Page 61 of Wild Thorns

I turn my coffee cup in my hands and think about the howling.

We want you to feel like family.

I've spent three years trying to be invisible. Trying to be someone a town didn't notice, a person with no footprints, a woman who could fold herself small enough to slip through the world without being seen.

Magnolia Creek hasn't let me do that. The Voss family hasn't let me do that. The town itself, the way people knew my coffee order and smiled like they'd been expecting me, the way Rowena's casseroles appeared, the way the magnolia tree caught the light exactly right every single morning, all of it called to me and none of it had let me stay invisible.

And now I'm starting to wonder if invisible wasn't safety after all.

If being found, truly found, by people who cared, might be something else entirely.

The coffee shop hums around me. Outside, a cloud moves and the afternoon light shifts, flooding through the window and laying gold across the table.

I don't leave right away. I sit there and let the feeling settle, the one that's been building since I arrived and keeps getting louder: the sense that I've stepped into the middle of a story that's been going much longer than I've been in it. A story that was waiting for a particular piece.

I've been hiding or running for years. Toward nothing. Away from something.

I like that feeling of belonging. I'm starting to think Magnolia Creek has been waiting for me.

I need to know what that means.

I finished my coffee and gathered my things. It dawned on me that I hadn't checked the locks on my way out this morning, and yesterday morning too. For the first time, that feels less like forgetting and more like a choice.

Outside, the afternoon is warm and alive with that special quality of light that this town does something with; turns it golden, turns it significant, like everything's being lit by someone who understands composition.

I walk back toward the studio. And the whole way, the back of my neck prickles with the certainty that the answer to whatever question I'm building toward is closer than it's ever been.

I just need to be ready to hear it.

Somewhere in the back of my mind a voice whispers, “You’re almost there.”

I almost didn’t hear over the one that said, “Did you really think you could hide from me?”

Chapter seventeen

Stay

Lila mentioned it casually, like it was nothing.

"Oh, someone was asking about you yesterday." She was sorting fabric swatches, not looking at me. "Tall guy. Handsome, kind of intense. Said he was a friend."

Everything in me went still.

My hands stopped moving. My breath stopped coming. For a moment, the world narrowed to a single point of icy terror.

"What did he want?"

"Just asked if I knew you. If you worked here." Lila looked up, finally noticing my expression. "Serena? What's wrong?"

"What did he look like exactly?"

"Dark hair. Nice suit. Really focused, you know? Like he was paying attention to everything." She frowned. "Is everything okay?"

"Did he leave a name?"

"No. I asked, but he said he'd find you himself." Her frown deepened. "Serena, you've gone white. What's going on?"

I made myself breathe. One, two, three. Pushed through the panic, found my voice.