Lucy leaned back.
“Who do we call?”
Hannah thought of every lawyer in Bellweather.
Three represented banks.
Two handled divorces.
One was Wade Holloway’s cousin.
She said, “Someone not from here.”
They found Rebecca Sloan in Atlanta.
Forty-four.
Commercial litigation.
University of Georgia Law.
A reputation for representing smaller manufacturers in disputes with larger corporations.
Hannah emailed her at 6:18 p.m.
Rebecca called at 6:46.
“You have eleven years of records?”
“Yes.”
“Written notices telling them to stop dumping?”
“Yes.”
“Written responses identifying the material as waste?”
“Yes.”
“Photographs?”
“Hundreds.”
“Did you pay for any of the material?”
“No.”
“Did they ever invoice you?”
“No.”
“Demand royalties?”
“No.”
“Restrict use?”
“No.”
“Ask what you were doing with it?”
“No.”
Rebecca was quiet for several seconds.
Then she said, “Do not speak to Holloway again without me.”
“Is that good?”
“It’s interesting.”
“That’s lawyer language.”
“It means I’m not celebrating until I see everything.”
Rebecca drove to Bellweather the next morning.
She wore black trousers, flat shoes, and the expression of someone who considered intimidation inefficient.
She spent four hours reviewing documents.
At noon, she looked at Hannah.
“Why were they dumping on your property?”
“They claimed my father agreed.”
“Did he?”
“I don’t know.”
“No contract in his papers?”
“Not that I’ve found.”
“What did your father do at the mill?”
“Maintenance. Then mechanical repair.”
“For twenty-eight years?”
“Yes.”
“Was he management?”
“No.”
“Friends with the Holloways?”
Hannah almost smiled.
“No.”
Rebecca closed the binder.
“Then why would an industrial company establish an eleven-year disposal arrangement with a maintenance worker’s family farm?”
Hannah frowned.
“I never thought about it that way.”
“You should.”
Rebecca walked to the window.
Across Main Street, the courthouse clock showed 12:17.
“What else did your father say about Holloway?”
“Not much.”
“Nothing?”
“He hated the place.”
“That’s something.”
“He said they treated workers like replaceable parts.”
“Anything specific?”
Hannah hesitated.
“He lost fingers in an equipment accident.”
Rebecca turned around.
“When?”
“Twenty-nine years ago.”
“Lawsuit?”
“No.”
“Settlement?”
“I think there was something.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
Rebecca tapped one finger on the binder.
“Find everything your father kept.”
That evening, Hannah and Lucy climbed into the farmhouse attic.
They opened boxes smelling of dust, cedar, and old winters.
Tax returns.
Christmas decorations.
Receipts.
Farm records.
School papers.
A stack of letters from June to Daniel Mercer before they married.
Nothing about the mill.
Until Lucy found the metal toolbox.
It sat beneath a folded army blanket.
Locked.
“Do you have a key?”
Hannah shook her head.
They carried it downstairs.
The lock was old.
Lucy stared at it.
“Grandpa would haunt us for breaking that.”
“He’d haunt us for paying a locksmith.”
They used bolt cutters.
Inside were drill bits, gauges, calipers, two old union buttons, a photograph of Daniel Mercer at twenty-two, and a brown envelope.
Hannah opened it.
The first document was dated October 14, nearly thirty years earlier.
HOLLOWAY COTTON WORKS.
INCIDENT COMPENSATION AGREEMENT.
Hannah read.
Then reread.
Her father had received $8,400 following the machinery accident.
In exchange, he agreed to release Holloway from additional claims.
Lucy whispered, “Eight thousand four hundred?”
Hannah said nothing.
Her father had lost three fingers.
Eight thousand four hundred dollars.
Beneath that document was another.
Not a disposal agreement.
A letter.
Signed by Thomas Holloway, Wade’s father.
Mr. Mercer,
Regarding our discussion, the company will continue delivering designated textile remnants to the Mercer property at no charge. Said remnants shall be considered abandoned material upon delivery. Holloway Cotton Works relinquishes interest in disposal, reuse, alteration, resale, or destruction.
Hannah stopped breathing.
Lucy grabbed her arm.
“Mom.”
Hannah read the next sentence.
This arrangement is offered in consideration of continued cooperation regarding the October 9 machinery matter and related internal concerns.
Rebecca Sloan arrived back in Bellweather before midnight.
She read the letter twice.
Then once more.
