Chapter One
Tenyearshadpassedsince I set foot in Hickory Hollow, Texas.
Ten years, almost to the day.
I hadn’t missed it.Not the humidity that felt like breathing through a wet towel.Not the gossip.Definitely not the way the whole town still dressed like it was trapped in a 1987 Sears catalog.
I drifted along the edge of the crowded living room skimming faces the way I skimmed headlines.The threadbare carpet still had the same floral pattern I used to trace when I was bored as a kid.The furniture sagged in familiar places.The drapes—yellowed, heavy, absolutely not in style—hung in the exact same way they always had, like they were too tired to care.
Hushed voices floated through the room like the low hum of an air conditioner on its last legs.
“It was such a shock.”
“She seemed fine the day before.”
“It’s such an unexpected loss…”
My throat tightened.Aunt Alice.Dead.
It still didn’t feel real.Like a headline about a stranger I’d read on my phone between subway stops, instead of the woman who’d taught me how to coax seedlings into bloom and spin fairy tales out of nothing.
I tucked myself into a corner behind a side table stacked with deviled eggs and sympathy casseroles.My best impression of a wallflower—only I was the kind that cost four digits and came with red soles.
My couture black dress was sleek and city-chic.My four-inch heels were worth more than the combined outfits of half the room.I’d gone with minimalist gold jewelry and a sharp bob that skimmed my shoulders.Every inch of me screamed Manhattan fashion girl.
Every inch of the room screamed small-town Texas.
I’d never planned on coming back here.Ever.The plan—theplan—had been to die in Manhattan at a very old, very glamorous age after a long and scandalously successful career atGlintMagazine, with a walk-in closet the size of this living room and a partner who understood the sacredness of a sample sale.
Instead, I’d lost everything in a single spectacular, flaming dumpster-fire of a day.
Literally.
First, the job.My editor had called me into the office with that tight, apologetic smile that meant no one was “restructuring,” they were getting rid of you.One HR meeting and a signed NDA later, I walked out of the glass tower with a cardboard box and no idea what I’d done wrong.
Then Preston.
I’d gone home early, planning to drown my humiliation in Thai takeout and terrible reality TV, only to find my long-term boyfriend in our bed with a runway model who looked like she’d been assembled out of designer toothpicks and sorrow.
And because fate liked to overachieve, an electrical fire broke out in the building that night.Sprinklers.Smoke.Evacuation.My apartment—and everything that saidthis is my life now, this is who I am—went up in flames.
I’d been standing on the sidewalk in bare feet, clutching my Hermès crossbody and my laptop bag, when my phone rang.
My mother’s voice on the other end.Tight, thin, brittle.
“Piper.Alice is gone.”
Job.Boyfriend.Apartment.Aunt.
A superfecta of catastrophe.
So, when my mother called again a day later, insisting—no, demanding—I come home for the funeral, I didn’t have the energy to argue.I booked a cheap flight, packed what I could salvage into my ten-thousand-dollar Louis Vuitton luggage—a gift from my former editor, now saved in my phone asThat Woman (Do Not Answer)—and let my uncle pick me up from the airport in his dented pickup.
Regroup, I’d told myself.Go to the funeral.Figure out the next move.Maybe LA.Maybe a different magazine.Maybe… something.
Because it sure wasn’t going to be Hickory Hollow.
“You look like a city girl,” my mother had said in greeting, standing stiffly on the front porch with a pinched mouth and a face that had forgotten how to soften.
