Chapter 8: When The Roots Split

By noon, Hollow Creek was buzzing like a wasp’s nest rattled awake. Sheriff Davis had done his duty — the orchard was taped off with cheap yellow plastic that flapped in the breeze, catching on the brambles like it didn’t belong. Isla stood behind the line, her boots muddy from the early dig she and Jonas had done, her coat zipped high even though the sun was out.

Jonas stood next to her, arms folded tight across his chest, as if he could block the stares with just his shoulders. But the stares came anyway — from old Mrs. Parker on her porch, from the mailman slowing his van, from teenagers whispering behind their phones.

For the first time, the orchard felt small — too small to hold all the memories, all the ghosts rising up through the soil with every shovel scrape.

The coroner’s crew worked quietly but methodically, digging deeper where Jonas and Isla had cracked open the first secrets. Isla wanted to look away, but she forced herself to watch. If she could face this, she could face whatever came next.

Beside her, Jonas shifted closer. “You okay?”

She didn’t look at him. “No.”

He nodded once. “Good. Neither am I.”

A voice behind them made Isla stiffen. “This didn’t have to happen.”

She turned to find Rayburn leaning on the orchard gate, hat in hand, hair wild as brambles. He looked smaller in daylight, the menace of last night shriveled into something like regret.

“You kept quiet your whole life, Mr. Rayburn,” Isla said, her voice low. “Don’t start now.”

Rayburn shook his head, his eyes on the lilies that drooped where the earth had been turned. “Ruth asked me to guard the orchard, not to bury the whole town in gossip. You’ve got good roots here, girl. Don’t poison them.”

Jonas stepped forward, cutting the distance between them. “You mean don’t tell the truth.”

Rayburn’s lips cracked into a humorless smile. “Truth’s like an axe, boy. Good for clearing deadwood — or cutting down the whole orchard if you swing wild enough.”

Isla stepped closer to Jonas, her shoulder brushing his. She could feel the tension buzzing through him like a live wire. “What do you know that you haven’t told us?”

Rayburn’s eyes darted toward the men digging. “Your father wasn’t the only one Ruth put in that orchard.”

The words knocked the breath from Isla’s lungs. Jonas stared at Rayburn like he’d sprouted fangs. “What are you talking about?”

Rayburn didn’t answer. He just pointed at the old apple tree — the same gnarled giant under which they’d found the lockbox. His finger shook.

“You want the last truth?” Rayburn rasped. “Dig deeper. Past the roots.”

And then he turned, slipping through the gate, hat pulled low. He didn’t look back.

⸻

Isla wanted to chase him, demand the rest, but Jonas caught her arm. “He’s not wrong,” he said. “We need to know. All of it.”

So when the coroner’s men finished lifting the shallow box they’d found — which held nothing more than scraps of burlap, old bones that looked too small to be her father’s — Isla stepped forward.

“There’s more,” she said. “Under the big apple tree.”

The lead investigator, a gruff man named Walters, frowned at her. “We’re not here to tear up your orchard, Miss Hale. We’re here for a body.”

She pointed at the lilies, now bruised and wilted. “Then you’re in the right place. Dig.”

Jonas stood behind her, hands on her shoulders, steadying her as the men gave in. They brought a second crew, bigger shovels, heavy lights when the afternoon sun started to fade.

They dug under the roots that had tangled around secrets for decades. Isla watched soil give way to rock, rock give way to splintered planks — then something that wasn’t wood or stone.

A scrap of fabric. Worn, pale blue, like an old Sunday dress.

Walters knelt, tugging gently at the cloth. More dirt fell away — revealing the curve of a shoulder, then the suggestion of a skull, hair clinging in ghostly strands.

Jonas swore under his breath, a sound like a prayer and a curse tangled together. Isla just stared, her mind a whirl of Ruth’s voice, Rayburn’s warning, her mother’s soft lullabies she barely remembered.

“It’s a woman,” Walters said, voice all business. “Older remains than the first. We’ll need to date it.”

He looked up at Isla. “Did Ruth ever mention anyone else?”

Isla’s mouth worked, but nothing came. Jonas answered for her, his voice a rough rasp. “Her mother. Ruth’s mother. She used to say she was buried ‘where the orchard starts and ends.’”

Isla’s knees buckled. Jonas caught her before she hit the churned earth. Somewhere, she heard someone call for a stretcher, more lights, more tape — but all she could see were the lilies, their white petals spotted with fresh dirt.

⸻

They didn’t sleep that night, either of them. Back in Ruth’s house, they sat on the porch steps, the orchard lights flickering behind them like ghost lanterns.

Jonas held Isla’s hand, thumb brushing her knuckles in a rhythm he didn’t seem to notice.

“When does it end?” she whispered.

Jonas looked at her — really looked. His eyes were dark, but there was no pity there. Just something solid enough to lean on.

“When we decide to stop digging.”

Isla leaned her head on his shoulder, her hair brushing his collar. “Part of me wants to run.”

“Where would you go?”

She let out a small, bitter laugh. “Anywhere. Somewhere no one knows my name. Or Ruth’s.”

Jonas was quiet a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was so soft she barely caught it. “You’re stronger than this town, Isla. You always were. That orchard didn’t bury you — it planted you. And now you decide what grows next.”

⸻

Out in the orchard, the lilies bent under the weight of the night breeze. Somewhere under the roots, a story older than Ruth waited for daylight. And Isla knew, deep down, that before she could let the orchard rest, she had to know every piece of what lay beneath.

She squeezed Jonas’s hand, her voice a whisper tangled in the dark.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “We dig until there’s nothing left to find.”

Jonas turned to her, pressing his forehead to hers. “Then tomorrow, we finish it.”

And for the first time since she’d opened Ruth’s box, Isla believed him.