Penny stepped out of her truck onto exceptionally dry dirt. Dust kicked up as she slammed the door. She shielded her eyes from the penetrating midday sun as she looked over what she once considered home, now dilapidated and vandalized.

This was once a stable. Small, but quaint, with ten stalls and an open field. Now it was just broken boards and overgrown pastures with weeds taller than the fence. Someone had already come by and spray-painted obscenities along the outside of the walls. She could faintly see large black patches along the boards.

If she closed her eyes and breathed in deep enough, she could still remember the thick scent of muck and fresh shavings. She could hear horses knicker and whinny as bales of hay were tossed around. But as soon as her eyes opened again, she was reminded of how quickly this place had fallen away, lost to time and grown with danger.

Against her better judgement, she stepped inside. She dodged around fallen beams and broken glass. At least she’d worn her old attire – thick jeans and work boots. Her shirt was on the thinner side, but it was summer and she knew better than to show up at a barn in long sleeves. She picked up the occasional stray bucket to set aside along with any odd grooming brushes. All the stall doors were thrown open and coated in a hefty layer of dust. However, it wasn’t brown dust, the kind that any farm would be used to, dust compiled of dirt, feed, and fur. This was gray. She ran her finger down one of the hatches. It was greasy. She took a step back and looked closer at the door. The wood was black and charred.

Her heart sank.

Twenty years had passed and this is what had happened to her home. It had burned.

She heard another car peel into the dirt lot. She peeked through an open board and saw another truck pull up next to hers. A man, not much older than her, hopped out and slipped into an orange vest before tapping a hardhat onto his head. He didn’t even acknowledge her truck. He simply strode in as if this was just another day on the job. Then he stopped, held up a finger as if he’d just remembered something, ran back to his truck and grabbed a clipboard.

He started around the perimeter, making marks on his clipboard and snapping pictures of damage. She knew who he was now. She stood back up and walked down the aisle of stalls to meet him around the side. “Mr. Grubb?” she called. The man stopped and smiled wide.

“Yes! Penelope Harding? Pleasure to finally meet you!” He quickly extended his hand to shake hers firmly. His excitement caught her off guard. “Sam Grubb, you can call me Sam. I know you spoke to my boss, Dan McKenna?”

She didn’t know why he finished as a sentence, but she nodded all the same. “Yes, Daniel is the insurance adjuster for the property.”

Sam threw a thumbs up and nodded his head to match hers. “Yes! Well, kind-of. He’s now the manager of the company and I’m the new insurance adjustor. I’m just here to see how much the company can offer you for the damages.”

Penny looked him up and down. What an oddly happy individual, she thought. He had shaggy blond hair curling from under the hard hat and rosy-pink cheeks from hours in the sun. He had the obvious build of a man in construction with just enough muscle to counter his small beer belly. His energy reminded her of an old golden lab, just happy to be included.

“I know it’s been a few months since the accident, but we had to wait for all the paperwork to be done and estate settled, which I’m sure you know,” he said, his goofy smile not really leaving despite his explanation.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Penny asked quickly. She’d yet to match his smile. Rather, she folded her arms over her chest.

Sam cleared his throat and nodded his head. He handed over the paperwork he’d been filling out. As she looked it over he began to explain what all had happened. “There was a massive fire. At first we figured there may have been some wet hay that had caught the sun wrong. Then when we saw the heat lamp on the floor, we suspected faulty wiring. These things happen. There was a bad storm that night, too. All in all, we’re still determining the cause. As you know, your aunt didn’t make it. Not because of the fire, obviously,” he paused to make sure she was keeping up. Penny briefly glanced up at him.

“Car accident,” she said rather shortly.

“Right, right. Just a bad situation all around. I understood she was leaving our office, too, trying to work out what to do with the farm.”

“What happened to the horses?” Penny asked, looking up from the clipboard. She’d already made up her mind that this gentleman wasn’t just happy-go-lucky, but maybe also a little dense, too.

“The farm hand, Nate, he got ‘em. I mean, she only had three by then, so it was easy to let them out, but he did manage to save all of them,” Sam shrugged his shoulders as he thought about the silver lining.

