Page 82 of Tessa and Nash

“Two minutes,” I say, stepping onto the porch and pulling the door behind me so it clicks softly. “Say what you came to say out here.”

Nash’s eyebrows lift. “Afraid I’ll steal the silver?”

“I’m afraid you’ll breathe,” I say flatly. “This house reports back to my uncle.”

He glances at the windows like they might be listening. “That’s… normal.”

“It’s Long,” I correct. “Different breed.”

Fire shifts behind his eyes. A flicker of understanding, maybe. Or at least recognition that my sarcasm isn’t the point today.

He pulls a folder from under his arm and holds it up as evidence.

“I found something,” he says.

My spine goes straighter before I can stop it. “What kind of something?”

“The kind that made my mom pull out the binder she only touches when she’s about to start a war.”

That should not sound the way it does. That should not make a tiny cold line form in the middle of my chest.

And yet.

I glance toward the street, empty, thank goodness, then step closer so he can’t be overheard by anyone with a porch and too much free time.

“Show me,” I say.

Nash flips the folder open, the paper edges fluttering in the cold. Deeds. Old photocopies. A map that looks like it’s been scanned too many times. A handwritten note in the margin that makes my stomach drop before I even read it.

Nash points, finger tapping a line that cuts along the creek.

“Mayor Caldwell said there were Long concerns,” he says. “I thought it was your uncle stirring the pot. Then I got home, and my mom showed me this.”

His finger slides to the margin note.

Long Extension Property — check access rights before development.

He swallows, throat working, the words still taste wrong. “My dad wrote it. He knew. Which means… our families have known longer than we have.”

I don’t respond immediately, because my brain is doing that thing it does when it’s trying not to panic: turning facts into neat stacks. Filing them. Cross-referencing. Finding the angle that makes them make sense.

Long Extension Property.

Juniper House.

Old Mill Road extension.

The place that lives like a ghost in the back of my uncle’s mind.

The place he said was vulnerable.

The place he never wanted touched.

I look up at Nash. “Your cabin sites are on the east parcel.”

“Yes.”

“And the creek line runs along the edge.”