Chapter 2

I hung up the payphone and headed straight back to the old house. I just needed to grab the rest of my winter clothes and get out. I was going to stay with Grandma until culinary school started in Atlanta. 

I walked down the creaky wooden steps into the basement. 

I froze.

My duffel bags were dumped upside down. Everything I owned was scattered across the damp concrete floor. My mother’s spare handwritten recipe book lay open, smeared with thick, dark barbecue grease. My dad’s old leather boots—the ones I’d kept polished for a decade—were slashed to ribbons. 

And right in the center of the mess was the little floral dress Cole bought me with his first paycheck. Sliced into useless shreds.

Footsteps clicked above me. Maeve strolled down the stairs. She was wearing a brand-new floral dress. An exact, expensive copy of the one she’d just destroyed.

"Oh hey, you’re here!" she said, flashing a bright, innocent smile. "I was just decluttering. All this old junk was taking up space."

I didn't answer her. I dropped to my knees, frantically digging through the pile of trashed clothes. 

Where is it? 

I was looking for the picture. The only photo we had left of all four of us standing in front of the BBQ stand. The last family portrait before the crash.

"Looking for this?"

I shot up. Maeve was leaning against the stair railing, holding the wooden frame loosely in her hand.

"Put that down," I growled, taking a step toward her.

Maeve’s eyes turned cold. A nasty little smirk pulled at her lips. She held the frame out over the hard concrete floor and just opened her fingers.

Crack.

The glass shattered everywhere. The jagged shards sliced right through my parents' smiling faces.

Instantly, Maeve scrambled backward against the wall. Tears welled up in her eyes right on command.

"I’m sorry!" she whimpered, letting out a dramatic gasp. "You just looked so angry, I got scared…"

The basement door swung open. Cole rushed down the stairs, still in his deputy uniform. He didn't even look at the mess on the floor. He went straight to Maeve, pulling her behind him like I was some kind of wild animal.

"Willa, knock it off," Cole barked at me.

"She broke the photo, Cole," I said, pointing at the glass. "She ruined Dad's boots."

"She didn’t mean it," he snapped, completely ignoring the slashed leather at my feet. "This is her house now. You don’t get to come in here and yell at her."

He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and gently wiped a stray tear from Maeve's cheek. "It's okay. Come on, let's get you upstairs."

He didn't even look at me. He just steered her up the steps. 

Halfway up, Maeve paused. She looked over Cole’s shoulder, right at me. She smiled, letting her lips form one silent, exaggerated word.

Loser.

I didn't yell. I didn't cry. I just knelt down, carefully pulled the torn photograph from the broken glass, and walked out of the house.

Grandma’s place was small and quiet. I pitched my sleeping bag on her living room floor. I had just finished washing the grease off my hands in the kitchen sink when the yellow wall phone rang.

I picked up the receiver.

"Hello?"

"Willa, you said I’d never be part of this family," Maeve’s sickly sweet voice drifted through the line. "Now the house is mine. The restaurant is mine. And your brother is mine. How does it feel?"

I gripped the phone tight.

My mind flashed back to ten years ago. The day after the town buried my parents. 

They had been driving up to Atlanta for the state BBQ championship when a truck crossed the centerline and hit them head-on. Our biggest rival, Red Oak BBQ, had paid off a broke ranch hand to run my folks off the road. Mom and Dad died on impact. So did the driver. 

That driver was Maeve’s father. 

I was nine years old, planting my feet at the diner’s front door, sobbing hysterically as Cole tried to bring the killer's daughter inside.

"Your dad killed mine!" I had screamed, pointing at the shivering little girl. "You don’t belong here!"

Cole had physically dragged me away from the door. 

"Willa, she’s all alone now," he had scolded me, his voice heavy with that stubborn southern pride. "We don't turn our backs on family. That’s not how we do things down here."

Family.

Over the next ten years, I watched that "family" take everything gradually.

At first, Maeve was just a ghost in the house. She stayed in the tiny, drafty guest room near the back porch, and we barely spoke. 

But slowly, things shifted. Whenever Cole went into Macon for restaurant supplies, he started bringing back a little gift for me—and eventually, he'd hand one to Maeve, too. Then he started paying for all her extracurriculars, buying her expensive curling irons and fancy dresses so she wouldn't feel like a poor outsider at school.

The real breaking point was the day he brought her to the county cemetery to visit our parents' graves. 

When I saw her standing there, I completely lost it. I started screaming at Cole right in front of the headstones. 

"How could you bring her here?!" I yelled, my voice cracking. "You know exactly what her dad did—"

Cole stepped right in front of Maeve, shielding her from me. For the first time in my life, I saw a flash of real impatience in my brother's eyes.

"Willa, that's enough," he snapped. "If it wasn't for our family's feud with Red Oak BBQ, her dad never would have been desperate enough to take that payoff. What did Maeve do wrong?"

I froze. 

The words caught in my throat. I couldn't say a single thing. 

After that day, Cole's guilt went into overdrive. He let Maeve take over my large bedroom so she’d have more space to herself, forcing me down the hall. A few months later, when she casually mentioned that my parents' old mattress felt more comfortable, she moved right into the master suite. 

Step by step, she took the house. Then she wanted to learn the business, so Cole pushed me out of the kitchen.

Now, for her nineteenth birthday, she asked for the whole damn estate. And Cole just handed it over.

I didn't answer Maeve. I just gently set the receiver back on its hook.

That night, I borrowed Grandma's old bicycle and pedaled out to the county cemetery. The air was thick with the smell of pine needles and damp earth.

I walked past the rows of headstones until I found the two matching granite markers.

I sat down in the wet grass between them. I pulled the torn photo out of my pocket and traced the split line running right between my parents' faces. 

"I’m sorry I couldn't keep it," I whispered into the quiet night. 

I folded the picture and slid it safely next to mom's recipe book in my pocket. I stood up and brushed the dirt off my jeans.

The cold wind bit at my face, but my head was perfectly clear.

"But I'm not staying where I'm not wanted."

I turned my back on the graves, walked back to the bike, and rode into the dark.