“You’re the youngest,” June said. “You’re fourth in line for the birthright.”
“I’m the only one who wants it. And the only one my dad trusts.”
She felt a swell of something in her chest then, an acknowledgment, maybe, that Sullivan was different, singular. And hers. June lifted her cheek from where it rested on his shoulder and looked around the property. There was the sprawling house with its layered decks and custom-built hot tub. The carefully maintained barns and outbuildings. The bricked-in sign that designated the entire farm a national heritage site. One of the smaller barns had been built in 1876 and meticulously reconstructed a hundred years later. Sometimes people came to take pictures in front of the rough-hewn stone. June had never wanted something so domestic, so predictable, but all at once the realization washed over her: It could all be hers. If she wanted it.
She felt the draw of that belonging even now, even as she traced the path to the Tates’ farm, every muscle in her body stiff with rage. Sullivan had offered her something back then that she didn’t even have the understanding to know she would want or need: home. The sort of fellowship that attached her to something greater than herself and ensured that she would never, no matter what, be alone. More than anything else, she felt alone. So whatever negligible claim she had to Willa, she would protect it with a ferocity she hadn’t even known she was capable of.
If Franklin and Annabelle Tate still lived on the property, Juniper wasn’t sure what she would do. Of course, they knew exactly who she was, and she doubted they would react kindly to her sudden appearance on their doorstep. But if she was right, and Sullivan and Ashley were now the patriarch and matriarch of the Tate Family Farms, she knew the confrontation wouldn’t go much better. She was on a fool’s errand.
The long roundabout in front of the Tates’ palatial, columned house had been paved since Juniper had seen it last. Back in the day it had been gravel, just like every other farm driveway for a hundred miles, and Sullivan had driven right off it to park on the patchy grass beside the two-stall garage. Now there were four stalls, with carriage house doors and dormer windows in what looked like a loft above the new construction. The double front door was a confection of wrought iron and glass, and there was even a fountain iced over in the very middle of a bricked walkway. A dozen other little changes made the transformation subtle but complete: the Tate Family Farms were no longer an impressive property in a conservative working-class community: they were a manor, a plantation that made no apologies for a level of status and wealth that far outweighed anything in the entire region. It was breathtaking, but indecent somehow.
Juniper wavered in the driveway for a moment, but when she thought of the tiny house where she was living and how it could easily fit in the garage of the Tates’ gorgeous estate, a lick of fury rekindled. They slashed her tires. She had no doubt it was them, and in the face of their ridiculous affluence, that level of cruelty was just obscene.
The front door was fitted with a knocker （a knocker!） in the shape of a teardrop, but no doorbell. So, hand shaking and thumb still wrapped in a tissue now matted with dried blood, Juniper lifted the knocker and let it drop. Twice. A few seconds after the pair of thuds echoed through the house, Juniper could see Ashley descend the central staircase at a jog.
Was it relief that flooded through Juniper? Terror? She only had a moment to consider what she had done—the confrontation that she had so blithely initiated—before Ashley caught sight of her between the twining curls of iron and stopped in her tracks.
They stared at each other through the glass. Juniper bundled in a dusty winter coat and boots, and Ashley barefoot in a pair of high-waisted leggings and a sports bra to match. Winter and summer. Polar opposites. Strangers.
That could have been me, Juniper knew, and she couldn’t tell if she was recoiling because she loathed the thought or because she secretly wished for it.
At first Juniper worried that Ashley wouldn’t open the door at all, but then her shoulders squared and Ashley all but lunged across the space between them. Yanking one of the heavy doors wide, she growled, “What do you think you’re doing here?”
“Hi, Ash.” It popped out before Juniper could stop it. It was snide, but she felt her former best friend’s nickname pierce a forgotten place in her heart.
“Don’t you dare call me that. You have no right to call me that. I won’t ask again: What are you doing here?”
Juniper thought of her crappy, rusty car and the knife that had surely made quick work of the threadbare tires. She could almost picture it: bone-handled, custom-made. Perhaps Ashley used it to segment pomegranates for her post-workout smoothie bowl. “Why did you do it?”