“In town, at the church. But that’s not where he proposed.” Aidan’s eyes went distant, remembering. “There’s a tree by the east lake. An oak that’s older than anything else on the property. He told me once that’s where he asked her, where she said yes.”
“How far?”
“From here? Another two miles, maybe three.”
Dylan looked at the sun, now high overhead. They’d been walking for hours, piecing together not just clues but the entire story of a family that had endured against all odds. Her legs were tired, her mind was spinning, but something in her wanted to keep going, to see how this story played out.
“We should come back next week,” she said instead, the practical part of her asserting itself. “Plan better, bring supplies.”
Aidan looked like he wanted to protest, then nodded. “You’re right. Besides, Grandda waited three years to give me this puzzle. He’d probably approve of making me wait a little longer.”
As they walked back toward the truck, taking a different path that Aidan promised was shorter, Dylan found herself thinking about permanence, about roots, about what it meant to stay. The O’Haras had been here since before Laurel Valley existed. They’d shaped the land and been shaped by it in return. They’d built something that lasted not through stubbornness alone but through adaptation, through choosing the right partners, through knowing when to hold tight and when to let go.
“Can I ask you something?” Aidan said as they emerged from the forest onto the road where they’d left his truck.
“Depends on the question.”
“Why didn’t you come to book club Thursday?”
The question caught her off guard, too direct for the cautious dance they’d been doing all morning. “I forgot,” she admitted. “I’ve been distracted.”
“By the job offer?”
“By everything.” She stopped walking, needing to say this while she wasn’t looking at him, while the words could float free without the weight of his green eyes. “The job isn’t really the issue. Marcus could offer me twice as much and it wouldn’t solve the real problem.”
“Which is?”
“I want my own shop. My own place where I can do restorations the way they should be done. Where I can choose projects that matter, that bring something beautiful back to life.” The words came out in a rush, a dream she’d never voiced aloud before. “But that takes money I don’t have, credit I can’t get, and faith that I could actually build something lasting.”
She felt rather than saw Aidan go still beside her. When he spoke, his voice was careful, considered. “What if you could?”
“Could what?”
“Have your own shop. Here. In Laurel Valley.”
Dylan turned to look at him, sure she’d misheard. “That’s not—I just told you I don’t have the money.”
“But what if you did? What if there was a way?”
Something in his expression made her heart race—intensity and possibility and what looked dangerously like determination. “Aidan, what are you talking about?”
He seemed to catch himself, stepping back from whatever edge he’d been approaching. “Nothing. Just…thinking out loud. Forget I said anything.”
But Dylan couldn’t forget. As they drove back toward town, the silence between them comfortable despite the weight of unspoken possibilities, she kept turning his words over in her mind. What if she could? What if there was a way to have everything she wanted without having to leave?
The thought was dangerous. Hope was dangerous. Because once you started believing something was possible, you started making space for it in your life. And Dylan had learned long ago that the more space you made for dreams, the more it hurt when they didn’t come true.
But sitting in Aidan’s truck, watching him navigate roads his family had been traveling for almost two centuries, Dylan felt something shift inside her chest. Maybe it was the morning spent walking through history. Maybe it was Patrick’s riddles working their own kind of magic. Or maybe it was just Aidan himself, solid and real beside her, making her believe that some things were worth the risk of wanting them.
“Same time next week?” he asked when they reached the turnout where her car waited.
“I’ll be here,” she promised, and meant it.
As she drove back toward town, following the curves of a road that had been carved through wilderness by men who believed in permanence, Dylan thought about roots and wings, about staying and leaving, about the courage it took to do either.
The O’Haras had come to this valley with nothing but determination and hope. They’d built something that lasted, something worth protecting, something worth passing on.
Maybe it was time for Dylan Flanagan to stop running long enough to see if she could build something too.