“And then?” Penny asked, now shoving her hands in her pocket.

“Well, Miss Harding had sold them that morning before the meeting. We couldn’t get her the money that she’d needed before going through the paperwork. These things happen.”

“But she died that day,” Penny’s eyes narrowed as she thought over the logistics. “She wouldn’t have had time to make the sale, move them, and go to the meeting only to have the place end up in flames.”

“Right. I know it’s a bit confusing,” Sam stopped to scratch the back of his head nervously. Sweat had already started pooling at his temples. Then he held up his finger like he’d done before, remembering something, “Honestly, I’d recommend talking to Nate. He’s kind of been our point of contact until we were able to meet you. Here’s his number,” Sam scribbled out the full name and his phone number on the edge of the paper. He tore it off and handed it over. “I’m going to get back to my survey. Like I said, call Nate, he’ll probably know more since he was here and all. Nice to meet you, Penelope.”

“Penny,” she said as she took the piece of paper that read Nate Kormick followed by the number. She stepped off to the side to get out of Sam’s way. She walked back to her truck and hopped in, leaving her door open and her leg hanging out. She was blasted with cool air once the engine turned. She grabbed her phone and made the call. There was no sense in waiting, after all.

What she didn’t tell Sam was that she didn’t need Nate’s number, or that she was completely out of the loop.

There wasn’t even a whole ring before she heard a low voice on the other end. “Penelope Harding, ‘bout time you called me.”

She froze and a cold chill ran down her spine.

“Let me guess, you’re at the farm finally,” Nate chuckled.

Hearing his voice was always jarring. Yes they’d kept in touch over the last year with her aunt’s declining ability to care for the farm, but she always made sure it stayed in emails and text messages. Phone calls and voicemails were strictly out of the question, and for one reason alone – Bennett.

“I promise it’s Nate. Bennett is back in the city. It’s just me out here now,” Nate confirmed. She could hear him shifting his phone on the other end.

Her tense breath finally released. “Fucking twins,” she mumbled.

“There’s the old spitfire!” He exclaimed. “Just like yer’ aunt.”

“Yeah, well, probably why she left this place for me.”

“I never understood that, either,” Nate confirmed.

Penny’s face fell flat and unamused, even though she knew he couldn’t see. “Listen, I’ve got questions,” she said bluntly. She wasn’t in the mood to beat around the bush.

“I figured. Why don’t you come over?”

Penny paused to think about it for a moment. It was Nate, which was fine, but it was also Nate. She bit her lip, thinking over if she was ready to face the past, or if she even had much of a choice. “Yeah. You still over in Shadow Oak?” It had been twenty years, but it wasn’t an offensive question. People rarely moved on from what’s left for them. Even she’d traveled four hundred miles for a piece of property that was in complete shambles.

“You know it,” he said.

“Alright, I’m on my way,” she said, pulling her leg back in the truck and shutting the door.

“Oh wait, Penny, before you head this way. I’m gonna need you to go up in your aunt’s apartment and grab somethin’ for me.”

“You want me to climb the stairs here, Nate? You’ve seen the place, right?”

Nate cleared his throat, “I know, I know. Look I’d do it, but, well, you’ll see. Now I need you to go up there and grab a folder from her desk. It’s a green folder.”

“How do you know it survived the fire?” Penny asked.

“Because I put it there after she died.”

Penny rolled her eyes. She wasn’t shocked he was using her aunt’s property as his own personal safe. “Yeah, I’ll get it, but no more surprises, okay? I want answers, not a runaround.”

“Well, you know best of anyone I can’t make that promise.”

Penny could only imagine the mischievous smile on the other end of the line. “See you soon…. Sis,” and he hung up the phone.

That last word sent the shiver right back down her spine. She hadn’t heard it in so long. She shook the uneasy feeling from her shoulders and cut the engine. Once again, she was hopping back out onto the dirt road. This time she walked back into the barn with a bit more ease. She knew where to look, what to step over, and wasn’t as shocked by the surroundings.

