19. Fran
— ? —
Fran
We move to the living room, settling on opposite ends of the old couch with the morning light streaming through the windows. Logan’s scarred arm is still visible, and I find I can’t stop looking at it, this evidence of what the fire cost him, what saving me cost him.
But that’s not the whole story. And he deserves to know the rest.
“You know she’s the one who locked me in there,” I say. “Don’t you?”
His face goes blank with shock. Whatever he was expecting me to say, it wasn’t that.
“What?”
“Sloane. She locked me in the bedroom. She started the fire.” I keep my voice steady, even though my heart is pounding. “She tried to kill me.”
Logan stares at me like I’ve started speaking another language. “That’s not - Fran, what are you talking about?”
“The night of the fire. I was upstairs in the bedroom, getting ready for bed. I heard the front door open - someone coming in. Footsteps on the stairs, light and quick. Not yours.” I keep my eyes on the window instead of his face.
“I went toward the door, and before I could open it, I heard the lock turn. From the outside.”
“The bedroom door locks from the outside?”
“Old-fashioned keyed lock. Same key works both sides.” I make myself look at him. “I kept my spare in the nightstand drawer. When I went to get it, it was gone. She’d taken it - I don’t know when. But she had it.”
Logan is shaking his head slowly, not in denial but in confusion. Like he’s trying to fit pieces together that won’t quite connect.
“The front door,” he says finally. “I gave her a key years ago. Back when we were close, before you and I ever met. She used to check on the house when I traveled.” His voice is flat with self-disgust. “I never asked for it back.”
“That’s how she got in,” I say. “The bedroom key she must have taken separately. But the front door, that was yours to give.”
“And then I heard her voice,” I continue. “Through the door. She said, ‘I told you three days.’”
“Three days?”
“At the showcase. After you unveiled the dressing table.” The memory of the bathroom confrontation surfaces, Sloane’s cold smile, her calculated cruelty. “She found me in the bathroom and gave me an ultimatum. Three days to disappear from your life, or she’d make me regret it.”
“She threatened you?” His voice is rising. “She threatened you, and you didn’t - why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried.” The old frustration flares. “I tried to tell you something was wrong with her, that she was positioning herself, that she wanted me gone. You told me I was overreacting. You told me to stop letting her get under my skin.”
He flinches like I’ve hit him.
“I’m not saying this to hurt you,” I add, softer. “I’m saying it so you understand why I didn’t come to you. I didn’t think you’d believe me.”
“I would have-”
“Would you?” I meet his eyes. “If I’d walked up to you the day after the showcase and said your childhood friend threatened to destroy me if I didn’t leave, would you really have believed me over her?”
The silence stretches long enough to become its own answer.
“I don’t know,” he finally admits. “I want to say yes. But I don’t know.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you.” I pull my knees up, wrapping my arms around them. “And that’s why, when the three days were up and she showed up to make good on her threat, I was alone. No one knew what she’d said. No one would have believed me anyway.”
“Tell me the rest.” His voice is rough. “Tell me everything.”
So I do.
I tell him about hearing the lock click, about pounding on the door and screaming her name.
About the smoke starting to seep under the door, chemical and sharp, about grabbing my phone and calling 911 with shaking hands.
About watching through the window as she stood on the lawn crying, performing terror for anyone who might see.
“I could see you arrive,” I say. “I saw you run to her, saw you kneel down beside her. I was pounding on the window, screaming, but you couldn’t hear me over the fire.”
“The glass.” His voice is barely a whisper. “It’s thick. And the fire was loud by then-”
“I know. I’m not blaming you for not hearing.” I take a breath. “But I could hear you. I heard you shouting, asking where I was. I just couldn’t hear what she said back. I saw her gesture toward the road, saw your shoulders relax.”
“She told me you weren’t inside.” The words come out strangled. “She looked me right in the eye and told me you’d left earlier.”
“And then you looked up.”
“And then I saw you in the window.” He meets my eyes. “And I ran.”
“I broke the window. And you came back.”
“I came back.” He’s staring at his scarred arm. “But if I’d been thirty seconds slower. If the ceiling had come down differently. If-”
“Stop.” I do touch him now, my hand on his unmarked arm. “You saved me. Whatever happened before, whatever she told you - you saved me.”
“I should have checked. I should have gone inside and made sure-”
“You didn’t know there was anything to check. She made sure of that.”
Neither of us says anything for a while. I can see him processing it, the betrayal, the calculation, the realization that someone he’d known his whole life had tried to murder his wife.
“There’s more,” I say quietly. “At the hospital.”
“What happened at the hospital?”
“I woke up the day after the fire. You were in another room - they were still working on your arm, I think. And Sloane came to visit me.”
His jaw tightens.
“I pretended to be asleep. I don’t know why, instinct, maybe, or just fear.
But she didn’t know I was awake.” I close my eyes, remembering the cloying smell of her perfume, the soft click of her heels on the hospital floor.
“She stood over my bed and talked about how I was supposed to die. Quick, clean, a tragic accident. How she would have been there to comfort you after, to pick up the pieces.”
“She confessed? While you were lying there?”
