Chapter Five
Sunday morning descended on Laurel Valley dressed in church bells and sunshine, the kind of morning that made even skeptics consider the possibility of grace. Dylan stood at her apartment window, coffee cooling in her hands, watching families make their way toward the white-steepled church at the center of town. The O’Haras would be among them—five brothers in their Sunday best, wives corralling children, Anne and Mick leading the procession like they’d been doing for forty years.
Tomorrow, Marcus Rowan needed an answer. Tomorrow, she had to choose between the practical path and the impractical life she’d been building here one day at a time.
But today, she had paint on her hands and a half-transformed apartment that suddenly felt too small for all the feelings she’d been trying to contain since yesterday’s treasure hunt.
The apartment above Millicent’s Antiques had always been temporary in her mind—a place to sleep, to store her few possessions, to exist between workdays. She’d never hung pictures, never bought curtains to replace the yellowed ones that had come with the place, never done anything that might suggest permanence. But yesterday, walking through ruins that had sheltered the first O’Haras in 1847, something had shifted.
Dylan dipped her roller in the paint tray, watching the warm terra-cotta color cling to the foam. The first wall had been an accident—she’d bought the paint on impulse Friday night, driven by a restlessness she couldn’t name. But now, Sunday afternoon, with three walls done and her furniture pushed to the center of the room like islands in a sea of drop cloths, she understood what she was doing.
She was nesting. Building. Making space for a life that might actually happen instead of one she was just passing through.
Church bells rang again, signaling the end of service. In an hour, the O’Haras would gather at their farmhouse for Sunday dinner, the table groaning under Anne’s cooking, the house filled with the chaos of family. Dylan had heard Sophie describe it with the reverence usually reserved for sacred rituals.
Her phone buzzed. A text from Aidan: Found something about the well in my grandmother’s diary. Want to see?
Her heart did that stupid skip it had been perfecting since yesterday. She stared at the message, thumb hovering over the keyboard. The smart thing would be to wait until Saturday. Keep the boundaries clear. Maintain the fiction that this was just about helping with his grandfather’s puzzle.
She typed: When?
After dinner? Around 3? Everyone will be in food comas by then.
Three o’clock. After church, after Sunday dinner, when the family would be scattered between naps and football. A safer time than joining them for the meal itself.
I’ll be there, she sent before she could think better of it.
Dylan returned to her painting, but her mind kept circling back to yesterday. The way Aidan had moved through his family’s history with such reverence. The way he’d looked at her when she’d solved the first part of the riddle. The way Patrick’s clue had felt like more than just directions to a hiding place.
By the time three o’clock approached, she’d finished the last wall and stood in the center of her transformed space. The warm terra-cotta made the room glow even in afternoon shadow, made it feel like somewhere a person might actually live rather than just exist.
The drive to the O’Hara ranch took her through quiet Sunday streets. Most of Laurel Valley observed the Sabbath in some form—shops closed, families gathered, a collective pause in the week’s rhythm. Even the tourists seemed subdued, as if the town’s reverence was contagious.
The O’Hara house sprawled across its hilltop, the gray stone and white paint gleaming in afternoon sun. The white fences lined the paddocks where horses grazed, and the barns with their dark green roofs looked like something from a painting—Rural Paradise, oil on canvas.
She parked behind Aidan’s truck, noting the collection of vehicles that suggested the full clan was still present. Through the windows, she could see movement—someone washing dishes, children running past, the comfortable chaos of family in its natural habitat.
The kitchen door opened before she could knock. Aidan stood there in jeans and a button-down shirt that suggested he’d changed after church but hadn’t quite made it to completely casual.
“Good timing,” he said. “I just escaped dish duty.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“Told Mom I had important research to do for Grandda’s treasure hunt. She’s a sucker for anything involving family history.”
He led her through the kitchen where Anne and Sophie were putting away leftovers, both women greeting her warmly but not stopping their conversation about Wednesday’s church social and who was bringing what.
The hallway to Mick’s office was lined with photographs—decades of O’Hara history captured in frames. Weddings and christenings, first days of school and championship rodeos, the visual DNA of a family that had stayed long enough to document its evolution.
“Dad’s in the living room yelling at the Broncos,” Aidan said, opening the office door. “We should have at least an hour before he remembers this is his sanctuary.”
The office was exactly what Dylan would have expected from Mick O’Hara—masculine but warm, organized but lived in. The massive walnut desk dominated the space, and Aidan had spread papers across it like he was conducting an archaeological dig.
“Your grandmother’s diary,” Dylan said, spotting the leather-bound journal.
“She wrote about everything. The weather, the ranch, the boys. And Patrick.” Aidan’s voice softened on his grandfather’s name. “She wrote about their courtship, their marriage, their life together. It’s like having a window into who they really were, not just the stories everyone tells.”
He opened the diary to a marked page, his grandmother’s precise script filling the yellowed paper.
