Chapter 44 Marshall
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Marshall
Thursday
The bees hear me before she does.
She’s down by the hives, veil on, gloves tucked into her belt instead of worn. Sun’s out, not harsh, just warm enough to make the wax smell sweet and green. Clover and smoke and honey all tangled together.
I stop short of the fence line.
She’s kneeling in the grass, journal open beside her, one bare hand resting against the side of a hive, listening to it.
Not just hearing the sound, but reading it. The rhythm. The mood. The subtle shifts that tell you when to move and when to leave well enough alone.
The bees don’t swarm. Don’t warn. Don’t even change their pitch.
They trust her.
That’s not luck. That’s years of knowing when to act and when not to. Same instinct you see in good horsemen. Same patience. Same respect.
She lifts a frame, checks it with a practiced eye, adjusts something small, barely a movement at all, and the hive settles deeper into itself, hum smoothing out, a breath finally let go.
I tip my hat without thinking, even though she can’t see me yet, and lean my forearms on the fence. Watch for a second. Just one.
There’s something sacred about this part of her world. Feels wrong to barge in loud.
Finally, she glances up.
Sees me.
Her smile flickers on instinct, then fades quieter. Heavier. She pulls off her veil and stands, brushing grass from her knees.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.”
I hop the fence and walk over slow, careful not to spook the bees or her. They don’t buzz louder when I get close. Just keep doing what they’re doing.
Smart creatures.
“You alright?” I ask.
She nods. Then shakes her head. Then huffs out a breath that’s almost a laugh. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
Fair enough.
I gesture toward the hives. “They seem settled.”
“They are,” she says. “They always calm me down. Even when everything else is… loud.”
I nod. “So, what’s going on?”
She sighs heavily. “I finally met the writer of the letters.”
Shock reverberates through my system. “You did?”
“I did,” she says. “Her name’s Evelyn Mercer.”
“Whoa.”
“She knew my mom,” Abilene continues. “Really knew her. Not the version people talk about. The real one.”
My chest tightens. I stay quiet. Let her set the pace.
“She wrote the letters,” Abilene says. “All of them. After she found some letters Mom wrote to her when they were young. She didn’t know how to come to me directly, so she… nudged me.”
I grunt softly. “Hell of a nudge.”
“Yeah.” She exhales. “I was angry at first. Still am, a little. But mostly I’m…” She searches for the word. “Relieved.”
I tilt my head. “Relief usually comes after pain.”
She gives me a small, tired smile. “You noticed.”
She crouches again, fingers tracing the edge of the journal. I follow her down, settling on my heels a few feet away.
“There were three stories tangled together,” she says. “That’s what Evelyn said. The rivalry. The inheritance. And the fire.”
I keep my face neutral, but my jaw tightens at that last word.
“The rivalry wasn’t about land or money,” Abilene goes on. “It was about people. My mom. My aunt. The men they loved. Hurt feelings that got turned into gossip because this town doesn’t know how to let private pain stay private.”
I snort under my breath. She’s not wrong.
“And the inheritance…” She swallows. “Grandma Mabel maybe had one. Quiet. Old family line. Everyone kinda assumed it was something valuable. Jewels, probably.”
“Assumptions are cheap,” I say. “They spread easy.”
She nods. “My mom heard the rumors. Thought if she could find something valuable, she could leave. Start over. Give me a safer life.” Her voice wobbles, just barely. “She wasn’t chasing wealth. She was chasing freedom.”
“And the fire?” I ask, desperately hoping she got the answers she needs.
Abilene’s gaze drops to the grass. “It was an accident. A real one. She was in the barn. Smoking. Following a half-formed tip about where the inheritance might be hidden. Something caught. She panicked. She didn’t mean to die.”
I stare out across the pasture, jaw locked, thinking about how many lives get reshaped by one small, stupid moment. One spark. One wrong step.
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out one of the letters, unfolding it carefully. The paper looks thin. Old. Handled too many times already.
I don’t lean in. Don’t ask to see it. This is something you’re invited into, not something you take.
She hesitates, then clears her throat and reads.
“Evie, I don’t know if I’m brave or foolish anymore.
Some days I feel like I’m standing on the edge of something, and if I don’t jump soon, I’ll disappear entirely.
I love my daughter more than I thought a person could love another human being.
Loving her makes staying harder, not easier.
I want her to grow up somewhere she doesn’t learn to hold her breath. ”
My chest tightens.
Abilene swallows and keeps going.
“I’ve heard things. About what Mom might have tucked away. I hate myself for even thinking about it like this, but if it’s real, if there’s something I can turn into a way out, I would do it. I would do anything to give Abilene a life that doesn’t feel so… small.”
She stops there, fingers curling around the page.
She flips to another letter, this one more creased. It’s been folded and unfolded a hundred times.