“She confessed everything, believing I couldn’t hear.” I open my eyes. “She laid out the whole future she thinks she’s owed. You and her, the families joined, and me erased from it.” I pause. “And she promised she’d be more careful next time.”
Logan makes a sound I’ve never heard from him, something between a sob and a growl. He’s on his feet, pacing the length of the small room, his hands clenched into fists.
“That’s why I left,” I say to his back. “That’s why I couldn’t stay.
I woke up alone in a hospital bed, and the woman who tried to kill me was standing three feet away telling me how sorry she was that I survived.
And I didn’t know-” My voice breaks. “I didn’t know what you knew.
I didn’t know whose side you were on. I couldn’t take the risk of being wrong. ”
He stops pacing. Turns to face me.
“You thought I might have known?” The hurt in his voice is raw. “You thought I might have been part of it?”
“No. Not really. But I thought-” I struggle to find the words. “I thought you might not believe me. I thought you’d defend her, the way you always defended her. And I couldn’t - I was pregnant and terrified and half-dead from smoke inhalation, and I couldn’t have that fight. Not then.”
“Pregnant.” He says the word like he’s just remembered. “You were pregnant, and you thought-”
“I found out at the hospital. The blood tests they ran. I didn’t know before that.” I put my hand on my belly, feeling the familiar flutter of movement. “I had to protect us. Both of us. And I didn’t trust you enough to let you help.”
The words hang in the air between us. I watch his face cycle through emotions, hurt, understanding, guilt, anger. So much anger, but not at me. At himself. At Sloane. At the whole impossible situation.
“I failed you.” His voice is quiet. “Not just during the marriage. After, too. You didn’t trust me because I never gave you a reason to.”
“That’s not entirely fair to you.”
“Isn’t it?” He sits back down, not on the couch but on the floor in front of me, looking up.
“I spent nineteen months making you feel invisible. I let Sloane back into our lives without thinking about how it would affect you. You tried to tell me something was wrong, and I dismissed you. I ignored the signs.” He shakes his head.
“And then when you needed me most, when you should have been able to turn to me, you couldn’t.
Because I’d taught you that I wasn’t safe. ”
“You’re not wrong.” I won’t lie to him about this. “But what she did - that’s not on you. That’s on her. You didn’t listen when you should have, and that’s yours to carry. But she’s the one who locked the door. She’s the one who struck the match.”
“I know.” His voice is rough. “I just keep thinking - if I’d listened-”
“Then maybe it would have happened differently. Or maybe she would have found another way.” I reach down, touch his face. “We can’t know. What we can know is what happens next.”
“What do you want to happen?”
“I want-” I pause, trying to articulate something I haven’t let myself fully feel until now. “I want to not be scared anymore. I want to know that when I tell you something, you’ll believe me. I want to build something real, not whatever we had before.”
“I believe you.” He says it without hesitation. “Everything you’ve told me - I believe all of it. And I’m so sorry you had to carry it alone.”
“I’m not alone anymore.”
“No.” He covers my hand with his own. “You’re not.”
We stay like that for a moment, connected, the morning light warm around us. It isn’t forgiveness. Maybe it won’t be, for a long time. But it’s something. A foundation we can build on.
“There’s an investigation,” I say eventually. “I reported her when I got to Marigold. A detective took my preliminary statement, started looking into the fire. The investigators already flagged the scene as suspicious.”
“What do you need from me?”
“Nothing right now. Just - support, when it comes time for the formal statement. Maybe testimony, if they need someone to confirm what she said about me not being inside.”
“Whatever you need. Whatever helps.”
I believe him. It’s strange, after everything, but I do.
“I need some air,” I say, standing carefully. “I’m going to walk out to the garden for a bit. Just to clear my head.”
“Do you want company?”
“Not right now. I just need a few minutes to process.”
“Okay.” He stands too, but doesn’t try to follow. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
I walk out the front door and across the yard, toward the small garden space I’ve been reclaiming since I returned to the farm. The morning sun is warm on my skin, and I rest a palm on the curve of my belly as I walk, feeling the baby shift and settle.
The garden is quiet. Just me and the plants and the soft buzz of insects in the late morning heat. I find a bench that Junie must have placed here while I was gone, she always did have a knack for knowing what a space needed, and sit, letting myself just breathe.
I told him everything. Not the carefully edited version I’d been planning, not the strategic revelation timed for maximum impact. Just the truth, messy and painful and real.
And he believed me.
I think about what comes next. The formal statement I’ll need to give. The investigation that will hopefully lead to charges. The long process of justice that may or may not result in Sloane facing consequences for what she did.
But I also think about other things. Logan’s scarred arm. The way he looked at me when I touched his face. The foundation we’re trying to build out of the wreckage of what we had before.
It won’t be easy. We have months of hurt to work through, patterns to unlearn, trust to rebuild from scratch. There will be setbacks and arguments and days when it all feels impossible.
But sitting here in the garden, with the sun on my face and my baby growing inside me and the man I’m learning to trust waiting in the house behind me, what I feel has changed shape.
Not certainty. Not confidence that everything will work out. But something steadier than the desperate hope I carried through those first terrible days. Something that’s taken root.
It’s enough for now.