“This changes everything.”
Hannah sat at the kitchen table.
“How?”
“Holloway didn’t merely abandon the scraps. They documented it.”
“So Wade has nothing.”
“On the fabric ownership claim? This is extremely damaging to him.”
Lucy leaned forward.
“What does ‘continued cooperation regarding internal concerns’ mean?”
Rebecca looked at Hannah.
“That’s what worries me.”
The next morning Rebecca responded formally to Wade’s notice.
Nine pages.
No emotion.
No threats.
Just dates, documents, legal arguments, and a copy of Thomas Holloway’s signed letter.
Wade called Hannah personally six minutes after receiving it.
She did not answer.
He called again.
Then twice more.
At 10:32, Rebecca’s phone rang.
She answered.
Hannah watched her face.
“Mr. Holloway.”
Pause.
“No.”
Pause.
“I understand what you’re offering.”
Longer pause.
“No.”
Rebecca looked toward Hannah.
“No, my client is not interested in selling Mercer Made.”
Hannah’s stomach dropped.
Lucy mouthed, Selling?
Rebecca continued.
“The answer remains no.”
She listened.
Then her face changed slightly.
Not fear.
Attention.
“What exactly do you mean by that?”
Silence.
Rebecca stood.
“Mr. Holloway, I suggest you be extremely careful with your next sentence.”
He apparently became careful.
The call ended.
“What did he say?” Hannah asked.
Rebecca set down the phone.
“He offered $1.2 million for your company.”
Lucy’s mouth opened.
Hannah stared.
“And when you said no?”
“He said you might reconsider once you understood what Mercer Made was actually built on.”
Hannah felt cold again.
“What does that mean?”
“He didn’t explain.”
Two days later Holloway withdrew its licensing demand.
Publicly, nothing happened.
Privately, Bellweather began buzzing.
People knew Wade had visited Mercer Made.
People knew lawyers were involved.
People saw Rebecca Sloan’s Atlanta plates outside the shop.
Rumors spread.
Hannah was suing Holloway.
Holloway was buying Mercer Made.
Mercer Made had stolen fabric.
Hannah owed millions.
Wade secretly owned the company.
By Sunday, a woman Hannah had known since childhood cornered her after church.
“I hope you’re not trying to hurt the mill.”
Hannah stared at her.
“The mill threatened me.”
“Well, Wade’s got responsibilities. Four hundred families depend on that place.”
“Twenty-one depend on mine.”
“That’s different.”
“Why?”
The woman had no answer that could survive being spoken aloud.
Hannah walked away.
Monday morning, three wholesale customers canceled orders.
Tuesday, another asked whether Mercer Made was facing a lawsuit over stolen materials.
Wednesday, a local online page published an anonymous post claiming Hannah had built her business using “improperly obtained corporate property.”
Thursday, a distributor postponed a $38,000 order.
The attack was not loud.
It was effective.
Lucy slammed her laptop shut.
“He’s doing this.”
“Probably.”
“Can we prove it?”
“No.”
“What do we do?”
“Work.”
“Mom, we lost almost sixty thousand dollars in four days.”
“I know.”
“You’re too calm.”
“No.”
Hannah looked at her daughter.
“I’m being useful.”
That afternoon Hannah called every canceled customer personally.
She did not complain about Wade.
She did not accuse Holloway.
She sent copies of the abandonment letter where appropriate.
She explained that Mercer Made’s ownership and material rights were documented.
Two customers reinstated orders.
One did not.
The distributor resumed negotiations.
Miniature victories.
Enough to breathe.
Then Hannah changed the business.
For eleven years, Holloway scraps had been the heart of Mercer Made.
Now Hannah refused to let them be a chain around its ankle.
She called small weaving mills across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee.
She bought deadstock.
Overruns.
End rolls.
She contracted for new American-made cotton canvas.
She introduced a label.
RESCUED TEXTILE COLLECTION.
And another.
MERCER FIELD CLOTH.
New material.
New source.
Same hands.
When the first roll arrived from a family-owned North Carolina mill, Hannah gathered the staff.
“We started with what somebody threw away,” she said. “That doesn’t mean we have to stay dependent on the people who threw it.”
Shonda smiled.
Lucy looked proud.
Within three months Mercer Made recovered most of the lost orders.
Sales climbed again.
Wade stopped calling.
That frightened Rebecca more than the calls had.
“People like him don’t suddenly become peaceful.”
