Chapter Text
Summer made everything look kinder than it was at your home.
The grass brushed warm against your bare legs as you ran through the backyard, sunlight pouring thick and golden over everything it touched—the porch steps, the wildflowers crowding the fence, the white railings with their chipped paint, your mother sitting in the shade as if she had been placed there by the day itself. The air smelled of clover and lavender and the sweetness of earth left baking under the afternoon sun, and somewhere close by bees hummed lazily among the flowers while the screen door behind the kitchen knocked once against its frame and settled again.
You kept running for no better reason than because you could. Because the grass was soft. Because the light was pretty. Because your mother was watching and smiling, and when she smiled at you the whole world seemed to turn gentler.
“Don’t go too close to the fence, baby,” your mother called.
Her voice drifted across the yard like a ribbon, and you turned immediately because you always did when she spoke.
She was sitting on the porch steps in a white sundress trimmed with lace, one hand resting over her knee, the other shielding her eyes from the sun. Her dark hair fell in a long, shining curtain over one shoulder, and even from where you stood you could see the strange, beautiful color of her eyes when the light caught them—storm blue one second, jade green the next, as though the sky and the earth themselves had fought a long war over her and finally agreed to a truce. Fragments of every element seemed to live in her irises, crowning her delicate face with something almost unreal.
“I’m not!” you called back, though you were, a little.
She smiled. “I know.”
There was a softness to her today. A tiredness too, though you did not know how to name that yet. You only knew that some days your mother moved like music and some days she moved like something hurt. Today was somewhere in between.
You wandered farther through the grass, crouching here and there to inspect the tiny, miraculous things that seemed so important—a bent daisy near the fence, a beetle crawling over a stone, a line of ants disappearing beneath the porch. Everything felt alive beneath the careful magnifying glass of your curiosity.
Then something lilac drifted through the air in front of you.
You stopped so quickly you nearly stumbled.
For a second, you thought it was a flower petal blown loose on the breeze. Then it moved again, delicate and wandering, and your whole face lit with wonder.
“Mama,” you gasped. “Mama, look!”
Your mother straightened slightly where she sat. “What is it, sweetheart?”
You pointed, too enchanted to lower your hand. “A butterfly.”
She followed your finger, and the moment she found it, her smile changed into something softer, deeper, touched with a kind of quiet fondness that made your chest feel warm. “Oh,” she murmured. “Yes. I see her.”
Her.
That felt right inside your small heart.
The butterfly floated through the yard as though she belonged to no one and nowhere, lilac wings opening and closing in the sunlight, pale violet with silver threaded through the edges whenever she caught the light just so. She moved from flower to flower in no hurry at all, and you followed at once, laughing softly every time she rose just beyond your reach and drifted down again as though she had only moved to make sure you were still paying attention.
“Can I hold her?” you asked, crouching in the grass while the butterfly settled on a flower no taller than your shin.
Your mother shook her head, smiling. “No, baby. Gentle things don’t like to be held too tight.”
You considered that with complete seriousness, your brows drawing together for a second before you nodded. “But I wouldn’t crush her. I’d be careful with her.”
“I know you would,” she said softly. “But it’s better not to try, sweetheart. You could hurt her wings, and then the poor thing wouldn’t be able to lift herself into the air again.”
You watched, chin nearly resting on your knees, too absorbed to notice the heat anymore. Everything narrowed to the small, lovely miracle in front of you. The butterfly moved her wings slowly, almost lazily, and the whole world seemed to slow with her.
Then a shadow cut across the light.
A rough cry split the stillness overhead.
You jumped with a gasp, your heart lurching so hard it hurt.
The butterfly lifted into the air at once.
Something dark swept down toward the oak tree near the edge of the yard, wings broad and black and startling against the late afternoon sun, before settling on one of the lower branches with a rustle sharp enough to make your stomach drop.
“Mama!”
You ran before you had even finished screaming for her, tearing through the grass as fast as your legs would go, fear closing tight around your throat. By the time you reached the porch, you were crying from the shock of it, scrambling into your mother’s lap with clumsy little hands and wet cheeks and a heartbeat that would not settle.
“There you are,” she murmured, gathering you close without hesitation. One arm circled your back while the other smoothed over your hair, over and over, until some of the panic in you loosened enough to breathe around. “What happened?”
“There’s a bird,” you mumbled into the hollow of her neck. “A very ugly one.”
You felt her laugh softly. “An ugly one?”
You nodded hard against her skin. “Very ugly.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” She pressed a kiss into your hair. “Look at me.”
Reluctantly, you lifted your head.
Her expression was gentle, touched with amusement, but not dismissive. She always did that—made room for your fear without making you feel foolish for it.
“That’s not an ugly bird,” she said softly.
“Yes, it is,” you insisted immediately, one hand clutching the lace at her shoulder. “It scared me.”
Her thumb brushed a tear from your cheek. “Scaring you doesn’t make something ugly.”
You blinked at her, unconvinced.
She turned you carefully in her lap so you were facing the yard again, your back against her chest, her chin resting light near your temple. “Look,” she said. “There.”
The bird still sat in the oak tree, dark and sleek against the branch, his feathers drinking in the sunlight until they seemed almost blue at the edges. Bigger than the little birds that came to the feeder. Sharper too. His head tilted with a strange, unsettling intelligence, as if he were watching not only the yard but understanding it.
“That’s not an ugly bird,” your mother murmured. “That’s a crow.”
You stared at him from the safety of her arms. “He’s scary.”
“A little,” she allowed.
The butterfly drifted back into view over the roses, and the instant the crow turned his head toward her, your whole body went tight.
“He sees her,” you whispered.
Your mother’s arm tightened around your middle. “I know.”
“He’s gonna eat her.”
This time her laugh came quieter, almost fond, though there was something thoughtful beneath it too. “No, baby.”
“Yes, he is,” you said, your voice breaking. “He’s bad. He’s gonna hurt her. Make him stop, mommy!”
“Hush now.” Her lips brushed your hairline. “Just watch.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Yes, you do.”
There was something so certain in the way she said it that you fell quiet, even with tears still damp on your cheeks.
So you watched.
The butterfly floated through the yard in wandering little arcs, lilac and silver and impossibly delicate. The crow followed her movement from the tree, shifting once along the branch, then again, always turning to keep her in sight. Not lunging. Not diving. Not striking. Just watching with an intensity that no longer looked like danger.
“He’s waiting,” you whispered.
“Maybe.”
“He wants to catch her.”
“Or maybe,” your mother said, her voice dropping softer still, “he just can’t look away.”
You tipped your head back enough to look at her. “Why?”
Her gaze stayed on the yard. “Because sometimes a thing can be so lovely, so strange, so unlike anything else around it, that even something wild stops just to marvel at it.”
You looked back at the crow.
He had gone very still, his black shape sharp against the branch while the butterfly drifted above the flowers below him, careless and beautiful and bright enough to hold the eye whether you meant to stare or not.
“He likes her,” you said.
A little smile touched your mother’s mouth. “Maybe he does.”
You kept watching, fear beginning to unwind into something else. Curiosity. Wonder. Relief. The crow moved when she moved, but never toward her in any cruel way. He followed her with the same fascinated patience someone might follow sunlight on water.
“I thought crows were mean,” you admitted after a while.
“Most people do.”
“Why?”
Your mother was quiet for a moment, her fingers slowly combing through your hair. “Because they look like shadows,” she said at last. “Because they’re black and loud and too clever for their own good. Because they don’t sing the way people want birds to sing. They don’t come wrapped in pretty colors. They don’t flutter.” She smiled faintly. “People like pretty things they understand. Crows make them uneasy.”
You considered that. “But they’re not bad?”
“No.” Her voice softened. “Not just because they look severe.”
She shifted slightly on the step beneath you, and you settled more comfortably against her while she went on, her tone unhurried now, almost thoughtful, as though she were speaking as much to herself as to you.
“Crows are some of the cleverest creatures God ever made. They remember faces. Did you know that? If someone is kind to them, they remember. And if someone is cruel…” She paused, a faint shadow passing behind her eyes before she smiled again. “They remember that too.”
You looked at the crow with renewed awe. “Really?”
“Really.” Her fingers traced absent little paths through your hair. “They watch. They learn. They protect each other. If one of them is hurt, the others gather. They mourn their dead. They bring gifts sometimes—small shiny things, bits of ribbon, bottle caps, all sorts of treasures—just because something in them decided it mattered.”
Your mouth fell open. “Like people?”
A quiet laugh escaped her. “Sometimes better than people.”
You turned that over in your head.
