Page 74 of Wild Sanctuary

My Daisy.

Twenty-three. Good Lord, how time flies.

I remember twenty-three. You’re braver than you know, angel. Braver than I was at your age, I’ll tell you that much.

Whatever comes next, you’ll handle it. You always do.

Happy Birthday. I love you bigger than the sky.

Dad.

I read it twice. Then a third time.

Whatever comes next, you’ll handle it.

He wrote that two months before he died. Before the fifty thousand dollars. Before the questions that got him killed. Whatever he was pulling at, whatever threads he’d started following, he sat down and bought a gas station birthday card and wrote that to me like he already knew something hard was coming. Like he wanted me to have it in my pocket before it did.

Or maybe he was just a father who bought a birthday card early and never got to send it.

I don’t know which. Maybe both.

I sit there for a long moment with the card in my hands, the mountains outside the window and the smell of cedar pressing in around me.

My throat tightens, sharp and sudden, and I press my lips together until it passes.

Whatever comes next, you’ll handle it.

I let that land. Let it sit exactly where it needs to. Then I slide the card back into the envelope and close the folder with a deep exhale.

Love you bigger than the sky, too, Dad.

I push to my feet, stretch my back, and head to the kitchen. Five minutes. Tea. Then back to work.

As I’m filling the kettle, a phone on the countertop lights up. It takes me a second to register it’s June’s.

I don’t mean to look, but the words grab me regardless.

WYATT

She’s Tom’s daughter. I was just looking out for her. Drop it.

I don’t move for a beat. Just stand there as the screen dims and goes dark. I don’t need to see the rest of the thread. Whatever came before it, Wyatt shut it down.

She’s Tom’s daughter.

I was right. I’d already decided I was right, and now I know I was right.

So why does it feel like this?

Instead of debating the answer to that, I make some of June’s chamomile tea and carry it back to the office.

Setting the tea on the desk, I settle into the seat and open the county records. I find the thread I’ve been pulling at all week and pull it harder because this is the only thing I have any control over right now, and I’m going to follow it until it leads somewhere.

By the time June calls me for dinner, I have a name I didn’t have this morning.

It doesn’t make sense yet.

But it will.