Dahlia #3
"The cider barn?" Teddy asked, her curiosity clearly piqued as she looked at Nell. "What are you talking about?"
"I am talking about keeping your mother's business private," Nell answered, her expression closing up as she picked up her fork. "Some things are not meant for public record."
Dahlia felt a sudden chill, despite the warm humidity of the kitchen. She looked at the empty chair at the head of the table, then back to Nell's guarded face. The older woman was hiding something, and it was clear that she did not trust Dahlia's corporate efficiency to protect it.
"I won't do anything to jeopardize the family legacy," Dahlia promised, her voice soft but firm.
"I hope not," Nell replied, her tone softening slightly as she took a bite of her dinner. "I truly hope not. Now, please, let us eat this food before it gets cold. We have plenty of work to do tomorrow."
An hour later, after Nell had left, Dahlia carried her heavy leather bag up the stairs.
The second floor of the farmhouse was quiet, the air holding the afternoon's trapped heat.
She walked down the narrow hallway, passing the closed doors of her sisters' rooms. Each door was painted a soft cream, the brass knobs tarnished from years of handling.
Dahlia pushed open the door to her childhood bedroom and stopped.
The room was smaller than she remembered, the sloped ceiling dipping low over the single bed.
The wallpaper, decorated with faded yellow wildflowers, was peeling slightly near the baseboard.
Her mother hadn't changed a single thing since Dahlia left for college thirty-two years ago.
The white painted dresser still sat against the far wall, its drawers slightly askew.
Dahlia walked across the room and set her laptop bag on the small desk near the window.
She reached out and touched the wooden windowsill.
There, carved into the pine with a pocketknife, were her own initials next to Beckett's name.
They had carved them when they were fifteen, hiding behind the curtains to avoid Rosalind's sharp eyes.
The wood was dry and rough under Dahlia's fingertips, the carved letters worn smooth by the passage of time.
Dahlia sat on the edge of the mattress. The springs groaned under her weight, a familiar, metallic protest that she remembered from her teenage years.
She reached for her leather bag and pulled out her smartphone.
The screen was dark. There weren't any new messages from Marcus, and the corporate calendar was empty until tomorrow morning.
She set the phone on the nightstand, next to a small pottery lamp that her sister Prue had made in high school.
The silence of the house was different from the silence of her Chicago apartment.
In Chicago, there was always the distant hum of traffic on the expressway, the rattle of the elevated train, or the steady vibration of the building's ventilation system.
Here, the silence was active. It was filled with the rhythmic chirp of crickets in the tall grass near the well house and the dry scrape of the old sugar maple branches against the window pane.
It didn't feel peaceful to Dahlia; if anything, it felt demanding.
Dahlia unzipped her suitcase and began to unpack.
She hung her tailored pants in the small closet, the wire hangers clinking against the wooden rod.
She folded her silk blouses and placed them in the top drawer of the dresser.
The scent of lavender and aged pine rose from the wood, a scent that belonged exclusively to her mother's house.
It made her throat tighten with a sudden ache.
She walked to the window and pushed the glass upward, securing it with the wooden block that still sat on the sill.
The night air was humid, carrying the scent of damp earth and ripening apples from the orchard down Marchetti Lane.
Across the dark fields, she could see a single yellow light shining from Beckett's gray farmhouse.
It was a steady, quiet light, a reminder that her childhood best friend was only a field away.
After showering and changing into her pajamas, Dahlia pulled back the hand-quilted yellow blanket on her bed. She lay down on the mattress, her body tense as she stared at the white ceiling. The wooden floorboards below her creaked as her sisters moved around the house, preparing for sleep.
She had told her sisters that she would fix the farm's finances, draft an operating plan, and hire a manager within a month.
She had treated this trip as a temporary disruption, a brief vacation from her real life in Chicago.
But as she listened to the crickets and pictured the yellow light across the field, Dahlia felt a familiar ache in her heart.
The farm wasn't just a business problem to be solved with a color-coded spreadsheet.
The house, the fields, and the secrets that Nell Vance had hinted at were already pulling her back.
Dahlia closed her eyes, but she knew sleep wouldn't come easily tonight.