The butterfly landed on a pale flower near the fence. The crow remained above her in the oak tree, motionless now, his whole dark body angled toward her like devotion disguised as stillness.
“Maybe he thinks she’s beautiful,” you whispered.
Your mother’s arms tightened almost imperceptibly around you. “Maybe he does.”
“And he’s not gonna eat her?”
“No, baby.”
“But… How do you know that?”
This time, when she answered, there was something wistful in her voice, something so tender it made the whole yard seem to lean in and listen.
“Because that’s not how he’s looking at her.”
You went still in her lap.
Children knew more about tone than adults ever gave them credit for. You did not understand everything, but you understood that this mattered. That the answer was bigger than the butterfly and the crow and the yard and the summer heat wrapped around the two of you.
“How is he looking at her?” you asked, almost with a conspiratorial tone.
Your mother smiled, though sadness had begun threading itself into the edges of it. “Like she’s the prettiest thing he’s ever seen.”
You looked back at the tree, and suddenly that was exactly what it looked like.
No hunger. No cruelty. Only absolute devotion disguised as wonder.
The butterfly moved again, and the crow tracked her without sound, as if the whole sky had narrowed to the lilac flicker of her wings.
A little laugh escaped you, watery with leftover tears. “I like him now.”
“I thought you might.”
You leaned back into her more fully then, content to simply watch them together, the butterfly wandering from bloom to bloom, the crow following from above with all the solemn intensity of something old and dark discovering beauty for the first time and not knowing what to do with the ache of it.
The wind stirred across the porch.
The strap of your mother’s sundress slipped slightly down her arm.
And that was when you saw the bruises.
They were soft colors at first. Bluish at the edges. Violet where the skin was paling. Bloom shaped beneath the white of her dress and the warm gold of the afternoon. Your eyes fixed on them immediately, the comparison arriving before the thought itself had fully formed.
“Mama?”
She hummed absentmindedly, still looking toward the yard.
You reached for her arm with one small finger, careful not to press. “Those are the same color.”
Her body went still.
“The same color as what, sweetheart?”
“The butterfly.”
Silence.
You traced the air above one bruise without touching it. “And this one too.”
For a long moment she didn’t speak. The whole yard seemed to hold its breath with her—the wind, the flowers, even the crow in the tree.
Then, quietly, “You notice everything.”
You looked up at her, your little face full of the unguarded concern children wear so openly it almost hurts to witness. “Did it hurt?”
Her gaze flickered toward the house, then back to you. “A little.”
Your mouth turned down. “Why Daddy did that?”
The butterfly still drifted through the flowers, and the crow still watched from his branch with patient attention. But in your mother something closed. Something drew tight and careful behind her face.
She gathered you a little more firmly in her lap. “Your father works very hard,” she said quietly. “He gets tired.”
You frowned. “Tired?”
She nodded. “And sometimes when people are tired, they… they don’t always know what they’re doing.”
The answer didn’t sit right, even in your small body. You looked from her bruises back to the crow, back to the butterfly, trying to make the shapes of things match the way she wanted them to.
“I don’t like it when he hurts you,” you whispered.
Her hand closed around your wrist. Not harshly. Just enough to stop you from pointing again. Enough for you to feel that the air had changed.
“Don’t say that.”
You blinked at her, startled.
“Baby,” she said, softer now, though no less firm. “Your father loves us.”
The words felt wrong inside you.
You looked back toward the tree where the crow still sat in the branches, black and solemn and so careful in the way he watched that even you could see the difference now.
“But the crow likes the butterfly,” you said slowly, “and he isn’t hurting her.”
Something flashed across your mother’s face—pain, maybe, or shame, or just exhaustion too old to hide quickly enough.
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
She drew in a breath that sounded thin in her chest. “Because grown up love can be hard.”
You frowned harder. “But if it hurts, then why is it love? You love me, and you never hurt me. Grandpa doesn’t either.”
Her eyes closed for just a second.
When they opened again, they looked too bright.
“Because sometimes,” she said, voice low and strange, “people hurt the things they love.”
The sentence slipped into you like something sharp and quiet.
You didn’t have the words for contradiction. Didn’t have language yet for how wrong something could feel even before you knew how to argue with it. But you had your own small logic, and your own small logic was already pushing back.
“No,” you said softly.
Your mother looked down at you.
You shook your head. “That’s not what the crow is doing. He loves the butterfly and he isn't doing any of those things, mommy.”
And there it was—her own lesson turned against the lie she was trying to hand you.
She had told you not to judge the crow by the darkness of his feathers, by the roughness of his cry, by how frightening he looked at first glance. She had told you to watch what he did. And what he did was follow beauty without harming it. Marvel at it without crushing it. Stay near it without taking from it.
Your father did not do that. Even then, some hidden part of you knew it.
Your mother looked away toward the yard, her jaw tight. The wind lifted strands of her black hair across her cheek, and she brushed them back with trembling fingers.
“It’s my fault sometimes,” she murmured after a while. “I know how to push him. I know when I should stop talking and I don’t. He comes home with so much on his shoulders and sometimes I make things worse.”
You stared at her, confused in that deep, miserable way only children can be when an adult they love asks them to stand inside a lie.
“But he did it, he hurt you,” you said.
She swallowed.
“Mama…”
“He loves me. He did it because he loves me,”
The words came out brittle this time, as if she needed them to be true because the alternative was too large to survive.
You looked at the bruises again, lilac and blue against her skin, the same shades as the butterfly’s wings, and felt something inside you twist painfully. Even in the warmth of the porch, you turned cold.
Because the crow had frightened you.
But your father frightened your mother.
And those were not the same thing at all.
“That doesn’t make sense,” you whispered.
Her face changed then. Not anger. Something sadder. Something almost broken.
“No,” she said softly, too softly. “No, it doesn’t.”
The answer startled you more than if she had insisted again.
For a second, she looked as though she might say more. As though something inside her had risen all the way to the surface and might finally spill over. But then the familiar restraint came down again, like a curtain drawn shut.
“He’s your father,” she said instead. “You owe him some respect, you can't say those things because someone could hear and think that he's a bad a man,”
You lowered your eyes.
The apology came before you could stop it. “I’m sorry.”
You didn’t know what you were apologizing for. Only that the air had gone wrong and your mother’s face had gone far away and some instinct already lived in you that whispered that when love changed temperature, you should try to fix it.
Her expression crumpled at once.
“Oh, baby.” She pulled you against her so quickly your cheek knocked against her shoulder. “No. Don’t do that. Don’t you apologize to me.”
You wrapped your arms around her neck, frightened by the tremor in her voice more than by anything else.
“Did I make you sad?”
“No.”
“Did Daddy?”
Her arms tightened until you could feel the beat of her heart against you, quick and uneven.
“Mommy?”
“Hush now.”
Her voice was gentle again, but closed.
So you did.
You sat there in her lap and watched the yard with the solemn silence of a child trying to understand a world that had shifted beneath her feet without warning. The butterfly rose from one flower and drifted to another. The crow kept watch from the tree. The summer light softened by degrees, turning everything gold at the edges.
After a while, you asked in a quiet voice, “If the crow likes her that much… Will he keep her safe?”
Your mother was silent for so long you thought perhaps she hadn’t heard you.
Then she kissed your temple and said, “I’d like to think so.”
You nodded and let that answer settle in you.
The butterfly lifted higher into the evening light, pale lilac against the sky. The crow watched her without moving, dark and still and wholly taken by her.
You stared at him for a long time.
Then you tilted your face up toward your mother and said, with all the dreamy seriousness of a child confessing a secret wish, “When I’m big… I want someone to look at me the way he looks at her.”
Your mother went utterly still.
For one suspended moment, the whole world seemed to narrow to the space between your face and hers.
When she looked down at you, there was so much sadness in her eyes it nearly swallowed the light in them whole. She touched your cheek with trembling fingers, brushing a strand of hair away from your forehead.
“Oh, my love,” she whispered.
You blinked up at her. “What?”
Her smile came small and heartbroken. “Nothing.”
But that wasn’t true. Even you could tell that much.
This would be the first contradiction you would ever carry: that something capable of frightening you could turn out to be unexpectedly gentle, while something beloved could become cruel enough to wound you. At your age, all you had was a feeling. The feeling that two utterly contradictory things had been placed into your hands at once by your mother. Love and pain, both insisting they belonged in the same place.
And somewhere deep inside your small, tender chest, where no one could yet reach it, confusion planted itself like a seed—because the crow was not what it seemed, but your father was not what she said.
You looked back toward the yard, toward the butterfly and the crow, and your mother held you a little tighter, as if she were trying to keep something from reaching you.
