the argument, the facts might eventually speak for themselves.”
My grandmother closes her book and places it carefully on the table beside her.
“Facts rarely speak,” she says. “People do.”
The quiet certainty in her voice makes my chest tighten.
“For years,” she continues, “Buckhorn repeated the same version of events about this land. The McCoys prospered. The Longs suffered. The narrative became familiar enough that no one felt the need to question it.” She folds her hands in her lap. “And because no one challenged it, the lie calcified.”
The word lands with uncomfortable precision.
Calcified.
Turned solid through time and repetition.
I feel everything shift slowly in my understanding. “I thought doing nothing would keep things from getting worse.”
My grandmother shakes her head gently.
“Silence rarely prevents harm,” she replies. “It simply allows someone else to define the truth.”
The room grows very still.
Because suddenly I understand exactly what she means.
For eight days, I have told myself I was being cautious, measured, and responsible, when in reality I was avoiding a choice entirely. I have been watching the town argue while my uncle shapes the narrative to suit his purposes, and while Nash stands alone in the middle of a story he cannot correct.
Choosing nothing, it turns out, is still choosing.
My grandmother watches my expression carefully.
“You see it now,” she says softly.
I nod.
Finally, the confusion in my mind begins to sharpen into something far less comfortable but far more useful.
Resolve.