Chapter Nine

Jules' POV

Pastor Graham made me tea I didn't drink.

He had the kind of face that had absorbed a lot of news over the years — the good kind and the terrible kind — and he absorbed mine the way he probably absorbed all of it, with a slow nod and a hand resting on the table between us like an offering. The kitchen at the back of St. Anthony's was small and warm and smelled like old wood and candle smoke, and for the first ten minutes after I sat down I didn't say anything at all. I just held the mug and let the warmth seep into my palms.

"Nana planned her funeral," he said finally. "Years ago. She gave me the folder herself. Said she didn't want to leave it for you to figure out." He slid an envelope across the table. My name on the front, in Nana's handwriting. I didn't open it. Not yet. I just put my hand flat on top of it.

"Did she suffer?" I asked.

He shook his head. "The smoke took her before the fire did. That's what the coroner said." He paused. "She wouldn't have known."

I nodded. I kept nodding for a second too long, the way you do when your body is trying to process something your brain hasn't caught up to.

"I'll take care of the arrangements," he said. "You don't have to worry about any of it. Just — come back Friday."

"Okay."

"Jules."

I looked up.

"She talked about you every week. Every single week, for nineteen years." He said it softly, without ceremony. "She was proud of you. I want you to know that."

I pressed my lips together and said nothing. I picked up the envelope, tucked it inside my jacket against my chest, and thanked him for the tea.

Cooper was waiting for me outside in a black car that was too clean for Fairview. He didn't look like he belonged here — not in the bad way, just in the way of someone who exists in glass buildings and fluorescent offices and doesn't spend much time in towns where the hardware store and the diner share a parking lot. He was leaning against the hood with his phone in his hand and he straightened up when he saw me, sliding it into his pocket in one smooth motion.

"How are you holding up?" he asked.

"Don't," I said.

He didn't.

We got in the car and he drove to a diner on the edge of town and we sat in a corner booth and he laid out what he knew. I watched his hands on the folder the way I'd watched Nana's hands on her Bible — like the object itself was the important thing, like the paper could contain everything bad if you just kept it flat and still.

"The tip was called in at eleven forty-seven PM," he said, turning a page. "Whoever made it gave your name, your license plate, and a detailed description of the fire's start point. That's not a panicked neighbor calling in smoke. That's someone who prepared."

"I know who it was," I said.

He looked at me.

"I don't have proof," I added quickly. "I just — I know. There's a woman. Her name is Elena. She's — she was with my husband." I said the word carefully, like it was hot. "She was there when I went to tell him about the —" I stopped.

Cooper waited. He was good at waiting.

"I drove to the city to tell Adam something important," I said. "She was there. She heard me leave. She knew I was going back to Fairview." I looked at the coffee I wasn't drinking. "She's the kind of person who does things like this. I can't explain it better than that. I just know."

He wrote something in a small notebook. "The witness who corroborated the tip — a man named Derek Paulsen — has a record. Two counts of fraud, one dismissed, one served. He lives forty minutes from Fairview and has no documented connection to you or the farm." He looked at me over the notebook. "He was paid. I'm certain of it. I just need to follow the money."

"And the charges?"

"Suspended pending investigation. Not dropped — suspended. Meaning if I don't find what I'm looking for, they could refile." He closed the notebook. "I will find it."

I believed him. I didn't know why, but I did.

"Who are you?" I asked again. Different this time. Not suspicious. Just — genuinely wanting to know.

He considered me for a moment. "I'm someone who works for someone who made a mistake and is trying to correct it from a distance." He said it like he'd rehearsed it. Like he'd been asked before and had settled on that exact phrasing.

"That's very vague."

"I know."

I looked out the window at Main Street. A woman was walking a dog. Two kids on bikes. The hardware store sign was missing a letter. Everything in Fairview looked exactly the same as it always had except that Nana was gone and my house was ash and I was pregnant and alone at a corner table in a diner trying to figure out who had burned my life down.

"There's one more thing," Cooper said.

I looked back at him.

He slid a single sheet of paper across the table. I picked it up.

Divorce decree. Already drafted. Already signed — Adam's signature at the bottom in the clean, assured handwriting of a man who never second-guessed himself.

He had signed it before I left the city.

Before I'd even knocked on his door.

I stared at it for a long time. The paper didn't tremble in my hands because I was holding it too tightly.

"He sent this through you?" I asked.

"He filed through his legal team," Cooper said, and his voice was carefully neutral. "I intercepted a copy for your records."

I set the paper down. I smoothed it flat with my palm the way you smooth a tablecloth when you want to look calm. I thought about the word go. I thought about how he'd signed before I arrived, which meant the conversation in the hallway had been a performance — not deliberate cruelty, maybe, but his decision was already made long before I knocked.

"Okay," I said.

"Jules —"

"No," I said, and I heard myself, heard the flatness of it. "I just need a pen."

He looked at me for a beat. Then he reached into his jacket and handed me one.

I signed my name below Adam's. Julia Rose Arthur, and then the name I would never use again: Casey. I signed both. I crossed nothing out. My hand was steady.

I slid it back across the table.

"Thank you for the legal help," I said. I put a twenty on the table for the coffee neither of us had touched. I picked up my bag. "Send me a copy when it's finalized."

I walked out into the thin morning light and stood on the sidewalk for one second — just one — with my eyes closed and the sun on my face.

Then I got in my truck and drove to the cemetery to bury my grandmother.