“Maybe he realized he can’t win.”
Rebecca looked at Hannah.
“Men who inherit power rarely confuse losing with being finished.”
Summer arrived.
Mercer Made reached $602,000 in booked sales.
Then $621,000.
Then $643,000.
Lucy created a new travel line.
A national retailer requested samples.
Hannah’s photograph appeared in a regional business journal under the headline:
FROM MILL WASTE TO MAIN STREET SUCCESS.
Hannah hated the photograph.
Lucy framed it.
On the afternoon Mercer Made officially crossed $650,000 in trailing twelve-month revenue, Ruby Callahan brought a cake.
Someone put six candles on one side and five on the other because nobody had enough number candles.
Betty Holloway, now eighty-five and mostly retired, came in wearing the original Mercer Market Bag Hannah had made for Ruby all those years earlier.
Ruby protested.
“I bought that.”
“And I bought it from you.”
“For twice what I paid.”
“Capitalism.”
They laughed.
Hannah stood in the center of the old hardware store surrounded by employees, customers, friends, thread racks, boxes, canvas, photographs, and the low beautiful noise of something alive.
Lucy handed her a paper cup of sparkling cider.
“Speech.”
“No.”
“Mom.”
“No.”
“Everybody, she’s giving a speech.”
People clapped.
Hannah gave her daughter a look.
Then she faced the room.
She had imagined success many times during the hardest years.
She had imagined paying off the farm.
She had imagined replacing the furnace.
She had imagined seeing Mercer Made in stores outside Georgia.
She had imagined people respecting her father’s land.
What she had never imagined was this.
People.
The work had collected people.
Hannah swallowed.
“When the first truck dumped scraps at my barn, I thought somebody had given me another problem.”
Shonda smiled.
“They had no idea,” Hannah continued, “that problems are just materials before somebody decides what to make from them.”
A few people laughed softly.
Hannah looked at Betty.
“At the beginning, I thought this business was about bags.”
She looked at Shonda.
“It wasn’t.”
At Carla.
“It was about useful things being called useless.”
At Jeanette.
“It was about people being told they were lucky to accept whatever they were given.”
At Lucy.
“It was about deciding that being discarded doesn’t mean being finished.”
The room became very quiet.
Hannah raised her cup.
“To second uses.”
They drank.
At 4:41 that afternoon, a sheriff’s deputy walked through the front door.
The celebration stopped.
Hannah recognized Deputy Eli Warren.
They had gone to high school together.
He looked uncomfortable.
“Hannah.”
“What happened?”
“I need to speak with you privately.”
Her first thought was Lucy.
Her second was the farm.
Her third was Wade.
“Office.”
Eli followed her inside.
Rebecca Sloan happened to be attending the celebration.
She came too.
Eli removed his hat.
“I’m not here to arrest anybody.”
“That’s a strange way to start a conversation.”
“I know.”
He held out a folded paper.
“There was a fire at Holloway Cotton Works last night.”
Hannah frowned.
She had heard sirens but assumed it was an industrial alarm.
“Was anyone hurt?”
“No serious injuries.”
Relief.
Then she saw Eli’s expression.
“What?”
“Fire started in an old records building behind the south warehouse.”
Rebecca spoke.
“And?”
“Investigators found evidence the fire may have been intentionally set.”
Hannah’s stomach tightened.
“I still don’t understand why you’re here.”
Eli looked at the paper.
“Because someone reported seeing your truck near Holloway property shortly before midnight.”
Lucy, standing in the doorway, said, “That’s impossible.”
Hannah turned.
“I was home.”
“I know.”
Eli nodded.
“We know.”
Rebecca’s eyes narrowed.
“How?”
“Traffic camera caught Hannah’s truck entering Mercer Lane at 8:12 p.m. It didn’t leave again.”
“Then why come here?”
“Because the witness gave the correct plate number.”
Nobody spoke.
Hannah felt the room shrink.
Eli continued.
“And because investigators found something inside the burned records building.”
“What?”
He hesitated.
“A Mercer Made bag.”
Lucy laughed once.
Not because anything was funny.
“Thousands of people own those.”
Eli nodded.
“This one had Hannah’s name written inside.”
The silence that followed felt physical.
Hannah pictured her bags.
The maker’s mark.
Interior pocket.
Name?
“I don’t write my name inside them.”
“I know.”
“What exactly did it say?”
Eli looked toward Rebecca.
She nodded.
“Tell her.”