The wind moved first, turning cold where it should have stayed warm.
Then the scent of lavender thinned.
The porch blurred at the edges. The flowers lost their shape. The oak tree smeared into shadow, and the sunlight that had soaked everything in honey-colored gold drained slowly into something dimmer, flatter, wrong.
Your mother’s arms disappeared last.
── .⋆♱ ⋅🦋⋅ ♱⋆. ──
You woke slowly, like surfacing through dark water.
Your lashes fluttered.
For a second, all you could see was the blurred oval of the airplane window beside you, black outside except for the faint wing light flashing intermittently against the night. Then the cabin came into focus around you in pieces—the dimmed overhead lights, the low rustle of sleeping passengers, the steady hum of the engines carrying all of you westward through the dark.
Your throat felt tight.
You swallowed against it, blinking the last of the dream away, but it clung to you stubbornly, not in images now but in feeling. An invisible, bruise-colored ache blooming beneath your ribs. The phantom warmth of your mother’s arms. The sound of her words echoing somewhere inside you.
Peter was already watching you, as though he had woken the moment he sensed the shift in your breathing and knew immediately that sleep had turned against you again.
You didn’t realize his hand had already settled over yours until his thumb brushed lightly across your knuckles, warm and lazy with remains of his own sleep.
“You were dreaming again,” he murmured.
His voice was low, careful not to disturb the passengers around you. The soft cabin light caught the neat line of his jaw, the expensive watch at his wrist, the polished ease of a man who had never looked out of place anywhere in his life—not in Manhattan restaurants, not at charity galas, not in first class, and, you suspected, not in the small Wyoming town waiting for the two of you at the end of this flight.
“It was nothing,” you said quietly. “Just strange.”
Peter’s brows lifted a little. “That bad, huh?”
You let out a small breath and turned toward the window again. “Apparently.”
He was quiet for a second, then his fingers closed a little more firmly around your hand. “You had the deepest frown on your face.”
That made you glance back at him. “I did not.”
“You did.” A faint smile touched his mouth. “You looked like you were seconds away from starting an argument with someone in your sleep.”
A tiny laugh slipped out before you could stop it.
“There,” he said softly, a little smug now. “That’s better.”
You shook your head, but the tension in your chest loosened by a fraction. “Maybe I was winning.”
Peter shifted in his seat to face you more fully. “No, definitely not. That was not the face of a woman who’s winning.”
“And what does that face look like?”
He pretended to consider it. “Smug. Slightly unbearable. Very pleased with herself.”
You huffed a quieter laugh this time and looked back down at your lap.
Peter watched you for another moment. “What did you dream about?”
You shrugged lightly. “I don’t know. It’s already slipping.”
“That’s convenient.”
You gave him a look. “It’s true.”
He smiled and tipped his head back against the seat for a moment. “You know, I’ve never understood why you never tell me about your nightmares.”
“They’re not nightmares.”
“No?” He looked at you again. “You wake up tense, out of breath, and looking like you haven’t slept at all.”
You drew the blanket a little higher over your lap. “That still doesn’t make them worth talking about.”
Peter tilted his head. “Maybe not. But I’d still like to know.”
The words were simple. Gentle. Not demanding. Just honest enough to make looking at him feel vaguely unfair.
You lowered your eyes. “It’s not personal.”
He studied you for a second, then softened. “Okay.”
The answer came so easily it caught you off guard.
A moment later, he unbuckled his seatbelt.
You frowned. “Where are you going?”
“Stay there.”
Before you could argue, he got up and disappeared a few rows ahead. You watched him exchange a few quiet words with a flight attendant before coming back with a small bottle of water, a paper cup, and the familiar little foil packet of aspirin from his bag.
When he sat down, you gave him a look. “You brought aspirin?”
He glanced at you as though that should have been obvious. “I’m traveling with you.”
That pulled the ghost of a smile from you.
Peter shook one tablet into the cup, poured a little water over it, and waited for it to dissolve before handing it to you. “Drink.”
“You’re very dramatic.”
“And yet,” he said, “here you are with a headache.”
“I didn’t say I had a headache.”
“You didn’t have to.”
You took the cup from him anyway. The water tasted faintly chalky, but you drank it in a few swallows and handed it back. He set it carefully on the tray table between you and twisted the cap back onto the bottle.
“Better?” he asked.
“I’m sure the miracle will kick in any second.”
Peter smiled. “Let’s hope.”
The engine hummed steadily beneath the silence that followed. Around you, the cabin remained dim and half asleep, a small suspended world of soft lights and low breathing and the occasional rustle of fabric. Outside the window there was nothing but darkness and the intermittent pulse of light over the wing.
Peter reached for your hand again, turning it over this time so his thumb rested against the inside of your wrist.
“Was it your mother?” he asked after a while.
The question was so quiet you almost missed it.
Your answer came too quickly. “No.”
Peter looked at you for a beat, then nodded once. He knew you were lying.
“Okay.”
You stared at the window.
After a second, he added, “You know you don’t have to shut down every time I ask, right?”
You let out a breath through your nose. “I’m not shutting down.”
“No?”
“No.”
He smiled a little at that—not mocking, just tired.
You glanced at him. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Do that thing where you look at me like I’m being difficult.”
“I’m not.” His smile widened just a fraction. “I’m looking at you like you’re awake at three in the morning pretending you weren’t clearly having a terrible dream.”
“That’s a very specific look.”
“I’ve had time to perfect it.”
You shook your head, but there was no real force behind it.
Peter leaned back into his seat again. “You don’t have to tell me tonight.”
“I know.”
“But one day you probably should.”
You were quiet for a moment. “Maybe.”
He glanced sideways at you. “Maybe?”
“That’s all you get.”
Peter’s mouth twitched. “I’ll take it.”
He closed his eyes again, though he kept hold of your hand. For a minute you thought he might drift back to sleep, but then he said, still half-smiling, “For the record, you really did look like you were about to fight someone.”
You rolled your eyes. “Maybe I was.”
“Mm.” His voice was growing softer now, sleepier. “Poor bastard.”
That earned one more quiet laugh from you.
And because he heard it, because he always did, his fingers gave yours one last absent minded squeeze before his breathing began to even out again.
You turned back to the window.
Outside, the wing light kept blinking against the dark in measured intervals, too distant and too steady to feel real. The aspirin had left a bitter trace on your tongue. Peter’s warmth still lingered faintly against your skin where his hand had been.
You should have felt calmer.
Maybe, in some small way, you did.
But the dream still clung to you stubbornly—not in images now, but in feeling. An invisible, bruise colored ache blooming beneath your ribs. The phantom warmth of your mother’s arms. The echo of her voice somewhere deep inside you, soft and sorrowful and impossible to untangle from the rest.
Beside you, Peter slept.
You pressed your fingers together in your lap and stared out into the dark, trying and failing to shake the dream loose.
Somewhere deep in the hollow between memory and omen, between the mother you had left behind and the life waiting for you in Jackson, there was the feeling that something had followed you out of sleep and into the cabin with you.
And the terrible, tender shape of a wish made long before you were old enough to know what it would cost.
── .⋆♱ ⋅🦋⋅ ♱⋆. ──
By the time the car pulled up in front of the house, the sky had turned the pale, washed blue of late afternoon, the kind of quiet color that made everything around it seem cleaner somehow, sharper at the edges. Mid June in Jackson looked nothing like June in New York. Nothing like heat trapped between buildings, sirens swallowed beneath traffic, or sunlight bouncing harshly off glass towers until the whole city seemed to gleam with the exhausting effort of being looked at. Jackson did not lunge at you. It did not glitter. It simply sat there beneath the enormous Wyoming sky, self contained and still, as though it had never once in its life felt the need to prove anything to anyone.
The house waiting at the end of the drive was beautiful in the way expensive gifts often were—large without being ostentatious, tastefully designed down to the last beam and stone path, with broad windows reflecting the mountains in the distance and a wraparound porch that looked too perfect to belong to real people. The front garden had already been landscaped, the hedges trimmed, the flowerbeds arranged with the kind of careful effortlessness that only ever came from money.
Not your money, of course.
Craven money.
The kind that had a habit of arriving before you did and deciding what your life should look like.
You stepped out of the car and drew in a slow breath, stretching your back after the flight. The air felt different here—thinner, cleaner, carrying the scent of pine and sun warmed wood instead of exhaust and concrete and expensive cologne lingering in elevator walls. Somewhere nearby, you could hear the faint bark of a dog, the distant slam of a truck door, wind moving through the trees in long, dry whispers.
