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But I didn’t have to like it.
My silence may have made me complicit, but I wasn’t giving up. Not on her and not on us—whateveruswas.
After our secret date on the beach, Sylvie consumed my thoughts more than ever.
Fall was stirring in the August air. Berry picking had slowed, and the workers shifted their focus to weeding between rows and preparing for the inevitable dip in temperature. The chaos on the farm was nothing compared to the thick swell of emotions residing in my chest.
There has to be a way.
Russell King was a ruthless businessman and a prick, but he was still Sylvie’s father. There was no getting around that. Plus, her overzealous brothers were a separate issue. There would be no tears shed by me if they ceased to exist. But I knew falling back into the pattern of pining for Sylvie from a distance wouldn’t work.
I simply couldn’t do it.
“Can I help you find something?” Bug King looked up at me as I wandered aimlessly through the stacks of the Outtatowner public library. Her lips were pursed and her arms crossed as though it caused her physical pain having to assist a Sullivan.
“I’m looking for...” Bug’s eyebrow raised and my hand dropped. “You know what? No. I don’t need help.”
She swiveled on her heel and stomped away from me. I still didn’t trust her, or any of the Kings apart from Sylvie. There was a reason behind the Sullivan–King feud and why it had persisted for so long.
When Kate uncovered the speakeasy hidden in the basement of Tootie’s farmhouse, someone was sneaking around the property, and it sure as fuck wasn’t us. Add in the tire tracks I’d found near the west pastureandthe inquiries into mineral rights on Sullivan land, and it was all too much.
I wanted answers.
Annie had pored over old news articles and public records to help us. In her search, she’d uncovered that the Kings and Sullivans had once been allies—friends and neighbors. Something had gone sideways, and I was willing to bet a King was behind it.
When I came upon a younger librarian, I cleared my throat to get her attention. She glanced up at me, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Any chance you can point me in the direction of town records?”
She dropped a pen on her desk and motioned for me to follow. “This way.”
The musty smell of old books filled my nostrils, and we rounded a corner toward a staircase that led to the basement.
“Almost everything is kept digitally—that makes it easier to search.” She glanced back. “What are you looking for?”
I shrugged. “I’m not exactly sure.”
She sighed. “Well, that will make it more difficult, but things are arranged by periodical type and by date.” She gestured to two computers at the center of the space and swept her arm toward bookshelves along the back wall. “Anything not yet converted to digital will be on those shelves. Nothing here can be checked out, but copies can be printed or photocopied. Ten cents per page.”
I nodded and thanked the woman before she disappeared upstairs. The air down there was stale, and the room itself gave off serious murder vibes. I checked my phone.
No service. Awesome.
I knew from Annie’s research that the Sullivans and Kings had been close—which lined up with a photo Kate had found in the speakeasy of three people—Philo Sullivan, Helen Sinclair, and James King. It may also explain why there was a bootleg bottle of booze labeled King Liquor down there.
After further digging, Annie uncovered that the three families—likely the grandparents of the threesome, if my math was accurate—had intentionally purchased adjacent parcels of land through the Homestead Act of 1862. It seemed like their families shared a close friendship. Years later, Philo and Helen married. After that, the timeline got fuzzy.
Something that tore the families apart.
It was a long shot, but maybe if I could understand what happened, I could find a way toward peace between our families and make whatever was developing between Sylvie and me work.
I started with the bookshelves, but despite the librarian’s claims it was organized, all I found was a fucking mess. Binders were arranged in haphazard rows with no apparent order. Birth certificates, property deeds, and newspaper clippings were shoved into the binders. Pages were falling out, some were stuck together, and a sense of overwhelm settled over me.
I had hoped something—anything—would give me something to go on, but there was nothing.
Frustrated and tired, I sat on the old office chair in front of one of the computers. I tapped the keyboard a few times, and it crawled to life. The electric whirs and thunks coming from inside the ancient computer weren’t encouraging, but eventually it blinked to life.
I spent a few minutes entering the names from the photograph into the computer with varying degrees of success. Mostly it was information Annie had already uncovered or a whole lot of nothing.
My eyes snagged on one name I hadn’t recognized. The document was an obituary that listed Helen Sinclair as a surviving sibling to a man named Thomas “Slick” Sinclair. I printed the obituary before heading home.
