Chapter 2
Silas
I’d seen too much not to believe in ghosts…but I knew for a fact that ghosts didn’t write letters.
Which meant this letter was from a living, breathing person who should have been dead.
I stood outside of the old Willow Grove Remnant Fellowship, peering down at the letter in my hand: a legal memo, freshly postmarked, the envelope crisp and white. Yeah…this wasn’t ghost shit; this was from a goddamn attorney stepping into my town and my business.
And it was pissing me the fuck off.
To Mr. Silas Ward—
RE: Notice of Property Reclamation—Willow Grove Remnant Fellowship
Effective immediately, the undersigned parties hereby notify you that your possession of the church located at 113 Grove Avenue is considered unauthorized.
As surviving members of the founding ecclesiastical body, we intend to resume stewardship of the property in accordance with its original covenant charter, filed 1994, and reactivated under emergency reinstatement clause (Sect. 3B) as of June 1, 2025.
No real signature…just a typed attorney’s name, plus a second name that made my blood boil.
Reverend Abel Trent.
Motherfucker.
My dead fiancée’s brother…the brother who’d skipped town a year before she died, leaving her high and dry. He hadn’t so much as sent a card when she passed, and then the church fell to me.
And now he wanted it back?
There was no fucking way.
I balled the letter up and shoved it into my pocket with a growl, pulling out my keys with my other hand to unlock my truck.
My brother Rhett needed some help out at the farmhouse today—he was raising a greenhouse for Willow, a two-person job that his wife wasn’t ready to manage so soon after giving birth to my niece.
Our other brother Beau was already there, probably with his excitable golden retriever in tow…
…and I was nowhere near ready to deal with that goddamn energy.
I slammed the truck door harder than necessary and sat for a second, hands gripping the wheel, knuckles white. The heat was stifling, the cab like an oven, but I didn’t start the engine or turn on the AC.
I just…sat there. Breathing through my teeth. Counting backward from ten.
Abel fucking Trent.
It wasn’t just that he wanted the church back—it was that he thought he still had the right after everything they’d done…after the people of Willow Grove had run every Trent but Amelia out of town.
And even though the church was a blight on downtown, old, ugly, falling apart…it was the only thing Amelia had left me when she passed.
I started the truck.
If I was gonna survive the day, I needed a hammer in my hand and my brothers nearby.
Preferably with coffee.
Maybe whiskey.
Willow Grove was quiet today—like it always was on Sundays, when a few folks drove out to neighboring towns for church while others worshiped in their own ways.
Some preferred to worship in their gardens…
some in bed, some parked in front of the TV.
Others gathered at Mabel’s Diner to pray to the god of good grub.
I worshiped with my brothers in the place I’d always known was holy: the old Ward house, where my Grandma Hazel’s ghost kept watch over us all.
The gravel crunched under my tires as I pulled up the long drive, the trees on either side throwing shadows across the hood.
The Ward house sat at the top of the hill, a small cluster of cars parked out front—including Delilah’s Jeep, which took me by surprise.
She hung out here often enough, eager to spend time with Willow and with my baby niece, Hazel—but Delilah wasn’t exactly an early riser.
Beau’s truck was parked alongside Willow’s Bug, Rhett’s truck on the other side.
And there were three women sitting on the porch.
Willow, Delilah…and someone I never thought I would see again after she’d exorcised my brother’s house.
June Fontenot.
Tall. Blonde. Gorgeous.
Episcopalian…devout.
Totally off limits.
She looked almost the same as when she’d been here for Rhett’s wedding-exorcism last year, though her hair was a little longer, her freckles a little darker. Her blue eyes were looking right at me as I pulled up the driveway, like she’d already known I was comin’.
She had that way about her…a shine, the kind that Grandma Hazel would have said meant she was somethin’ special.
That was obvious enough.
She wasn’t just special…she was mercy. She was compassion. Two things I didn’t want and sure as hell didn’t deserve.
I got out of the car, my eyes still locked on hers while Willow and Delilah chatted away. I was about to greet the three of them, but the wind was suddenly knocked out of me as a golden blob bolted out of nowhere and hit square in the middle of my chest.
The sloppy kisses came a second later.
“Hi, Milo,” I grunted, looking down at Beau’s dog. Milo was standing on his hind legs, fully expecting me to pick all ninety pounds of him up like a baby, and I gently pushed him back to the ground.
He got right back up.
“Yeah, you’re a real peach, buddy,” I muttered, scratching him behind the ears and then pushing him away more forcefully this time. When I looked back up at the porch, Willow and Delilah were laughing…but June looked downright bashful.
I knew she saw somethin’ in me, the same way I saw the shine in her.
Unfortunately, she didn’t know the first thing about me. If she saw any kind of promise in me, any future…she was wrong.
“Well, hey stranger!” Delilah called in singsong, still laughing. “I see you met the welcoming committee!”
“You and Milo have an awful strange definition of welcome,” I shot back, frowning.