He unfolded his notes.
“Hannah Mercer. Daniel Mercer file. Locker 6.”
Hannah forgot how to speak.
Lucy whispered, “Grandpa?”
Rebecca stepped closer.
“Was there a file?”
Eli shook his head.
“Not when investigators searched.”
“Locker 6?”
“Empty.”
Hannah sat down.
Her father’s letter.
The settlement.
The unexplained phrase.
Continued cooperation regarding internal concerns.
Rebecca turned to Hannah.
“Your father knew something.”
Hannah stared at the desk.
“I think Wade knows what.”
By evening, the fire was on Atlanta news.
Holloway Cotton Works described it as an unfortunate incident under investigation.
Wade appeared briefly on camera.
Calm.
Concerned.
Promising full cooperation.
He did not mention Hannah.
He did not mention Mercer Made.
But at 8:03 that evening, Hannah received a text from an unknown number.
ONE FILE SURVIVED.
No explanation.
Then another message.
YOUR FATHER HID IT.
Then a third.
NOT AT THE FARM.
Hannah showed Rebecca.
“Don’t respond.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
Lucy leaned over.
“Can police trace it?”
“Maybe.”
The fourth message arrived.
ASK BETTY HOLLOWAY WHY YOUR MOTHER STOPPED SEWING IN 1994.
Hannah read it twice.
Then looked across the room.
Betty.
Eighty-five-year-old Betty Holloway.
The woman who had sold Hannah her first industrial machine.
The woman who had worked at Holloway Cotton Works for thirty-two years before retiring.
The woman who shared the family name but always insisted she was “the poor branch of the Holloways.”
The woman who had helped Mercer Made grow.
The woman who had known Hannah’s mother.
Hannah drove to Betty’s house before Rebecca could stop her.
Rebecca and Lucy followed.
Betty lived in a small white bungalow near the Baptist church.
One porch light burned.
Hannah knocked.
No answer.
She knocked again.
“Betty?”
Nothing.
Lucy tried the phone.
They heard it ringing inside.
Rebecca said, “We should call Eli.”
Then Hannah noticed the door.
Not open.
Not broken.
Simply resting against the frame.
Unlocked.
Hannah pushed gently.
“Betty?”
The house smelled like lemon furniture polish and cinnamon tea.
A lamp glowed beside the sofa.
A book lay open.
Betty’s reading glasses rested on top.
Her purse was on the table.
No Betty.
Lucy’s voice dropped.
“Mom.”
On the dining room table sat a sewing box.
Old.
Wooden.
Hannah recognized it immediately.
Her mother’s.
June Mercer’s sewing box.
Hannah had searched for it after June died.
Her father said he did not know where it had gone.
Now it sat in Betty Holloway’s dining room.
Thirty years later.
Hannah approached slowly.
A white envelope rested on top.
HANNAH.
Her name was written in Betty’s shaky handwriting.
Rebecca stopped her.
“Photograph everything first.”
They did.
Then Hannah opened the envelope.
Inside was one page.
Honey,
If you are reading this, Wade finally found out I kept what his father ordered destroyed.
I should have told you years ago.
I told myself silence was protecting you.
Maybe it was.
Maybe it wasn’t.
Your mother designed more than quilts.
Hannah’s hands began trembling.
She continued.
June designed a reinforced utility bag for Holloway workers after your father’s accident. She developed the double-layer bottom, the cross-stitched load handles, the interior tool pockets, and the folded corner construction.
Hannah looked toward Lucy.
The Railway Weekender.
The Mercer Market Bag.
Those features had come from old patterns Hannah remembered her mother teaching her.
Rebecca whispered, “Keep reading.”
Thomas Holloway took June’s prototype.
He said the company owned anything developed using mill materials.
June disagreed.
There was a dispute.
Then there was an agreement.
Then the agreement disappeared.
Hannah’s heartbeat became loud in her ears.
Your father discovered Holloway was selling versions of June’s design to an industrial supplier under another name. When he confronted them, Thomas offered the scrap arrangement and additional compensation.
Daniel refused the money.
But he accepted the scraps.
I never understood why until later.
He wanted the fabric returned to the family it had been taken from.
Hannah covered her mouth.
Lucy sat down hard in a chair.
Rebecca took the page gently and continued reading aloud.
When June became ill, she gave me a folder for safekeeping.
Original drawings.
Dated photographs.
Correspondence.
A signed development agreement.
Sales records.