For one suspended second, standing in the driveway with your overnight bag still slung over your shoulder, you let yourself believe that maybe this could mean something. A beginning, perhaps. A pause. A place to breathe, the way you had once promised yourself you would find.
Then Peter’s voice cut through the moment like a knife through silk.
“No, not there,” he said sharply, barely waiting for the movers to finish unloading before stepping back out from the passenger side. “The larger boxes go upstairs. The ones marked study need to stay together, and for God’s sake, be careful with anything labeled glass.”
One of the movers nodded, already breathless from hauling boxes up the porch steps. “Yes, sir.”
Peter loosened his tie with one practiced hand, though the gesture made him look no less composed. Even after the flight, even after hours of travel, he still looked like something lifted neatly out of a magazine spread—charcoal slacks, pressed button-down with the sleeves folded once to the forearm in a way meant to suggest casualness without ever quite managing it. He glanced toward the front windows, toward the stack of boxes, toward the delivery van parked at the curb, mentally cataloguing imperfections before they even had a chance to happen.
“The dining room pieces go in last,” he added. “I don’t want any of them damaged because someone decided to crowd the space.”
Another mover gave a quick nod. “Got it.”
You watched him for a moment from beside the car, your fingers still hooked around the strap of your bag. There was something almost impressive about the efficiency of it all, if efficiency had ever been your kind of romance. Peter did everything like a man who expected the world to obey the shape of his expectations. Sometimes people mistook that for competence. Sometimes, when he was in a good mood and the room was full of people eager to be impressed, you did too.
He turned at last and noticed you standing there. His expression softened immediately into something warmer, smoother, like a door quietly clicking into place over whatever had been visible beneath it a second earlier.
“You okay baby?” he asked, walking back toward you.
You nodded. “Just stiff.”
“The flight was long.”
“It was.” You glanced past him toward the house again, toward the movers carrying in the life you were meant to inhabit now. “I still can’t believe your father bought us an actual house.”
Peter followed your gaze, and for a second pride flickered over his face so openly it almost made him look younger. “He wants us to start properly.”
You smiled, though it didn’t quite reach the place inside you where joy should have lived. “Properly.”
He looked back at you then, sensing something in your tone. “Don’t start.”
You let out a small breath, not yet a laugh, not quite a sigh. “I’m not starting anything.”
“No?” His brow lifted faintly. “Because it sounds like you’re about to.”
You hesitated, then shrugged one shoulder. “I just mean… It's a lot.”
Peter’s gaze drifted to the house again, to the porch columns, the wide front windows, the movers already disappearing inside with more boxes. “It’s a gift.”
“I know.”
“And a generous one.”
“I know that too.”
He turned back to you fully, slipping his sunglasses off and tucking them into the open collar of his shirt. “Then maybe try sounding a little more grateful.”
There it was. Not loud. Not overtly cruel. Just precise enough to leave a small mark if you let it.
You looked down briefly, toe nudging a loose pebble in the driveway. “I am grateful.”
Peter studied your face for a beat too long, as though weighing whether to let the moment go or sharpen it further. Then, apparently deciding the movers were audience enough for the day, he exhaled through his nose and reached to smooth an invisible crease from the shoulder of your dress.
“I know you are,” he said, quieter now. “You’re just tired.”
The correction settled over you before you could object. You were not irritated, not exactly. Not ungrateful. Just tired. That was easier. Cleaner. Something that required no discussion.
“Maybe,” you said.
“Maybe?” he repeated with a faint smile.
You managed a small one back. “Definitely.”
“That’s better.”
Behind him, one of the movers struggled awkwardly with a large framed mirror.
Peter turned at once. “Careful with that,” he snapped. “If you scratch the frame, it comes out of your fee.”
The man flushed. “We’ve got it, sir.”
Peter stood there another moment, watching until the mirror disappeared through the front door, then muttered under his breath, “Unbelievable.”
You shifted your weight from one foot to the other and glanced toward the road, then toward the line of houses stretching farther into town. Everything looked so still compared to the city. So open. The mountains in the distance were blue with evening haze, and the sidewalks seemed to invite wandering in a way New York sidewalks never had. Not crowded. Not hurried. Just there.
“You know,” you said carefully, “you could leave them to it for ten minutes.”
Peter didn’t look at you. “Could I?”
“Yes.” You adjusted your bag higher on your shoulder. “Come take a walk with me. We’ve been on a plane for hours. I need to stretch my legs.”
That got his attention. He turned, one hand resting on his hip, the hint of amusement returning to his mouth. “A walk.”
“A short one.”
“With half our life in boxes on the front lawn.”
You smiled lightly. “I think the house will survive without us.”
“The house, maybe.”
You rolled your eyes, though softly enough to keep it playful. “Peter.”
He took a step closer. “What?”
“Come on.”
His gaze lingered on your face for a moment, and you could see him almost considering it. Or perhaps considering whether indulging you was worth the interruption to the order of things. In the end, order won, as it so often did with him.
“I can’t,” he said.
Your smile faded a little. “Can’t or won’t?”
He reached out and curled a hand around your waist, drawing you gently toward him until the edge of your bag pressed between your side and his hip. Up close, he smelled like juniper and mint and the cologne he only ever wore when travel or family were involved. Something expensive and familiar and faintly suffocating.
“Don’t do that,” he murmured.
“Do what?”
“Ask questions you already know the answer to.”
You opened your mouth, closed it again.
Peter tilted your chin up with two fingers, the gesture almost tender if not for how controlled it was. “You know I want everything settled before tonight. My father may call. The club board will want an update by the weekend. There are a dozen things to take care of before we can enjoy any of this.”
“Enjoy,” you repeated, softer than you meant to.
His eyes narrowed just slightly. “Is there something you want to say?”
You should have said no immediately. You knew that. Instead you hesitated for half a second too long, and Peter noticed because Peter noticed everything.
“I just thought…” You searched for the least dangerous wording and found none of it satisfying. “I thought maybe the point of moving somewhere like this was to breathe a little.”
His expression cooled by a degree. “And you think I’m stopping you from doing that?”
“No.”
“But you do believe it.”
You looked away, toward the porch, toward the movers, toward anything but him. “I didn’t say that.”
Peter let the silence stretch just long enough to make your pulse skip. Then, just as quickly, he smiled again. Smoothed over. Effortless. “You need air, sweetheart? Go get some air.”
His hand eased from your waist as he leaned down, and the kiss he gave you was soft and brief, warm with familiarity rather than urgency. It lingered just long enough to register, not long enough to deepen, the kind of kiss that belonged more to habit than desire and still managed, somehow, to feel gentle.
When he drew back, he remained close for a beat, his thumb brushing once beneath your jaw, his features softened into something almost boyish in the late light, as though the sharpness you’d heard in his voice a moment earlier had already been folded away.
“Go for your walk,” he said. “Look around. Fall in love with small town America if you want to.” His thumb grazed once beneath your jaw. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
There was something in the way he said it that should have sounded comforting.
You searched his face for a beat, trying to decide whether you were imagining the weight in the words, but he was already turning away again, attention returning to the house before you had fully stepped out of his reach.
“Not that rug,” he called to one of the movers. “The blue one goes in the den, not the foyer.”
You stood there another second, watching him slip seamlessly back into command, back into the version of himself the rest of the world found so polished and reliable. Then you tightened your fingers on your bag strap, exhaled, and turned toward the street.
“Don’t go too far,” Peter said without looking back.
Something in you stiffened, small and automatic.
“I won’t,” you answered.
“Take your phone.”
“I have it.”
“And keep the sound on.”
You looked over your shoulder. “I’m just walking.”
Peter glanced at you then, just briefly. “I know.”
The smile he gave you was mild. Reasonable. Impossible to argue with.
You started down the sidewalk before you could think too hard about why the back of your neck suddenly felt warm.
Jackson opened around you slowly.
The first thing you noticed was the quiet. Not silence exactly—there were too many signs of life for that—but a different kind of noise than the one you were used to. Here, sound spreads out instead of piling up. A truck rumbling somewhere a few streets over. Wind combing through the trees. Laughter drifting from a yard. The metallic clink of someone repairing something in a garage left open to the evening. No sirens. No car horns. No constant electric thrum beneath everything. The town seemed to breathe at its own pace and expect everyone in it to do the same.
You walked without hurry, passing neat little houses with porches full of rocking chairs, potted plants, wind chimes, bicycles leaning against fences. Some were painted in soft faded colors, sage and cream and dusty blue, while others wore their age plainly in weathered wood and cracked steps. None of them looked like the sort of homes designed by committees or decorators or fathers trying to purchase a future. They looked lived in. Chosen. Kept.
