Chapter One – Holt
My alarm goes off at five thirty, and every muscle in my body locks before my eyes even open. That’s new. I’ve always been good at waking fast. Farm life trains that into you early. So does growing up in a house where privacy is mostly theoretical, and someone is always stomping down the hallway, slamming a cabinet, or yelling for a missing shoe before sunrise. But this isn’t a habit. This is my body already aware of the day before my mind fully catches up.
I reach across the nightstand, silence the alarm, and lie there for a few seconds, staring at the ceiling. The room is still mostly dark. A thin wash of gray presses at the windows, outlining the dresser, the chair in the corner, and the half-open closet door. The fan turns overhead with a low, steady hum. The house around me sits quiet, which somehow makes the noise in my head feel louder.
Today matters. That’s the whole problem.
I sit up and push the covers back. The hardwood floor is cold under my feet. It grounds me fast. I stand, drag a hand over my face, and cross the room without turning on the light. I know every inch of this place well enough to move through it half asleep—the board near the hallway that creaks if I step too hard, the bathroom door that sticks for half a second before it gives, the kitchen tile that always feels colder than it should.
I lean over the sink, turn the faucet all the way to cold, and splash water over my face until I stop feeling half in a dream. Then I brace my palms on the counter and look up.
Same face. Same eyes. Maybe a little more tired around them than I want to admit.
I stay there for a second. A part of me expects to see something different staring back. A bigger shift. Some visible sign that yesterday’s version of me and today’s version of me aren’t exactly the same man.
Nothing dramatic waits in the mirror. Just Holt Wright. Same dark hair doing whatever it wants. Same jaw my mom, Claire, insists comes from her side of the family and my dad, Mason, insists comes from hard work and stubbornness. Same shoulders that got me called “such a big, strong boy” by every woman over sixty in this town for most of my life.
Still me. Still the brother most likely to say the wrong thing at dinner and make my niece, Evelyn, laugh hard enough to snort milk through her nose.
Still the guy my best friend, Beckett, swears has “golden retriever chaos energy,” which I reject on principle because it sounds like something a woman on the internet says about a man who wears flannel and forgets to pay his water bill.
Still the son who left a plate in the sink last night because I stood in this same bathroom, thinking about the station, until even rinsing one dish felt like too much.
And now also—I straighten slowly—firefighter.
The word settles strangely inside me. Heavy in some moments. Too light in others. It still feels like something I’m carrying and reaching toward at the same time.
I shut off the faucet and walk into the kitchen. The room holds on to the cool from the night. I go straight to the coffee maker, fill the reservoir, measure the grounds by instinct, and start it. While it sputters to life, I move to the window over the sink.
The field stretches out behind the house in muted shades of gray and silver. Dew clings to the grass. The fence line cutsacross the property in one hard, familiar line. The trees beyond it stand dark and still, holding the last of the night.
The farm is peaceful at this hour. Usually that settles me. This morning, it mostly gives me too much room to think.
The coffee finishes. I pour a mug, black, and take the first sip standing there in sock feet, staring out at land that has seen every version of me.
My phone buzzes against the counter.
I glance down and see my twin’s name flash on the screen.
Hadley:you awake???
I snort under my breath and type back.
Me:no
Her response comes instantly.
Hadley:rude
Hadley:also Mom says she dropped something off and if you don’t eat it she’ll cry and I’ll record it.
I close my eyes for a second.
Of course.
I leave the mug on the counter and walk into the living room. I’ve already spotted the Tupperware from the kitchen. It sits in the middle of the coffee table like it owns the place. There’s a folded note taped to the lid in Mom’s neat, impossible-to-misread handwriting.
I pick it up.