Willow chuckled, standing up with baby Hazel on her hip. “You look like you could use a biscuit,” she said. “And maybe an Irish coffee?”
I grunted.
Willow would understand.
June still hadn’t said a word, standing now with one hand resting lightly on the porch railing. She hadn’t stopped looking at me though, like she was challenging me to break the silence first. The night of the wedding, we’d talked a lot. About Amelia, about the town, about anything and everything.
Then I’d had a couple too many shots.
I’d asked her to dance.
She’d said yes…and I’d held her in my arms, closer than I’d been with any other woman since Amelia died.
But that was it. She’d left, I assumed that was the end of it.
And here she was.
Watching me.
“Silas, you gonna stop ogling my friend and get up here?” Delilah chimed, voice cutting through whatever was tense between me and June. “You remember June, I presume.”
I growled, balling my hands into fists and stomping up the stairs.
“My memory is just fine, Delilah.”
“Right…it’s your social skills that need work,” she teased.
June finally laughed, though I didn’t know how I felt about it being at my expense.
“Welcome back, June,” I said gruffly, though I directed my attention toward Willow. “Rhett and Beau out back?”
Willow nodded, bouncing Hazel on her hip. “Yep—Milo’s been doing their best to distract them, but he’s much more interested in June now that they’re here.”
I wanted to ask why she was here…and how long she was staying, and if she’d thought of me as often as I’d thought of her.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I ignored all three women and went down the stairs at the end of the porch, out toward the garden.
“You’re an asshole, Silas Ward!” Delilah called after me.
“Language!” Willow snapped, and I heard her slap Delilah’s arm.
Baby Hazel cackled.
The sound of Hazel’s laughter followed me all the way to the greenhouse frame. I shoved my hands in my pockets as I walked, knuckles brushing against the crumpled letter, which just pissed me off more.
Rhett was on a ladder, squinting against the morning sun, while Beau stood below with a measuring tape and a mouthful of opinions. They’d both already sweat through their t-shirts—it was just that kind of Georgia day.
“Jesus, finally,” Beau said when he spotted me. “We were about to send Milo out looking for you.”
“He found me,” I grunted. “You need to get that mutt trained before he knocks somebody down for good.”
“Aw…Milo’s not a killer,” Beau said. “Ain’t his fault you’re not tough enough to fend him off.”
“Milo’s not my biggest concern right now,” I said. I stepped in to hold the ladder as Rhett climbed down, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Got a letter from Abel Trent.”
“Well, I would say good mornin’, but it clearly isn’t one,” Rhett said. “You bring it with you?”
I pulled the letter from my pocket and held it out. Beau grabbed it first, his eyes skimming fast, jaw tight.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
“Thought he’d crawled into a hole somewhere and died,” Rhett muttered.
“Yeah, well—looks like he brought stationery with him,” I replied.
Beau rubbed a hand through his hair. “What the hell is an ‘emergency reinstatement clause’?”
“Could be made up, for all I know,” I said. “Wouldn’t be beyond the Trents to bullshit a legal reason to kick me out of their damn church.”
Rhett took the letter next, scanning slower than Beau had. “They didn’t even bother signin’ it,” he said.
“Cowards,” Beau said.
“Or smart,” I huffed. “Easier to walk away if it doesn’t go their way. You know they love to walk away.”
Rhett folded the letter and moved to hand it back—then paused. “They ever file anything official after they left?”
“Nope,” I said. “They just up and vanished—left Amelia behind and never looked back. And don’t get me wrong…it was probably good for her. But to not even go to your sister’s funeral…?”
“Yeah, they’re assholes,” Beau said. “So what are you gonna do about it?”
I shrugged. “Figure the town’ll do what it did last time—run the damn cultists out.”
“I don’t know…maybe enough folks forgot that they’ll be happy to have a church in town again,” Rhett said. “Me and Willow have gotten a few dirty looks in town lately, people worried we brought some kinda sinful shit to town with our little wexorcism, think we need Jesus.”
Beau snorted. “They ain’t wrong. I’m still scarred by catchin’ you two on the breakfast table more than a few times.”
My eyes widened. “Rhett. People eat there.”
Rhett gave me a lazy smile. “Yeah…I eat there.”
Beau made a dramatic gagging noise and walked off, shaking his head. Rhett just leaned on a post, wiping his brow. “Point is,” he said, “not everyone remembers what the Fellowship really was. Not like we do.”
“They remember enough to whisper about Amelia,” I muttered.
Rhett went quiet.
That quiet was too uncomfortable for me, though…
and I crouched to grab a spare tool belt, sighing.
“Still get folks askin’ if she was intentionally careless because her family left her…
as if it wasn’t a goddamn accident,” I muttered.
“Amelia was happy. Excited about…about us. And her family abandoned her.”
Rhett didn’t say a word as I stood.
“They want to reclaim that building? They can do it over my dead body.”
There was a long pause, then Rhett reached out to grasp my shoulder.
“I think that’s what they’re hoping for,” Rhett said.