Chapter 23: The Invoice in the Wrong Folder

Travis sent Maya a letter through his attorney several days later.
He had resigned from Morrow Ridge Holdings and wanted to provide documents relevant to the access dispute.
The package included meeting notes, revised route drawings, and an invoice from a subcontractor.
The invoice described emergency site preparation near the Price parcel.
Its date matched the week my fence had been cut.
The line items were vague, and none identified the work as vandalism.
One entry covered removal of access obstacles.
Another covered after-hours field inspection.
The name of the subcontractor was Mason Vale Services.


Maya immediately cautioned me against treating the invoice as a confession.
“We need to know what was actually paid for,” she said.
“This may describe legitimate work somewhere else.”
She forwarded the records to Owen with a short explanation of their origin.
Travis’s attorney also wrote that his client would cooperate with lawful requests for testimony.
I thought about his first visit to the fallen fence and the way he had avoided looking at the cut bolts.
He had known the project was moving ahead without permission.
Whether he had known about the damage was still uncertain.
The difference mattered to me because I did not want to become the kind of person who assigned guilt wherever an unanswered question remained.

Chapter 24: The Night I Nearly Left

I slept badly after the documents arrived.
Every creak in the farmhouse sounded like a gate opening, and every set of headlights seemed to slow at the driveway.
At two in the morning, I walked through the kitchen and found my father’s old jacket hanging beside the back door.
He had worn it during the final harvest he could manage.
The sleeves were stained with soil, and one pocket still held a folded grocery list written in his careful hand.
I sat at the table until dawn.
For the first time, I considered accepting an ordinary offer from someone unconnected to Celeste and leaving Bellhaven entirely.


I imagined a small house near Rebecca and an office job that did not require watching the weather every hour.
The thought was not cowardice.
It was a reasonable desire to stop being frightened on my own property.
When Rebecca called, I told her the truth.
“I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” I said.
She did not tell me to be brave.
“You can leave if you want to,” she answered.
“Dad loved the land, but he loved you more.”
I watched sunlight move across the kitchen floor.
“I know.”
“Then don’t make staying a test you have to pass for him.

”
Her words gave me something I had been missing.
I could fight for the property without pretending the fight was painless.
I could also decide later that my life mattered more than an orchard.
I put the jacket away and went outside to check the trees.