She stepped up to the base of a staircase directly in the middle of the barn. She jimmied the banister. It creaked with the movement, but nothing splintered or fell. She breathed in deeply, figuring it had to be somewhat sound if Nate had made it up there to stash the folder. She carefully took the first step, noticing any movement or sound as the wood shifted. So far it was fine, but it was also one of fifteen steps. She took another, and it was equally fine. She took a few more, coming up on the half landing. Things were still okay, and she was breathing easier.

The apartment door was still unlocked. The place was small, barely a quarter of the barn in the style of a studio. A small kitchenette in the corner, a pullout bed against the wall, and an old oak desk right next to the couch that was older than the barn itself. Right there on the desk was a green folder. She snatched it and headed back.

And of course, just as she began to trust the craftsmanship of the barn, the step after the landing completely gave way. Her leg fell straight through, catching at the knee. She yelled, then gasped. She pulled on her leg, only to feel a sharp pain shoot up her calf. “Jesus Christ!” she screamed. Her heart was racing, her breath quickening, and now her hands were shaking. The board beneath her gave a loud pop and snapped in half. She fell even further into the hole, only to stop with a jerk of her arm.

She looked over in shock to see Sam putting his arms beneath her shoulder and picking her up to slide her back onto the landing. He heaved one more step back until her leg was completely back through the hole. The leg of her pants was quickly soaking with blood. She blinked hard and pushed her head back against the wall. “I hate blood,” she whispered and closed her eyes. She could feel the color draining from her face as her forehead broke out in a sweat and went numb.

“Excuse me, Miss Penny, I’m going to…Well, here,” he didn’t quite wait for her consent because he knew there wasn’t going to be a lot of time if he had any questions. He took out his knife and cut through her pants leg, then ripped it off the rest of the way, revealing a nice gash going from ankle to midcalf.

“Is it bad?” she asked and cupped her forehead, doing her best to stay conscious. She was breathing hard and had broken out in a cold sweat all over her face now.

“Nah, no not really,” he pushed around and she winced with a hiss. Nothing seemed to split open. “I mean, it’s gross, but you won’t need stitches. Now if you’d really fallen – “

“What do you mean really fallen? I fucking fell!” She was gritting her teeth now.

Sam stifled a chuckle. “No, I mean, if you really fell through - like hit the concrete - that would be bad. This, though…It’s gnarly, but you won’t need stitches. Here, let’s get you downstairs. I’ve got a first aid kit in the truck.” He slipped his arm back under her shoulders and lifted her up onto her good leg. He grunted with every step as he carried her down.

“Not used to carrying people?” She asked, forcing herself to open her eyes to see where she was going and help by at least limping a little.

This time his chuckle slipped through. “Not anymore,” he replied. “Clipboards and cameras are just a bit lighter.”

She had to admire his honesty, even if it seemed ill-timed at points. He got her outside where a stone bench was still standing and set her down. He then skipped off to his truck and fetched the first aid kit. It was larger than she expected, full of everything from burns to full lacerations. Far more than the standard bandage and ointment.

She set the folder down next her and looked over what he was doing. She didn’t comment or resist as he wrapped her leg neatly. “Thank you. Look, I have a meeting. Could you just, help me to my car?” She gave the slightest smile, though it really looked more like a passive grimace.

Sam nodded his head, his goofy grin outshining hers completely. “Absolutely, Miss Harding,” he pulled her arm over his shoulder once again and together they hobbled to the truck. He propped her inside like a true gentleman, wished her well, and went back to his job.

She watched him closely, waiting for him to turn the corner around the property before leaning down and ripping the clean bandage straight off. She instantly grit her teeth as she felt the fresh skin pull back open and blood ooze out. She placed both her hands on her calf and whispered under her breath. Slowly, a pink light radiated from her palms, splintered and twisted into the open wound. Cell by cell, her calf sewed itself back together. The blood stopped and she sat back, heaving from the effort.

To get her mind off of the whole ordeal, she grabbed the folder and flipped it open. The front page was standard insurance claims, then the property deed stapled behind. She thumbed the papers, finding where her name was listed as the beneficiary, until something stopped her completely. There was a co-beneficiary someone she’d never heard of before – Emmett Dane.