She told me to give it to Hannah only if Holloway ever tried to claim ownership of her work.
They have.
The folder is not here.
I moved it when Wade began asking questions.
Look where your mother taught you that mistakes could become patterns.
B.
Hannah stared at the final sentence.
Where your mother taught you that mistakes could become patterns.
Lucy whispered, “What does that mean?”
Hannah knew.
The church quilting room.
When Hannah was eight, June taught a Saturday sewing class in the basement of Bellweather First Methodist.
Whenever children cut fabric incorrectly, June saved the pieces.
“No mistake is useless,” she would say. “Sometimes you just haven’t found the pattern yet.”
Hannah stood.
“We have to go.”
Rebecca grabbed her bag.
“After we call Eli.”
They reached the church with Deputy Warren twelve minutes later.
Pastor Dennis unlocked the basement.
The quilting room had changed.
New cabinets.
New tables.
New fluorescent lights.
But the old wooden cutting table remained against the back wall.
Hannah touched it.
Memories came suddenly.
Her mother bending over fabric.
Sunlight through basement windows.
Silver scissors.
Chalk lines.
Her father arriving late from work.
Three missing fingers curled against his palm.
June kissing his cheek.
Hannah closed her eyes.
“Mom?”
Lucy’s voice.
Hannah opened them.
“What?”
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
She was not.
But that was not the question that mattered.
They searched the table.
Drawers.
Underside.
Cabinets.
Nothing.
Then Hannah remembered something.
When children made cutting mistakes, June placed the scraps in a long shallow drawer hidden beneath the table extension.
Hannah knelt.
The drawer had been painted over.
Eli used a pocketknife along the seam.
It opened.
Inside lay a brown accordion folder wrapped in plastic.
Nobody spoke.
Rebecca put on gloves.
The first page was dated March 7, 1993.
UTILITY CARRY SYSTEM — JUNE E. MERCER.
Drawings.
Measurements.
Stitch diagrams.
Handle reinforcement.
Folded corners.
Interior pockets.
Nearly identical principles to the bags Hannah had developed from childhood memory.
Not copied.
Inherited.
Page after page.
Then photographs.
June holding prototypes.
Daniel wearing a canvas tool carrier.
Holloway workers testing bags.
Then a contract.
Signed by June Mercer.
Signed by Thomas Holloway.
Independent Design Development Agreement.
Ownership of original design concepts retained by June E. Mercer.
Rebecca exhaled.
“This is enormous.”
Beneath the contract were sales records.
Invoices.
Holloway had sold hundreds of thousands of industrial carriers based on June’s design through another company.
For years.
Possibly millions of dollars in revenue.
Lucy stared at Hannah.
“They stole Grandma’s work.”
Hannah did not answer.
Because something else was bothering her.
“Why threaten Mercer Made now?”
Rebecca looked at the paperwork.
“Because your success might reopen questions about ownership.”
“No.”
Hannah picked up Wade’s original demand letter from her bag.
“He came asking for fifteen percent.”
“Yes.”
“He offered $1.2 million to buy us.”
“Yes.”
“He knew about this folder?”
“Probably knew it existed.”
“So why risk drawing attention to us?”
Rebecca went still.
Hannah continued.
“If he had ignored Mercer Made, I never would have opened Dad’s toolbox. I never would have found the abandonment letter. We never would have asked Betty questions.”
Lucy’s eyes widened.
“He wasn’t trying to get your company.”
Rebecca looked toward the folder.
“He was trying to find out what you knew.”
Exactly.
The lawsuit threat had been bait.
Wade expected Hannah to produce whatever documents she possessed.
When she produced only Thomas Holloway’s scrap letter, he learned she did not yet have June’s file.
Then the records building burned.
Then Betty disappeared.
Eli immediately called investigators.
Within hours, Betty was reported missing.
Her car remained in her garage.
No bank activity.
No phone activity after 3:12 p.m.
The next morning Bellweather woke to something it had never seen.
Sheriff’s vehicles at Holloway Cotton Works.
State investigators.
News vans.
A locked records building surrounded by tape.
Wade Holloway refused interviews.
Mercer Made closed for the day.
Hannah sent employees home with pay.
She sat in the farmhouse kitchen where her first bag had once stood crookedly on the table.
Lucy sat opposite.
Rebecca spread June’s documents between them.
“This could support several claims.”
Hannah barely heard her.
“Betty is missing.”
“I know.”
