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The truck cab was silent as we drove back to town. I toyed with the lid of the box, thinking about the injustice of what had been done to Honor.

“I’m expecting a busy night at the cemetery,” Jonah said, pulling me from my head. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I spent the night kicking out Mercer’s fans.”

I nodded, understanding he was asking me not to be near the cemetery without using the words. Technically, I wasn’t allowed there anyway, although I doubted Mr. Smith would care now.

“I’ll have a busy night too,” I said. “I’d like to go through all of these records. Try and learn as much about Honor as I can and decide how to tell her story. I might want to find out more about what usually happened to unwed mothers at that time. Turn it into a whole series.”

“You should get some sleep first.”

I nodded, but I knew I wouldn’t. If I tried to lay in bed, I’d be staring at the ceiling, my brain divided up between thinking about Jonah and running through everything I’d learned today about Honor.

Jonah dropped me off at my car. I was so distracted by the day’s events that I didn’t try to kiss him goodbye.

I didn’t ask for his number or make plans to meet up later.

We’d been brought together by the mystery of the nameless grave, and now the person buried there had their name back. Jonah would only be guarding the cemetery until Halloween, and I technically wasn’t allowed access again until November 1st. There was no reason for us to cross paths again if we didn’t want to.

I wanted to, but did he?

Evening was settling in as I drove home along the familiar streets of Woodbridge Falls. Halloween was just around the corner and this town didn’t let you forget it. Hollowfield Farm went all out with a pumpkin patch and corn maze. October also held haunted hayrides, the Harvest Gala and the Lantern Walk on the River.

Normally, I loved the Halloween stuff. Most of it anyway. It was nice to see everyone embrace the spooky side of life when normally it was just me and my camera who were interested.

This year I wasn’t feeling it. Maybe it was the distraction of Honor and her story. A reminder that turning the dead and their resting places into decorations for a party buried the truth of their lives.

Realistically, it was Jonah. I didn’t want a distraction from my day to day life when he was part of it. Not when he kept me guessing. One second he’s flexing his muscles the next he’s quoting Shakespeare or teasing me about my macabre style.

I pushed the thoughts aside. I was too tired or wired, or something to figure this out right now. I had to focus on telling Honor’s story before more people came to gawk at her final resting place.

Once I was home, I microwaved some questionable looking leftovers and settled onto the floor of my one-bedroom apartment. I spread the documents I had on the Smith family around me. There was a lot, but very little of it was about Honor, and none of it was on her baby.

I could piece together when she was born, when she died, siblings’ names, parents’ names. That was all that was left of a woman who would have been so much more than that. Maybe she hated peas or loved the color purple, maybe she was scared of spiders or snorted when she laughed.

She didn’t really get a chance to live. The world she grew up in had roles and rules for everyone. Death in childbirth was common, and there was a stigma on her to top it off.

Here I was, able to create content, to say what I wanted to say, and have a chance for the whole world to hear it.

I also had choices. Children or not, a career doing whatever I wanted, get married or stay single. Honor would have been blown away by the world just a few hundred years after her death. Yet I was humming and hawing about whether to tell Jonah I didn’t want to stop seeing him just because the mystery was solved.

Her life put things into perspective for me, or maybe I would have gotten there on my own. Either way, I was going to tell her story, then I was going to write my own the way I wanted it to be, and that included one grumpy, bodyguard mountain man.

Chapter Sixteen

Jonah

Mercer made the video.

I watched it when I arrived at the cemetery after Alden sent the link. It was predictably ridiculous. He said the live cutting out and the lights going black were because he’d successfully driven the spirits from the place and it was no longer worth seeing.

Even with the video, I’d still turned three people around when they showed up wanting to see the site.

I could have saved myself the headache and just let them have a quick look, then leave. Instead, I drew a hard line in the dirt and dared anyone to cross it.

I was making my own life more difficult at this point, and I knew exactly why. I wasn’t just guarding a cemetery. I was guarding one that was important to Briar. And she was important to me, and I was apparently a giant sucker who was willing to do anything to make her happy.

So no one touches this place while I’m here, and that’s that.

But when no one was here but me and the wind in the trees, I had too much time to think about her and me, about us and what happened when November hit and I was on some other assignment.