“Evie, I’m scared, but not in the dramatic way everyone expects.
I’m not afraid of leaving town or starting over.
I’m afraid of staying put and waking up one day to realize I taught my daughter that this smallness, this holding-your-breath life, is all there is.
And she deserves better than that. She deserves big skies and choices, and sandwiches cut diagonally because they taste better that way. ”
Her voice wobbles on the last word, just barely, and she stops reading.
The bees hum around us, calm and patient, holding the silence open.
“She never meant to leave me like that,” Abilene whispers. “She was trying to get us both out.”
“She wanted better for you,” I say. “That much is clear.”
“My grandmother,” Abilene says after a moment. “After my mom died… she shut down. Locked everything away. Not because she was hiding money. Because she was protecting herself. And me.”
I nod slowly. “Grief does that. Makes people choose silence over risk.”
“She never told me any of this,” Abilene whispers. “I grew up thinking the worst parts of my family were just… unspeakable. Like they’d poison the air if we named them.”
I shift closer without thinking, resting my forearm on my knee. “You don’t seem poisoned to me.”
Her lips curve, faint but real. “I feel like I’ve been breathing shallow my whole life. And someone just opened a window.”
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out one of the letters, unfolding it carefully. I don’t read it. Don’t need to. I can see the weight in how she holds it.
“There’s more,” she says. “Details. Things my mom wrote to Evelyn. About wanting to leave. About being scared. About loving me more than she loved the idea of staying safe.”
My chest aches, deep and dull.
“She wanted better for you,” I say. “That much is clear.”
Abilene nods, eyes shining. “And now there’s this… inheritance. Or what people thought was one. And I don’t even know where to start. I don’t know if I want to dig. Or if I want to leave it buried.”
She looks at me then. Really looks. Bracing for an answer she might not want.
“Does it intrigue you?” I ask.
She laughs, a soft, incredulous sound. “Of course it does. I’m human. And it’s my family. But it’s not about money. It’s about… meaning.” She presses her hand flat to her chest. “I don’t know what to do with it yet.”
I consider her words, the way I consider a horse that’s spooked but not broken.
“You don’t have to know right now,” I say. “This isn’t a race.”
Her shoulders ease a fraction.
“And,” I add, “you don’t have to do it alone.”
She blinks. “Marshall—”
“I mean it,” I cut in gently. “Whatever this turns out to be. Digging. Reading. Sorting truth from rumor. If you want help… you’ve got it.”
Her eyes soften, disbelief flickering there. “You would?”
“Yeah,” I say simply. “We would.”
She swallows hard. “Why?”
I decide to say it. The words out loud. The thing I never normally tell anyone.
“My brother,” I say. “Luke.”
Her eyes lift to me immediately. Fully now.
“He died young,” I continue. Don’t dress it up. “Accident. One second, everything was fine. The next… it wasn’t.”
I drag my thumb along my knee, feeling the grit there.
“For a long time,” I say, “I figured if I’d been faster, louder, smarter… if I’d done anything different, he’d still be here.” I huff out a breath. “Spent years carrying that like it was my job.”
Abilene’s watching me the way you watch someone crossing thin ice.
“People talked about him like he was reckless,” I go on. “Like he pushed too hard and paid for it. And part of me… I let that stick. Because if it was his fault, or mine, then at least it made sense.”
Her brow furrows. “But it didn’t.”
“No,” I say. “It just hurt.”
I stare out at the pasture, the grass pale and stubborn and still alive anyway.
“He loved this place,” I say quietly. “Everything he did was about keeping it going. About making sure the ranch didn’t die with the old generation. He wasn’t chasing danger. He was chasing a future.”
I swallow.
“I’m trying now,” I add. “Trying to let go of the idea that love failing is the same thing as love being wrong. Trying to believe that one bad ending doesn’t erase all the good intent that came before it.”
Abilene’s breath shudders.
“That sounds… really hard,” she says.
“It is,” I admit. Then, honest as I know how to be: “But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life punishing myself for something I couldn’t control.”
She nods slowly. “My mom gets talked about like that too. Like her mistakes matter more than her reasons.”
I meet her eyes.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s what people do when they don’t know how to sit with grief. They shrink it down. Blame someone. Anyone. Makes it easier to live with.”
The bees hum steadily around us.
“She loved you,” I say firmly. “Same way Luke loved this land. Same way they both thought one hard choice could fix everything.”
Abilene wipes at her cheek, then lets out a breath that sounds like something easing loose.
She studies me for a long moment. The bees hum. The wind shifts. Somewhere, a horse nickers.
“Thank you,” she says quietly.
I tip my hat, habit and truth all wrapped together. “Anytime.”
She folds the letters and tucks them back into her pocket, then glances at the hives again. “I think… I think I want to understand it. Not chase it. Just understand.”
“That’s a good place to start.”