The sidewalks were lined with June flowers, and more than once you caught sight of curtains moving behind a window where someone had clearly noticed the unfamiliar face passing by. Not unkindly. Just curiously. Small-town curiosity. The kind that would undoubtedly become gossip before sunset if given enough encouragement.
A woman pushing a stroller smiled at you as she crossed the street.
You smiled back, surprised by how natural it felt.
A little farther on, two boys on bicycles sped past you, one of them calling, “Sorry!” when he nearly clipped your elbow, though he was grinning too widely for it to sound particularly repentant.
“It 's okay!” you called after him, laughing despite yourself.
The air smelled faintly of pine and cut grass and something sweet baking somewhere nearby. Bread, maybe. Or pie. The kind of scent that would have felt artificial in Manhattan somehow, like a candle trying too hard to recreate a life nobody really lived. Here, it seemed to belong.
You slowed near a parked pickup truck when something in its window caught your eye, and for a moment it wasn’t the truck itself that held you there but your own reflection in the darkened glass. The pale dress moved softly around your legs in the breeze but something about it made you go still before you had fully understood why. It was not the same dress your mother had worn, of course it wasn’t, yours was newer, bought beneath flattering lights in a bright SoHo boutique by a woman who had called it timeless, and yet it was close enough in color, in shape, in the way it fell over your shoulders, that it made your stomach tighten all the same.
You took a small step closer to the window, as though the image might settle if you looked at it long enough, but it only made the feeling sharper. For one uncomfortable second, you looked so much like her that it unsettled you more than it should have, not because she hadn’t been beautiful, but because some part of you had always been afraid of becoming her in ways you didn’t quite know how to name.
A harsh cry split the air overhead before you could linger on the thought.
You jolted, your shoulder nearly clipping the side mirror as a black shape swept low across the street and vanished into the branches of a nearby tree. A crow, bigger than you expected, all sudden movement and dark wings against the soft evening sky.
You stepped back at once, the reflection breaking apart with it.
“Okay,” you muttered under your breath, more to yourself than anything else.
When the crow called out again from somewhere hidden above you, the sound was enough to make you turn in the opposite direction without thinking, your pace quickening as though distance might settle whatever had tightened in your chest. You told yourself it was nothing as you walked—just a reflection, just a bird—but that didn’t stop the faint unease from lingering even long after you’d left it behind.
It took a few streets for the feeling to loosen.
By the time you slowed again, it was because something else had caught your attention.
Each house had its own tiny garden, each one so lovingly tended it felt almost rude to stare. There were sunflowers taller than the fences, ivy climbing porch posts, strings of prayer flags fluttering in one yard, a rusting birdbath in another. One little blue house had yellow trim and a front porch full of clay pots bursting with herbs and late-blooming flowers.
That was where you saw her.
An older woman stood in the front garden with a hose in one hand and the other planted at her hip, watering a crowded spread of lavender, daisies, and trailing green things that had long since spilled past the edges of their pots. She wore a faded apron, loose gardening gloves, and the kind of practical expression that suggested she had lived long enough to stop pretending not to notice everything. Her silver hair had been twisted up loosely at the back of her head, though half of it had already escaped.
She looked up the moment your steps slowed near the gate.
“Well,” she said, smiling before you’d even opened your mouth, “you’re either lost or new, and you don’t look particularly worried, so I’m guessing new.”
The warmth of her voice caught you a little off guard. “Is it really that obvious?”
She laughed softly and turned the hose down until the water ran in a gentler stream over the flowers. “Honey, in a town this size, it’s obvious when somebody breathes differently. You’ve got that look people get when they’re still trying to decide whether they like it here or not.”
That pulled a small laugh out of you. “And what if I haven’t decided yet?”
“Then you’re perfectly normal.”
You smiled despite yourself.
She let the hose fall to one side of the flowerbed and straightened a little, squinting at you in the late light with open curiosity that somehow didn’t feel invasive.
“You one of the Cravens, then?”
You paused.
There it was already. Small-town speed.
You gave her a polite half-smile. “Something like that.”
The woman snorted, unimpressed by vague answers. “That house on Pemberley Lane didn’t stay empty long enough for anyone not to notice. Movers all afternoon, big shiny car in the driveway, and a tall man standing around like he personally invented instructions.” She gave a small shrug. “People talk. Or, more accurately, people don’t have enough else to do.”
Despite yourself, you smiled. “Yes. That would be him.”
“And you,” she said, looking at you more carefully now, “are the poor girl he dragged all the way out here from civilization.”
That startled a real laugh out of you. “That depends who you ask.”
She grinned. “Another good answer. You’re doing well so far.”
You stepped a little closer to the fence, your gaze drifting past her garden toward the narrow trail disappearing between the cottages farther down. It curved away beneath a line of trees, quiet and half hidden, and something about it caught your eye immediately.
“Excuse me,” you said, nodding in its direction. “What’s down there?”
The woman followed your gaze and smiled at once, like she’d been expecting the question. “Oh, that’s the path to the church.”
You looked again. “There’s a church back there?”
“There is.” She rested both forearms across the top of the fence as though settling in for a proper conversation now. “Jackson Community Church. Been there longer than most of the people living around it. It’s small, but don’t let that fool you. It’s lovely inside.”
“What kind of lovely?”
She smiled at that, as though she approved of the question. “The stained glass, for one. The light comes through it late in the day and makes the whole place look better than it has any right to. Even people who don’t care much for churches tend to care for that.”
You looked back toward the path. From where you stood, all you could see was the first bend and a little wash of brightness beyond it.
The woman caught your expression. “You like churches?”
You hesitated. “I don’t know if I’d say that exactly.”
She barked out a laugh. “Smart girl.”
You smiled too, a little sheepish. “I just like old buildings. And quiet places.”
“Well, then,” she said, lifting one shoulder, “that church has both. And if you’ve just spent the day moving into a house with too many boxes and too much polished wood, I’d say it probably has the exact right amount of peace too.”
You glanced back in the direction you’d come, as if Peter might somehow appear at the end of the street just because you’d thought about him. Then you looked at the trail again.
Of course she noticed that too.
“He’ll survive without you for twenty minutes,” she said dryly.
You let out a quiet laugh. “Is it that obvious?”
She leaned in a little, lowering her voice as though she were sharing a private truth. “Sweetheart, I was married for thirty eight years. Men like that all wear the same face once you know how to look.”
The words landed more softly than they should have. Maybe she saw something shift in your expression, because she straightened again almost immediately and smiled, gentler now.
“I’m Matilda, by the way.”
You told her your name.
“Well,” Matilda said, trying it out like she was testing the weight of it, “welcome to Jackson.”
“Thank you.”
She nodded toward the path again. “Go on, then.”
You laughed. “That convincing, huh?”
“Oh, absolutely. You’re curious already, which means you’ll go whether I tell you to or not. I’m just saving you the trouble of pretending this was never the plan.”
“That obvious too?”
“You’d be amazed what I can do.”
That made you laugh again, more easily this time.
Then, before you could stop yourself, you asked, “Is it far?”
“Not at all. Five minutes, maybe less if you’ve got a reason to walk quickly.” She paused, then added, “And before you ask, no, you can’t miss it.”
“I was going to ask that.”
“I know.”
You smiled and adjusted the strap of your bag on your shoulder. “Who runs it?”
“The church?”
You nodded.
“Father Miller.”
The name settled somewhere in your mind without really meaning to. “And what’s he like?”
Matilda made a face that was not unkind, just familiar. “Big. Gruff. Keeps mostly to himself.”
You blinked. “That doesn’t sound especially welcoming.”
“Oh, I didn’t say he wasn’t welcoming. I said he keeps to himself.” She gave you a pointed look. “There’s a difference.”
You considered that. “Is there?”
“There is once you’ve lived long enough. Some people are cold because they don’t care. Some people are quiet because they care too much and don’t know what to do with it.” She shrugged. “Father Miller falls into the second category more often than he’d probably like.”
You glanced toward the trail again. “You know him well?”
“As well as anybody in this town knows anybody else.” She reached down to pick up the hose, then changed her mind and let it lie there another moment. “He’s a good man. Stubborn as a mule, terrible at asking for help, not nearly as easy as he ought to be, but good. And he has that look about him.”
“What look?”
“The look of a man who spends too much time carrying things alone and then acting offended when his back hurts.”
That made you laugh.
Matilda smiled, pleased with herself. “There. That’s the right reaction.”
“So he’s difficult.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
“And you like him anyway.”
