My husband had spent years warning me never to set foot on that farm. So after he passed away and the lawyer handed me the key, saying that from now on the place belonged to me, I was ready to sell it right away and put everything behind me. But before making my final decision, I still wanted to see it once for myself. When the door opened, I finally understood why, all those years, he had never wanted me to set foot there.

Ellis did not answer immediately. He seemed too respectful for false wisdom.

“That depends,” he said at last, “on whether you want peace, justice, or control. Sometimes you can only pick two.”

I thought of Jenna in the silver sedan, listening to men who knew how to weaponize bloodline. I thought of Robert’s soft contempt. Allan’s legal precision. David’s dangerous quiet. I thought of the horses in the stable and the studio upstairs and Joshua’s face on the laptop telling me, even in death, that everything here was now my choice.

“I want my daughter back,” I said.

Ellis nodded once.

“Then start with her.”

I watched a week of videos in one night.

By the time dawn came again to Maple Creek Farm, I had a legal strategy, a geological education I never asked for, and a worse understanding of how precisely my husband had anticipated his brothers’ psychology.