Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Abilene
Monday
The morning feels wrong the second I step outside.
Not storm wrong, like last night.
Not the sharp crackle of lightning and the throat-tightening anticipation of thunder.
This is quieter.
Heavier.
It smells scorched.
My boots crunch over the gravel path that leads to the apiary, dew dried up before it even had a chance to soften the earth. The sky is a dull, hazy gray instead of its usual clear blue, as if someone smudged charcoal across the horizon.
The bees feel it too. Of course they do.
I can hear them before I see them: an agitated, uneven hum instead of the usual contented morning buzz. That’s the first alarm bell.
When I round the corner of the house, and the hives come into view, they’re already up and flying—too many of them, too early. Everything around the apiary is a puffing cloud, workers zigzagging in strange, wide arcs instead of their neat flight lines.
My chest tightens.
“Hey, hey…” I murmur, lowering my voice into the slow, soothing hum Grandma Mabel used to use. “Easy, girls. I’m here.”
It doesn’t settle them.
Which tells me… whatever’s wrong started before I stepped outside.
I set the smoker and my hive tools on the little wooden crate beside Hive Three and pause. Any beekeeper knows: you don’t open a hive until you are calm, or they’ll mirror your nerves right back.
So I inhale slowly.
Exhale slowly.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Let’s see what’s going on.”
I don’t bother with the full veil. Just my hat, gloves, and the light scarf around my neck to keep bees from sneaking inside my collar.
My girls don’t sting without reason. And today, their panic isn’t about me.
It’s about something bigger.
Hotter.
I approach the first hive and immediately note the signs:
– guard bees pacing the entrance board, fanning their wings too fast
– workers climbing across each other instead of landing smoothly
– the sharp, high-pitched hum
– the faint odor of overheated wax drifting out of the hive cracks
And then something soft lands on the back of my glove. A dark, feather-light speck.
I tilt my hand.
Ash.
My stomach drops. Bees don’t panic over nothing.
I straighten slowly, scanning above the hives. Another tiny gray fleck drifts down. Then another.
I lift my head and listen.
Under the rising hum of my bees, I hear it. A faint, distant sound that sends cold through my veins.
Sirens.
Not one. Several.
I straighten slowly, eyes drawn to the horizon beyond the pastures, past the tree line.
Smoke rises there. Not the gentle, white kind of a burn pile or someone’s chimney. Thick, roiling, gray-brown plumes curling up into the sky.
A wildfire.
The storm last night.
Lightning without enough rain.
My heart thuds painfully against my ribs.
For a long moment, I just stand there, feeling very small in the middle of my little yard while something huge and terrifying burns in the distance.
The wind shifts, blowing smoke smell directly into my face. It’s sharp and bitter, threaded with a tension that reminds me too much of another fire, another night, another loss.
Mom.
My throat tightens.
I reach for the nearest hive, needing something to ground me. The bees swirl around my hands, jittery but not aggressive.
I rest my palm against the wooden box, feeling the faint vibration of thousands of wings working nonstop.
“We’re okay,” I tell them quietly. “We’re far enough. They’ll put it out.”
The sirens scream again, louder this time, then start to fade as they move past, toward the flames. The fire must be closer to town than to us, thank goodness, but that doesn’t make my pulse slow.
Fires don’t respect boundaries. Or fences.
Or prayers.
I check the hives quickly, more for my peace of mind than anything else, looking for queen movement, watching brood patterns, making sure nothing immediate is wrong.
Everything inside the boxes is as it should be; it’s just the world outside that’s gone sideways.
When I finish, my shirt is damp with sweat, and my hands are shaking.
I look to the horizon one more time. The smoke is thicker now.
“Under control,” I whisper, like saying it out loud will make it true. “The fire crews are on it. They know what they’re doing.”
The wind stirs my hair, carrying another thin flurry of ash.
I scoop up the smoker and my tools, and head back toward the house.
Inside, the air feels close and stale, as if the smoke has found its way in through the cracks. I shut the back door a little harder than necessary and lean against it, listening to the tick of the old clock on the kitchen wall.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
The mundane sound helps. A little.