She gave you a very measured look. “You can like people and still think they’d benefit from being shaken.”
You laughed again. “That sounds oddly specific.”
“It is.” She bent to pull one glove off properly this time. “Jackson doesn’t have nearly enough interesting people for me to waste the word lightly, and Father Miller is interesting whether he likes it or not.”
You didn’t know why that stayed with you, but it did.
You looked once more toward the path. The trees shifted in the wind, and the last of the sunlight slipped through the branches in long soft bands, laying brightness over the dirt trail like something inviting. The world behind you still smelled faintly of lumber, moving boxes, and the life that had already been arranged for you but the world ahead smelled of wild flowers, earth, and whatever waited at the end of that narrow winding path.
“Thank you,” you said.
Matilda smiled and reached for the hose again. “For the directions, or for the excuse?”
You opened your mouth, then laughed when you realized there was no answer that would improve on hers.
“For both.”
“That’s what I thought.”
You hesitated a second longer, then gave her a little wave and stepped toward the path.
“Careful,” she called after you.
You glanced back.
Matilda turned the water on again, letting it run over the lavender as she smiled to herself. “Jackson has a habit of turning into home before people mean for it to.”
Something about the line lodged beneath your ribs before you could stop it.
You gave her a faint smile. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Then you turned and started down the trail.
The noise of the street fell away behind you almost immediately. Gravel softened into packed earth beneath your shoes, and the path curved between trees and tall grass as the light filtered through in fractured gold. Somewhere ahead, still hidden from view, a church waited at the end of the trail with stained-glass windows catching the last of the afternoon sun.
And without quite knowing why, you found yourself walking toward it as though something there had already started calling your name.
── .⋆♱ ⋅🦋⋅ ♱⋆. ──
The church stood at the end of the trail like it had been there waiting for you.
From outside, it seemed almost modest. Quiet. Tucked away. But the moment you stepped through the front doors and into the cool dimness beyond them, the place opened around you in a way you hadn’t expected.
Stone.
That was the first thing that struck you.
Not whitewashed walls. Not plain wood. Not the smaller, simpler kind of chapel you might have imagined finding at the end of a hidden path in a town like Jackson, but old grey stone rising in long, graceful lines that pulled your eyes upward before you could help it. The walls were rough in places, worn smoother in others, and the arches overhead gave the whole room the shape of something older and heavier than it had looked from outside. It wasn’t grand. It didn’t need to be. The stone did enough. It held the room together with a quiet severity that made your own footsteps feel too loud for a moment.
You stopped just past the threshold.
The doors had closed behind you with a low, heavy sound, and now the church seemed to settle around you all at once. Not empty, exactly. There were too many signs of life for that. But still in a way that made every small noise matter—the faint creak of old wood somewhere high above, the shift of air through a building too old to be fully sealed, the soft echo of your own breathing.
Then you noticed the light.
It came through the stained glass in long, broken bands, spilling color over the stone floor and the pews in deep reds, greens, blue, and gold. The whole church changed depending on where you stood. Parts of it looked colder where the shadows held. Other parts glowed unexpectedly warm where the late sun cut through the glass and touched the stone.
You moved farther in, slowly, your gaze lifting toward the windows.
Rows of dark wooden pews ran toward the altar in neat lines, their surfaces polished by use more than effort. Candles sat unlit near the front. Fresh flowers had been placed in simple vases, not arranged with any great precision, only care. A pair of reading glasses rested near a hymn book someone had forgotten to put away. The church did not feel abandoned. It felt paused for a moment.
And then your eyes found the first stained glass panel properly, and you stopped.
At the center stood a moose.
Broad and still beneath a wash of green and gold light, his antlers rose through the glass in dark, branching lines that gave the whole image a quiet kind of weight. Beside him stood another of his kind, smaller in frame, her body turned slightly toward his, and between them, tucked safely in the space they seemed to make around it, stood a calf.
You moved closer without thinking.
There was something unexpectedly tender in the image. No movement. No danger. No grand religious symbolism you could immediately decipher. Just the three of them standing together in a clearing rendered in color and lead, the larger bodies creating a kind of shelter around the smaller one without seeming to try. A family. Nothing more dramatic than that. A male. A female. Their young. The whole thing held in such quiet stillness that it made your chest tighten before you fully understood why.
The father did not look proud.
That would have been easier to read.
He looked complete. Entirely turned toward the fact of them. The mother stood close enough that the space between them did not feel like distance at all, and the calf, half hidden in the middle, seemed placed there with so much care that for a moment it felt less like church glass and more like someone trying to preserve a memory before time could get at it.
You stayed there longer than you meant to.
Then your eyes moved to the next panel, and whatever calm the first one had given you disappeared almost immediately.
The calf lay at the father’s feet.
You went still.
The mother was gone now. Her absence struck you before any other detail did. The whole composition had opened up around the father, but not in a way that felt freer. In a way that felt emptied. He stood over the calf with his head lowered, his whole body altered by the weight of what was in front of him. He looked larger in this one and somehow more diminished at the same time, as though grief had made him heavier and hollowed him out all at once.
You stepped closer.
The calf was very small.
That was what got you first. Not blood. Not damage. Just the size of it against the father’s legs. Small enough that the first window returned to you immediately and made this one worse. A moment ago it had stood between them. Safe. Held. And now it lay there, still and unreachable, while the father remained above it as though not even he understood how something could still be in front of him and already be gone.
Then you saw the face.
Or what had been done to it.
There were fine silver lines cut into the glass, slight enough that you almost thought you’d imagined them until the light shifted and made them visible again. Tears. Or something close enough that your throat tightened anyway.
He was crying.
Once you saw it, the whole panel changed. It changed the first one too, reaching backward and giving it a tenderness it hadn’t needed a moment before. The father in the first window became warmer, more vulnerable. The calf here became not just dead but loved.
You stood there and looked at him for longer than was probably reasonable, and the longer you looked, the clearer it became that whoever had designed these windows had not meant to show death in some distant, noble way. They had meant to show what came after the shock of it. The helplessness. The stillness. The impossible fact of having to remain standing over something you could not fix.
The next panel was violence.
The same moose—or what had to be the same one—was locked in brutal struggle with another of his kind, antlers crashed together, bodies straining with enough force that the whole image seemed to carry motion even in stillness. It took you a second to understand why it unsettled you so much after the grief of the panel before, and then it clicked.
It looked like rage.
Not clean rage. Not triumphant rage. The kind that came after there was nothing left to do with pain except drive it outward. The father was no longer bowed in this one. He was turned hard into impact, every line of his body violent with force. If the first panel had been tenderness and the second helplessness, this one was what came next when grief had nowhere else to go.
You kept looking.
The antlers looked almost desperate in the way they tangled. The bodies were too close, too committed to the blow for this to feel ceremonial or symbolic. It felt physical. Ugly. Necessary in the way some forms of anger seemed necessary when a person no longer knew what else to do with what hurt.
Then you moved to the next window, and this was the one that held you longest.
The moose stood alone again, but whatever violence had lived in the previous panel had burned itself out by now. Nothing in him looked triumphant. Nothing even looked furious anymore. He was still upright, still enormous, but the weight of him had changed. His body looked worn down by endurance rather than animated by strength, and around him, closing in from all sides, were five wolves.
You counted them twice.
Five.
One of them was already feeding.
Its jaws were sunk into the moose’s leg, and the dark red worked into the glass there was restrained enough that you didn’t notice it fully until you stepped closer. The others had not reached him yet, but that almost made the image worse. They were still circling. Still waiting for their turn. Still finding the best places to take from him.
And he was still standing there.
That was the part you couldn’t stop looking at.
He did not look wild in this one. He did not look enraged. He didn’t even look afraid. He looked tired. Tired in a way that felt almost painfully human. As though the fight had already happened, the grief had already happened, and now all that remained was the long, punishing part where the world kept taking and he had to endure it a little longer because he hadn’t yet fallen.
Something about that exhausted sadness in him made the wolves feel crueler.
You stepped closer until the colored light shifted over your shoes.
The whole sequence sharpened in your mind then, each panel locking into place behind the next. First the family. Then the dead calf. Then the rage. Then this worn, cornered body being eaten alive by what had come after. It no longer looked like separate images. It looked like the same life moving through different stages of pain.
And what struck you most was that the father kept changing in ways the world around him did not. In the first panel he was part of something whole. In the second he was broken open. In the third he was all force. In the fourth he was simply tired. The wolves had not just found him. They had found what was left after grief and anger had already done their work.
You should have looked away.
Instead, you searched for the next panel as if you already knew there had to be one.
