Jude nodded once. “Exactly. And Eileen’s offer is really about the land, don’t you think?”
Dad had been warning us about Whitaker’s “revitalization” pet project for months—pretty brochures, town-hall smiles, and a quiet push to rezone anything with a water view. Riverside Pines sat on prime river access. Aggie owned the parcel. Eileen owned one of the deeded entry strips. It seemed as if Aggie’s late husband had made the land ownership complicated on purpose. Both needed to sell the land to make it usable. You needed Eileen’s portion to get to the road, and Aggie owned the rest. Control the access, control the whole campground.
“Seems like they might be testing the waters,” I said quietly. “Seeing who’s willing to fold first.”
“Or who’s vulnerable enough to pressure,” Jude added. “Eileen’s on a fixed income. Double the value is hard to walkaway from when your trailer is getting older, and you can’t afford to replace it.”
I pictured Becca’s trailer again. How close it sat to the water, how easily someone could call it a hazard. How Travis had stood in her doorway tonight, looking like he already knew the next move.
“I’m going to look into it,” I said. “Don’t tell Cade. Or Dad. Not yet.”
He smiled, just a little. “I won’t. Let me know if you need help.”
I reached for my phone, thumb hovering over Becca’s name before I stopped myself. She hadn’t asked for help. Hadn’t asked for anything. Charging in now would only prove her point—the one she’d been making for years—that everyone else decided things for her.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t be ready when she needed me.
I locked the screen and slipped the phone back into my pocket.
“I’m not saying anything yet,” I said. “Not to her. Not to Aggie. I just want to know what we’re dealing with.”
Jude nodded. “I’ll keep an ear out.”
Later that night, the townhouse settled into its familiar rhythms—pipes knocking softly, Jude’s footsteps pacing the upstairs hall, the muted sounds of a game murmuring from his bedroom. Normal. Comfortable.
I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop open, the overhead light casting a warm circle over scattered mail and my abandoned beer. The screen glowed back at me, blank and patient.
I didn’t start with Becca’s name. I started with Whitaker’s public calendar—easy enough to pull from the town website. There it was: three meetings in the last six weeks labeled“Riverfront Opportunity Stakeholders.” Attendees listed in the minutes included “T. Reynolds, Special Projects Coordinator, Mayor’s Office.” Travis Reynolds. The same asshole who’d stood in Becca’s doorway tonight, acting like he still had the right to speak to her.
I clicked deeper. An attached memo—buried under “miscellaneous correspondence”—mentioned “preliminary interest in acquiring deeded access parcels along the Sweetbriar River to facilitate mixed-use development.” No names, but the date matched the week Eileen got her offer.
I leaned back, pulse loud in my ears.
This wasn’t random. This was coordinated. Travis wasn’t just harassing Becca because he couldn’t let go. He was doing his job. And if he was pressuring her, he’d pressure Aggie next. Or worse, he’d use Becca to get to Aggie. I stared at the screen until the words blurred. I couldn’t tell her yet. Not without proof, she’d believe. Not when she’d spent years learning to distrust anyone who tried to “fix” her life.
But I also couldn’t sit on this. Because if Travis was using his position to threaten her home, then this wasn’t just personal anymore. This was war. I closed the laptop and sat in the dark, rain drumming the roof.
I knew Becca. She was still pretending she could handle everything alone while Travis was still insisting he had a right to her future. And Whitaker was there in the background, claiming this was all just “progress.”
I wasn’t going to wait for them to make the next move. Forget keeping this quiet. I scrolled to her brother Matt’s number and sent him a text. If all of this pointed where I thought it did, Travis wasn’t the only one who was going to learn what happened when you tried to take something that wasn’t yours.
Chapter 6
Becca
“Welcome back toSomebody Said in Sweetbriar. Sometimes it’s not the things you say out loud that get you into trouble. It’s the moment you forget you’re not alone.”
Aweek passed.
Not the dramatic kind where everything changes, just the slow, grinding kind where hope frays thread by thread, and you keep telling yourself tomorrow will feel different, but it never does.
The job lead I’d pinned, with hopeful, stupid dreams, died with a polite email:Thank you for your interest. We’ve decided to move forward with other candidates. We wish you the best in your future endeavors.I read it twice, then once more, searching for mercy between the lines. There was none.
I closed the laptop. Stared at the narrow wall of my trailer. Told myself it was fine. Temporary. Redirection. All the words people use when they’re trying not to cry. My savings were almost gone. The trailer still leaked when the wind shifted thewrong way. Sweetbriar still felt too small to breathe in and too big to escape.
I saw Levi three times that week.
Once in the grocery store, our carts nearly collided at the end of the cereal aisle. We both froze, offering the same tight, polite smile strangers gave when they recognized each other but didn’t know what to do with it. Another time, across from Holloway’s—he was laughing with someone from the station, head thrown back, easy in a way I hadn’t seen in years. Our eyes met for two heartbeats. Something old and unspoken passed between us like static. We looked away at the same time.