I set the smoker by the back step and hang my hat on its hook. My clothes smell of smoke now—not the warm, comforting kind from my grandmother’s old woodstove, but the sharp, choking kind that makes your lungs burn and your eyes sting.
I grab a glass, fill it with water from the tap, and drain it in a few gulps.
My reflection in the kitchen window looks pale and wide-eyed, hair frizzed from the humidity and sleep I didn’t really get.
I should check the news.
Call someone. Make sure everything’s really okay.
Instead, I do what I always do when the world feels too big: I try to shrink it down to the size of my house.
Dishes in the sink.
A dish towel draped over the back of a chair.
A jar of honey on the counter with a spoon left in it from yesterday.
I move through the little kitchen, tightening what’s loose, putting away what’s out, wiping down an already clean counter because busy hands make quieter thoughts.
When my heart finally stops pounding so hard, I head into the front hall to check the mail slot. Sometimes Maeve puts out flyers or community notices when there’s been an event, and with the storm last night…
A thin rectangular shape is lying on the mat.
One envelope. Plain. No logo or colored ink. Just a single name written in neat handwriting.
My name.
Miss Abilene Kentwood
No return address. No stamp.
Someone dropped this off by hand.
An odd sensation crawls up my spine.
They would’ve had to walk right up onto my porch, past the wind chimes, past the potted herbs, unwrap the little twine securing the slot, and slip it through.
I didn’t hear anything.
But then, the storm was loud. The world was loud. I was busy letting my mind run in circles over lightning and bees and honey and the echo of a man’s smile.
I bend down and pick it up, the paper crisp and cool beneath my fingers.
I just stand there, staring at my name written in ink that’s just slightly smudged, like someone hesitated before finishing the last letters.
My pulse jumps again, this time for a different reason. I flip it over.
The flap is tucked but not sealed. No wax. No taped edge.
I slip my finger under the fold and open it.
Inside is a single sheet of paper. My eyes skim the words once without really registering them.
Then again. Slowly, this time.
My stomach drops.
Abilene,
You don’t know me, but I knew your mother. I knew your grandmother too. There are things you were never told about what happened the night of the fire, and about what your grandmother kept afterward.
Things your father never knew, or pretended not to know. Things that could have changed everything for you.
Not everything in your family’s story is what it seems. Not everyone did what people said they did. Some people lied, and some kept quiet, and some ran away with pieces of the truth in their pockets.
She would want you to know this. Your mother died looking for something she believed would save you.
–A friend
By the time I reach the last line, my hands are trembling.
I read it again. Then again, as if repetition might make it make sense.
It doesn’t. Not at first.
But each sentence lands like a small stone in my chest.
I knew your mother.
My throat constricts.
Everyone in Colter Creek knows how my mother died. Barn fire. The stories of what caused it shift depending on who’s talking, but the ending is always the same.
Smoke. Flames.
Sirens that came too late.
Me, age twelve. Standing outside in my pajamas, wrapped in a blanket I don’t remember anyone putting around me.
My grandmother’s hand on my shoulder like a vise.
My father’s eyes fixed on nothing.
She would want you to know this.
A bitter little laugh escapes me, too sharp to be amused.
“Weird. This is weird.”
Thunder rumbles faintly in the distance, as if answering.
My first instinct is to crumple the letter and toss it in the trash. Anonymous notes with ominous hints and no name are the stuff of cheap dramas and bad ideas, not real life.
But this isn’t generic.
It’s specific. Too specific.
Aunt Mara.
I haven’t thought about her in years. Not really. She’s more of a ghost than a person in my life.
My mother’s younger sister, the one who moved away after the fire. After that, she was just a name mentioned occasionally in arguments and then not mentioned at all.
She left because of “disagreements.” That’s how my grandmother always phrased it.
Disagreements.
I never asked what that meant. I should have.
My fingers rise, almost by instinct, to the silver bee pendant resting against my collarbone. I rub my thumb over its tiny wings, the familiar motion soothing and unsettling all at once.
“What are you supposed to save me from?” I whisper into the empty hallway.