At first your eyes struggled to make sense of it. Pale shapes against dark ground. The curve of bone. The familiar reach of antlers detached now from anything living. Then it settled into one image, and the sadness of it landed so quickly and so cleanly that you felt it before you found words for it.
The moose was gone.
What remained were the bones.
There was no struggle left in the glass. No movement. No wolves. No anger. Not even grief, exactly. Just the remains of something that had once been huge and living, reduced now to pale fragments on the painted ground. The antlers lay off to one side like an afterthought. The spine curved through the center of the image in a line too clean to be anything but final.
You stared at it.
And felt, absurdly, sorry for him.
Not because animals died. Not because death in art was unusual. But because after everything the windows had asked you to watch him endure—love, loss, rage, attack—this was how it ended. Alone. Stripped down to what the world had not wanted or had already finished taking.
Then your eyes lifted and found the figure standing above the bones.
A girl.
Or maybe an angel.
She was slight and still, dressed in pale glass that caught the light differently from everything around her. There was something wing like suggested behind her shoulders, but not so literally that you could say with certainty what she was meant to be. What mattered was where she was looking.
At him.
At what was left of him.
She had not come in time to save anything. She had not interrupted the wolves. She had not changed the ending. She only stood there, looking down at the bones with a sadness so quiet it almost hurt more than anything else in the sequence.
You couldn’t stop staring at her.
Because somehow that was the part that made the loneliness unbearable—not that he had ended like this, but that someone small and silent had been left behind to witness it. To arrive after the violence, after the grief, after the hunger, and see only the remains.
You looked back at the first panel then, all the way down the line of windows, and for a moment the whole thing lived in your mind at once.
A family.
The absence.
The grief.
The rage.
The exhaustion.
The end of him.
And finally someone left to look at what the world had done.
You let out a breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding.
It felt less like church art and more like a life told in the only language the place knew how to hold.
Only then did the rest of the room begin to come back into focus around you.
The pews. The flowers. The cool weight of the stone. The stillness of the empty church. You turned slowly, your eyes moving from the windows to the altar, and that was when you saw the cross.
And laughed.
Because after all that careful pain and beauty and stone and silence, the wooden cross hanging above the altar was visibly crooked.
Not missing. Not broken. Just tilted enough to be ridiculous.
You stood there staring at it for a second, then let out a soft laugh before you could help it.
“Well,” you murmured to the empty church, “that seems ironic.”
The room, unsurprisingly, offered no answer.
You looked at it a little longer, head tilting slightly as if the angle might correct itself if you stared hard enough. It didn’t. It only stayed there, crooked above the altar in the middle of a church full of grief and wolves and angels and stone.
You smiled despite yourself.
Then, from somewhere beyond the wall behind the altar, a man’s voice cut through the stillness—low, irritated, and very clearly cursing—and the sound was so out of place in the quiet of the church that it made you go still without thinking. A second later came the sharp crack of wood splitting, followed by another muttered swear, rougher this time, dragged under his breath as if whatever he was doing had just gone wrong again.
You turned your head slowly toward the back of the church, listening as the voice carried once more, closer now, impatient in a way that felt almost jarring against all that stone and colored light. It grounded the space immediately, pulled it out of something distant and solemn and back into something real, something where people got frustrated and things didn’t go the way they were supposed to.
For a brief moment, you hesitated, the echo of the place still lingering around you, but curiosity got there first.
You crossed toward the side door tucked behind the altar, your steps quieter now without quite meaning to be, as if the building itself had taught you how to move inside it, and when the crack of wood came again from somewhere just outside, you reached for the handle without overthinking it and pushed the door open, following the sound.
── .⋆♱ ⋅🦋⋅ ♱⋆. ──
You pushed the side door open and stepped out into the warmer air behind the church, the shift from cool stone to late-day heat immediate against your skin. The light was lower here, filtered through the trees and falling in long gold bands across the yard. It took you a second to place the sound properly—the crack of wood, the scrape of something heavy dragged aside, the low, irritated voice that kept muttering under its breath every few seconds like the day itself had personally offended him.
Then you saw him.
He stood with his back to you near a chopping block set a little way from the church wall, broad shouldered and planted solidly on the ground as he drove an axe into a split log with enough force to make the sound echo off the stone. A stack of cut wood stood off to one side, neatly piled. Another stack—wetter, rougher, rejected—lay a few feet away. He bent, picked up another log, set it upright, and brought the axe down again.
It split cleanly.
He grunted once, low in his throat, as though even success had only barely earned his approval.
The next one didn’t.
The blade struck off-center, lodging awkwardly in the wood, and the man straightened with a muttered, “Christ,” before yanking it loose again and setting the ruined piece aside with visible annoyance.
Only then did you notice the radio.
It sat on the low stone wall behind him, old and a little battered, the music soft enough that you hadn’t recognized it at first over the sound of the axe. Then the voice came through clearer, Bruce Springsteen sliding into the chorus of I’m on Fire, and something about that—about the song, the heat, the rough flannel stretched across a man’s back in the middle of nowhere—made the whole scene feel faintly unreal for a second.
He was wearing jeans and a dark flannel shirt with the sleeves shoved up to his forearms, which would have been an insane choice in that weather on anyone else and somehow only made him look more stubborn on him. He was older than you. That much was obvious even from behind. Built heavy through the shoulders, strong in the arms, moving with the kind of contained efficiency that suggested he knew exactly what his body could do and had no interest in making a show of it.
You stayed where you were.
For a moment longer than was sensible.
The song drifted on. The axe rose and fell. The rhythm of it was oddly easy to get caught in.
The line of his back tightening beneath the flannel.
The flex of his forearms when he adjusted his grip.
The rough little sound he made every time a cut didn’t go the way he wanted.
One split log landed squarely where it should. Another rolled off the block and he swore at it under his breath, bent, set it back up, and tried again.
You didn’t realize quite how long you had been standing there until he said, without turning around, “Well?”
You blinked.
He drove the axe down one more time, split the log clean through, and then finally added, “You gonna stand there all day starin’, or what’s wrong with you?”
The words hit with such flat dryness that you actually startled.
You had, in fact, been staring.
You straightened at once. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you.”
He bent for another piece of wood. “That’s good to know.”
You frowned. “Because I’m apologizing?”
“No,” he said, setting the log upright. “Because at least now I know you can talk.”
You stared at the back of his head. “That’s a little rude.”
He brought the axe down. “Well, most people start with hello and their name. They don’t just stand there like a statue watchin’ me work.”
The irritation in his tone was so matter-of fact that it threw you for a second.
“I wasn’t watching you work,” you said, which would have sounded more convincing if it had also been true.
He gave a low hum that made it very clear what he thought of that.
You looked around the yard instead, more out of stubbornness than interest. “I was just—”
“Mm.”
You glanced back at him. “You really do make conversation difficult, don’t you?”
That got the faintest pause.
He bent, picked up another log, and this time when he spoke there was something drier in it, almost bordering on amusement. “Ain’t much of a conversation so far.”
You exhaled through your nose and decided to try anyway.
“Fine,” you said. “Hello. I’m—”
He lifted one hand in a small, distracted gesture, not even turning around. “Don’t need your whole life story, darlin’. Just basic manners.”
You narrowed your eyes. “You know, for someone lecturing me about manners, you’re not exactly making an incredible first impression.”
At that, he gave the shortest huff through his nose and finally turned halfway toward you.
The first clear look at him hit harder than you would have liked.
Dark hair gone a little unruly at the temples. Beard threaded with grey. A face lined just enough to make it more interesting instead of less. A nose that looked like it had been broken at least once. Eyes that landed on you and took in everything in one sweep—your dress, your bag, your shoes, your face—before settling into something unreadable.
Then he turned back to the wood.
You recovered half a beat too late. “Are you the gardener?”
He didn’t answer.
You waited.
Nothing.
You frowned. “Or maintenance, maybe?”
Still nothing.
He drove the axe down again.
You blinked at him in disbelief. “Wow.”
“Mm.”
“No, seriously. Wow.”
He reached for another log.
You folded your arms. “You’re very rude.”
That got you a glance over his shoulder, brief and wholly unimpressed.
“Look,” he said, “what I’m doin’ is savin’ us both some time.”
“By ignoring me?”
“By not pretendin’ this is goin’ anywhere useful.”
You stared at him. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“It does to me.”
He set the log. Raised the axe. Brought it down.
The split came out ugly this time and he muttered under his breath again.
You looked at the damp piece he kicked aside, then back at him. “You do know you’re behind a church, right?”
“Mm.”
“And still cursing.”
“Also mm.”