“She kept this for thirty years.”
“I know.”
“And now she’s missing because of us.”
Rebecca’s voice hardened.
“No. We don’t know why Betty is missing. And responsibility belongs to whoever caused it.”
Hannah looked out the window.
The barn doors were white now.
The scrap piles were gone.
For years she thought the story was simple.
A mill discarded fabric.
A woman used it.
A business grew.
But the fabric had never been random.
Not really.
Her father had accepted it because it connected him to something taken from June.
Her mother’s designs had survived through Hannah’s memory without Hannah understanding where they came from.
Mercer Made had not risen from Holloway’s generosity.
It had risen from a family trying to reclaim pieces of itself.
That afternoon, Wade Holloway finally called.
Rebecca answered on speaker.
“Hannah needs to hear this,” Wade said.
Hannah nodded.
“I’m here.”
Silence.
Then Wade spoke.
“My father made mistakes.”
Hannah stared at the phone.
“That’s what you’re calling them?”
“I’m not responsible for everything Thomas did.”
“You were responsible for threatening my company.”
“I was trying to contain a situation.”
“By taking fifteen percent?”
“You don’t understand what’s in those records.”
“I understand my mother’s name is on them.”
Wade exhaled.
“Where’s Betty?”
No answer.
Hannah’s voice became colder.
“Where is Betty?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why should I listen to another word?”
“Because Betty doesn’t have the most important document.”
Rebecca leaned closer to the phone.
“What document?”
Wade hesitated.
“A second agreement.”
Rebecca’s expression changed.
“Between whom?”
“My father and Daniel Mercer.”
Hannah closed her eyes.
“What agreement?”
“I don’t have it.”
“Convenient.”
“My father spent years trying to find it.”
“What does it say?”
Another pause.
Then Wade said quietly, “It says Holloway Cotton Works doesn’t own the land beneath the south mill.”
Hannah opened her eyes.
Rebecca froze.
Lucy whispered, “What?”
Wade continued.
“Your grandfather leased the original mill parcel to mine in 1958.”
Hannah could hear her own heartbeat.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“The Holloways own that land.”
“The county records show we own it.”
“County records show a deed filed in 1967.”
“And?”
“And my father spent thirty years terrified Daniel had proof the deed was fraudulent.”
Rebecca stood abruptly.
“Wade, stop talking.”
But Hannah did not want him to stop.
“Why would my father have that?”
“Because your grandfather gave him the original lease.”
The room tilted.
Holloway Cotton Works.
The brick complex.
Four hundred workers.
Warehouses.
Loading docks.
Offices.
The iconic smokestack that appeared on Bellweather postcards.
All of it.
Possibly sitting on Mercer land.
Hannah whispered, “The scrap arrangement.”
“My father believed Daniel was keeping quiet in exchange for it.”
“No.”
“That’s what he believed.”
“My father would never trade that for scraps.”
“I know.”
The words came too quickly.
Hannah stared at the phone.
“How do you know?”
Wade said nothing.
“HOW DO YOU KNOW?”
His voice changed.
For the first time since Hannah met him, Wade Holloway sounded tired rather than powerful.
“Because Daniel wasn’t keeping quiet for the fabric.”
“Then why?”
“He was waiting.”
“For what?”
“For my father to admit what happened to June.”
Hannah’s hand tightened around the edge of the table.
“What happened to my mother?”
Rebecca mouthed, Hannah.
But Hannah could not stop.
Her mother had died when Hannah was sixteen.
Everyone said heart complications.
A sudden illness.
A terrible season.
June had become weak that winter.
Then weaker.
Doctors in Atlanta.
Medicine.
Hospital visits.
A funeral in April.
Hannah remembered the smell of lilies.
Her father standing beside the grave with one hand wrapped around hers.
She remembered asking him why.
He never answered properly.
Wade spoke slowly.
“June discovered the land records while researching her design contract.”
Hannah felt ice move through her body.
“She told my father she was going to an attorney.”
“What happened?”
“I was twenty-one.”
“What happened?”
“My father met with her.”
“Where?”
“At the old records building.”
The same building that burned.
Hannah stood.
“What happened to my mother?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not.”
“You called because you want something. So say it.”
Wade breathed out.
“I need the original lease.”
“We don’t have it.”
“Betty does.”
“Betty is missing.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Silence.
Rebecca reached for her phone, probably texting investigators.
Hannah kept Wade talking.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“My father kept a private journal.”