The pendant, of course, doesn’t answer.
The letter crackles softly between my fingers.
I swallow hard.
My gaze drifts almost automatically toward the living room doorway, where I know, on the bottom shelf of the old bookcase, my grandmother’s journals sit in a neat row.
They’ve been there since the day she died. I packed them in boxes when we cleared out her room, then unpacked them here, in this same house, because I couldn’t bear to put them somewhere I couldn’t see them.
For years, I’ve read them in pieces.
Some pages are purely practical: notes on weather patterns, hive health, crop yields. Others are more personal, little comments about neighbors, scraps of prayer, half-finished sentences about missing my mother.
I’ve never read them looking for secrets.
Now, I can’t think about anything else.
The letter’s still in my hand when I walk into the living room.
The house shifts around me, old wood creaking in the heat. The curtains are half drawn, letting in enough light for everything to look grayish and a little faded. Dust motes drift lazily.
The family portrait hangs where it always does. Mom in her yellow dress. Dad with his quiet smile. Me, small and freckled, holding a honey jar as if it’s the most important thing in the world.
My chest aches.
“I don’t know what you were looking for,” I tell her photo under my breath. “But if you died for it, I think I deserve to know what it was.”
The bookshelf sits beneath the portrait, sturdy and scarred. The bottom shelf holds three thick journals, each bound in plain brown leather, corners worn soft from years of handling.
My grandmother’s life in three volumes.
I set the letter on the coffee table and kneel in front of the shelf, pulling out the journals one by one.
They’re organized chronologically, at least, as far as I’ve been able to tell. The first one starts just after the Dust Bowl years, when her family first came west with a suitcase and nothing else. The last ends a few months before my mother died.
I pull the last one into my lap.
My fingers hesitate at the cover, pressing against the familiar leather.
The pendant is cool against my throat. I twist it, feeling the sharp edges of its tiny legs.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Let’s see what you were hiding, Mabel.”
I open the journal.
Her handwriting covers the first page in looping, careful script. Weather notes. Hive counts. A mention of a neighbor’s cow breaking through the fence again.
I flip forward, scanning entries.
Most of it is what I remember, daily life cataloged in quiet detail. Honey yields. Crop notes. Comments about my father’s stubbornness. Occasional entries about me:
Abilene asked today if bees get lonely in the winter. Told her they keep each other warm.
My throat tightens.
I flip faster, letting the pages whisper past my fingers, until something makes me stop.
An entry dated a few weeks before my mother’s death. The ink is darker here, the words pressed harder into the paper.
Bonnie restless again. Talking about “what’s ours” like it’s a thing she can hold. Told her to let old stories die.
She doesn’t listen. Says Abilene deserves better. I told her better comes from work, not ghosts.
A chill runs down my spine.
My thumb moves lower on the page.
She brought up the inheritance. The “jewels.” Fool’s chase.
My heart stutters.
Jewels?
The letter’s words echo in my head: Your mother died looking for something she believed would save you.
My mouth has gone dry.
I flip another page.
The next entry is shorter. The handwriting more hurried.
Bonnie asked me again where it is. Told her there’s nothing left. She doesn’t believe me.
Thunder mutters outside, soft and ominous.
I turn another page, then another, searching for more. The entries skip a few days here and there. The next entry is from weeks later.
The handwriting is shakier, as if her hand wouldn’t cooperate.
Bonnie is gone. House is scarred. Elias is half a man. Abilene is a ghost in her own home.
I should tell her the truth. I should burn the rest of it and be done.
But I have nothing else to give her except this roof and these bees, and I don’t know which truth is worse—that her mother died looking for a fantasy, or that I’m about to bury it alive.
My vision blurs.
I blink hard, tears hot and unexpected.
What did you do, Mabel?
What didn’t you do?
My fingers tighten around the edges of the journal.
I skim forward, but the entries after that day are… quieter. She writes about practical things and avoids mentioning the fire outright. Grief is there in the silence between her words, in the way she notes the weather but not the anniversaries.
There’s no mention of “jewels” again.
It feels like a lock.
And someone, somewhere, just slid a key under my door.