You actually laughed. “Do you answer everything like that?”
He planted the axe into the block and finally turned to face you more fully. The movement was unhurried, but there was something in it that suggested he was very aware of the fact that he had already given you more attention than he intended.
“Lemme try this another way,” he said, voice rough with that easy Southern drawl. “It’s pretty clear you got turned around. The boutiques are on the other side of town, sweetheart.”
You just looked at him.
Then your mouth dropped open. “Excuse me?”
His expression didn’t change. Not one bit. “You heard me.”
“I did hear you, actually. I’m just trying to work out whether that was supposed to be helpful or insulting.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Depends how thin your skin is.”
You let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “No, I’m serious. What exactly gave you the impression that I was lost?”
He looked you up and down again, slower this time, and if the first glance had been assessing, this one was openly dismissive.
“The dress,” he said. “The bag. The face.”
“The face?”
“Yeah.” He hooked a thumb vaguely in the direction of town. “That look city people get when they accidentally wander somewhere without valet parkin’.”
You stared at him in stunned silence.
He turned back to the stump as if that settled it.
“It hasn’t escaped me,” you said after a beat, “that you are wearing a flannel shirt in June.”
He bent for another log. “And?”
“And I’m just wondering if heatstroke is part of your problem.”
That made the corner of his mouth twitch, though he clearly regretted it immediately.
“I’m not lost,” you said, more firmly now. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”
He grunted in response.
That annoyed you more than if he’d laughed.
You took a few steps closer instead of backing off, and his shoulders shifted like he’d noticed but had no intention of acknowledging it.
“Well?” you said.
“Well what?”
“Do you always treat strangers like this?”
He adjusted the log on the block. “Usually don’t get this many follow up questions from ‘em.”
“You haven’t answered a single one.”
“Maybe they weren’t worth answerin’.”
You folded your arms tighter. “You are deeply unpleasant.”
“And yet you’re still here.”
The crack of the axe split the air between you.
You looked away for a second, trying not to let the irritation rise too quickly, and that was when he jerked his chin toward the trees.
“See that squirrel?”
You blinked. “What?”
“That squirrel.” He pointed with the axe handle toward a nearby pine.
You followed the gesture and spotted it immediately, a small blur of brown and grey scrambling up the trunk.
“Oh.” Your face softened before you could help it. “Yes. It’s cute. Ours in Central Park don’t really—”
“I don’t give a shit about Central Park,” he cut in. “That squirrel just ran for cover because you showed up, and you ain’t been here five minutes. You’re already alterin’ the local wildlife.”
You turned to stare at him.
He looked almost bored now, like he’d finally said something rude enough to make you leave and was simply waiting for the result.
“And,” he added, after a beat, “that includes me.”
For one long second, you just looked at him.
Then you drew yourself up, crossed your arms, and said very seriously, “You know what? You’re right.”
He paused.
Actually paused.
One brow lifted a fraction. “I am?”
“Yes.” You nodded once. “I’m glad you included yourself in that, because clearly what I’m looking at is the closest thing this town has to a Neanderthal.”
He blinked. “A what?”
“A Neanderthal.”
His eyes narrowed. “You wanna repeat that slower, or—”
“You heard me.” You smiled sweetly. “What other explanation could there possibly be for a rude, impossible man in a flannel shirt, in the middle of June, behaving like a primate the second a woman speaks to him?”
For the first time since you’d stepped into the yard, he looked genuinely surprised.
Not offended.
Not amused.
Just surprised enough that it bought you one glorious second of satisfaction.
“Primate,” he repeated.
“Yes.”
He looked you over again, slower this time, and when he spoke his voice had dropped half a note.
“If my shirt bothers you that much, darlin’, you’re free to leave.”
You tilted your head. “And miss all this charm?”
His mouth flattened. “Your people are probably waitin’ for you.”
You frowned. “My people?”
“Yeah.” He split another log with unnecessary force. “The ones with matching luggage and opinions about thread count.”
You gaped at him. “You know absolutely nothing about me.”
“Know enough.”
“No, you really don’t.”
He shrugged. “Then enlighten me.”
The challenge in it was so dry it almost passed as indifference.
You opened your mouth.
Closed it.
Because, absurdly, you had the sudden suspicion that telling him anything at all would feel like losing.
So instead you lifted your chin and said, “I think you’re insufferable.”
“Been called worse.”
“I’m sure you have.”
“Usually by people less dressed for brunch.”
You let out a sharp laugh. “This isn’t brunch attire.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“And you,” you shot back, “look like a lumberjack who lost a fight with a thermostat.”
That got him.
The sound that came out of him this time was definitely a laugh, though short enough that he could pretend it wasn’t if challenged. He bent to lift a damp log and tossed it onto the rejected pile.
“Lord,” he muttered. “You just keep goin’.”
“Well, someone has to keep this conversation alive.”
He straightened and looked at you again, properly this time, his gaze steady enough to make you aware all over again of the height of him, the roughness of him, the broad set of his shoulders under that absurd flannel.
“Who says I want a conversation?”
You smiled, all teeth. “Your squirrel did.”
That earned you another flicker at the corner of his mouth.
He looked away first.
You liked that far more than you should have.
For a while the only sound between you was the radio and the wood and Bruce Springsteen still dragging his voice through the heat. You didn’t know why the song seemed to fit him, only that it did.
He split another log clean through.
Then another.
Then, without looking at you, said, “You always this persistent?”
You leaned one shoulder against the church wall, pretending not to notice the shift. “Only when I meet someone this unpleasant. It becomes a challenge.”
“Think you’re winnin’?”
“I think you’re talking more than you were five minutes ago.”
He gave a low grunt that sounded suspiciously like acknowledgment.
You smiled to yourself.
Then you remembered why you’d come outside in the first place.
“The cross is crooked, by the way.”
That made him glance over.
You pointed toward the church with your chin. “Inside.”
He stared at you. “The what?”
“The cross.”
He squinted slightly, as if weighing whether this was some sort of trap. “It’s crooked.”
“Yes.”
“How crooked?”
You blinked. “Enough.”
“That ain’t an answer.”
“It’s the correct one.”
He looked at you for one beat longer, then shook his head once, like you were a problem he had no interest in solving. “Maybe your eyes are crooked.”
You stared at him. “My eyes are not crooked.”
“They are.”
“It is visibly crooked.”
“To you.”
“To anyone with functioning eyesight.”
He rested both hands on the handle of the axe and looked at you with something almost like patience, which was somehow more irritating than the rudeness had been.
“You done inspectin’ the place?”
“No, actually. I’d barely started before someone outside started swearing loud enough to be heard in the sanctuary.”
“That so.”
“Yes.” You narrowed your eyes. “And you still haven’t told me who you are.”
He reached for another log. “Didn’t say I would.”
“I asked if you were the gardener.”
No answer.
“Or maintenance.”
Still nothing.
You exhaled slowly. “Unbelievable.”
He set the log. Raised the axe. “Mm.”
“I genuinely don’t know how you live in a place this peaceful with that personality.”
He split the wood in one clean strike and finally looked at you again. “You’re still here.”
You opened your mouth to hit him with something truly devastating, but the truth was starting to creep in under your annoyance, which made it all much worse.
He was right.
You were still there.
Still standing in the yard of a church you’d never seen before, arguing with a broad shouldered stranger in flannel while Bruce Springsteen played on the radio and the sunlight caught in his hair every time he moved.
That realization irritated you enough to make you step back.
“Right,” you said crisply. “Well. You’ve been awful.”
He nodded once. “Appreciate the feedback.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
You stared at him.
He stared back.
Then you turned on your heel and headed for the back door of the church.
You had your hand on the latch when the sheer force of your own offense got the better of you. You looked over your shoulder and snapped, “You’re an asshole.”
This time, the surprise on his face was quick but unmistakable, the kind that seemed to catch him before he had time to hide it.
Then his expression settled again into something drier.
You didn’t wait for him to answer. You pushed the door open and stepped back inside, the cool hush of the church closing around you at once, colored light still spilled across the floor exactly where you’d left it. The change in temperature should have calmed you down. It didn’t. Your pulse was still moving too fast, your cheeks warmer than they had any right to be, and all you could think as the door swung shut behind you was:
“Unbelievable.”
You had barely taken another step into the sanctuary when his voice reached you from outside, lower now, rough with reluctant disbelief and just loud enough to carry through the door.
“Christ… mouth like that oughta come with a warning.”
You stopped in the middle of the aisle, the words catching you through the door before you could keep walking.
For a second, you just stood there.
Then, despite yourself, a laugh slipped out.