Wade Prescott retaliates on a Monday.
I'm in the barn, feedin' the chickens—the rooster is still named Junior and he still wakes me up at 5:47 and we still have a contentious relationship—when Callum's truck comes barrelin' down the road at a speed that says somethin's wrong.
He parks crooked. Jumps out. His face is tight.
"What happened?" I ask.
"Code enforcement."
"What?"
"County code enforcement showed up at my place this mornin'. Said they got a complaint. About my barn. Said it's a 'structural hazard' and I've got thirty days to bring it up to code or face fines."
"Your barn is fine."
"I know my barn is fine. It's been standin' for sixty years. But that ain't the point."
"The point is Wade Prescott."
"He's pullin' strings, Harlow. He's got friends in the county office. He filed the complaint anonymously, but we both know it came from him."
My blood goes hot.
"Anonymous," I say.
"As anonymous as a man in a suit can be in a town where everybody knows everybody's business."
I take a breath. Then another. Then a third, because the first two ain't enough to contain the anger that's risin' in my chest like a wave.
"Okay," I say. "Okay. So he's fightin' back."
"He's fightin' back."
"Then we fight smarter."
Callum looks at me. "What are you thinkin'?"
"I'm thinkin' that Wade Prescott just made a mistake. He thinks he can harass us into sellin'. He thinks we're small-town people with small-town resources and no way to fight back." I set down the chicken feed. "He's wrong."
"What are you gonna do?"
"I'm gonna call a town meetin'."
"A town meetin'."
"Public. Open. Everyone's invited. And I'm gonna lay out everything I know about Wade Prescott—every property he's bought, every complaint he's filed, every shell company he's used. I'm gonna put it all on the table and let the town decide."
"That's bold."
"That's necessary."
"Harlow, you've been here a month. You really want to stand up in front of this town and tell 'em how to handle their business?"
"I'm not tellin' 'em how to handle their business. I'm givin' 'em information. What they do with it is up to them."
He looks at me for a long moment. Then he nods.
"Alright," he says. "Let's do it."
The town meetin' is on a Wednesday evenin'.
The community center—a big cinderblock buildin' next to the church, with foldin' chairs and fluorescent lights and the faint smell of coffee and casseroles—is packed. Every seat is taken. People are standin' along the walls. I can see Earlene and Mabel and Darla and Bob Henderson and Dale from the hardware store and Reverend Mike and Earl Junior and about a hundred and fifty other people who've lived in Copper Creek their whole lives and care about what happens to it.
I'm standin' at the front of the room, behind a podium that's too tall for me—I'm five-foot-four and the podium was clearly built for someone who's six-two—feelin' like I'm about to give the most important presentation of my life.
Because I am.
Callum is standin' by the door, arms crossed, watchin'. He nods at me.
I nod back.
I can do this.
I've stood in boardrooms full of executives who thought they were smarter than me. I've pitched campaigns to clients who didn't want to listen. I've stood my ground against Sandra Brandt when she told me to shut up and do what I was told.
This is just another room. Just another audience. Just another pitch.
Except it's not. Because this room is full of people I care about. People who've fed me and taught me and welcomed me and judged me and slowly, grudgin'ly, beautifully started to accept me.
This is my town.
And I'm gonna fight for it.
"Thank you all for comin'," I say, and my voice is steady. "I know some of y'all are wonderin' why a woman who's been here barely a month is callin' a town meetin'. Fair question. I'm gonna answer it."
I take a breath.
"I'm here because of Wade Prescott."
A murmur runs through the room. Not surprise—recognition. Everyone knows the name.
"For the past ten years, Wade Prescott has been buyin' up property in this town. He's made offers to my grandfather, to Callum's father, to the Hendersons, to others in this room. His offers sound generous. His pitch sounds good. Jobs, revenue, growth."
I pause.
"But here's what he ain't tellin' you."
I pull out the folder. The thick one. The one I've been buildin' for weeks.
"Since 2016, Wade Prescott has purchased seven properties in Hill Country towns. In every case, he used the same playbook. He targeted owners who were sick, elderly, or in financial trouble. He offered cash below market value. When they said no, he filed code complaints, lawsuits, and threats. He wore them down until they sold."
I hold up a document.
"This is a property record from Fredericksburg. Prescott bought the old Mueller farm for two hundred thousand dollars. He sold the timber rights for three hundred thousand. He cleared the land and left. The property is now an empty lot."
I hold up another document.
"This is from Dripping Springs. The Peterson ranch. Same pattern. Buy low, extract value, move on. The property is a parkin' lot."
Another document.
"And this—this is from right here in Copper Creek. Three properties. One turned into a short-term rental that's been empty for two years. One flipped to an out-of-state investor. And one—the Peterson place—bulldozed and abandoned."
The room is quiet. The kind of quiet that listens.
"Wade Prescott ain't bringin' jobs to this town," I say. "He's bringin' destruction. He buys land, extracts the value, and leaves. And the people who lived on that land—the people who built their lives on it—they're the ones who pay."
I look around the room. At faces I'm learnin' to read. At people I'm learnin' to care about.
"I know I'm new here. I know I don't have the right to tell y'all what to do. But I have information that I think you need to see. And I have a reporter from the Dallas Morning News who's writin' a story about it."
A buzz runs through the crowd. A reporter. The Dallas Morning News. That gets attention.
"I'm not askin' you to trust me," I say. "I'm askin' you to look at the evidence. Make your own decisions. But know this: Wade Prescott is gonna come after me. He's already filin' code complaints against Callum. He's gonna try to divide this town and turn you against each other."
I pause.
"Don't let him."
A hand goes up before the room can erupt.
Not Bob. Not Earlene. A man near the back I recognize from the feed store but have never spoken to.
"Name's Calvin Mercer," he says. "Family's been here since before anybody paved Main Street."
"Okay."
"You said you ain't tellin' us what to do. But you called the meetin'. You brought the reporter. You got the folder. Sounds a whole lot like tellin' us what to think."
The room shifts.
Not against me exactly.
Toward the question.
Callum straightens by the door.
I keep my eyes on Calvin.
"That's fair."
He looks surprised.
"I came here plannin' to sell this ranch," I say. "I called Copper Creek nowhere. I complained about the heat, the cell service, the roads, the coffee, the rooster, and most of y'all privately or out loud."
Earlene raises a hand. "The coffee complaint was justified."
A few people laugh.
Calvin does not.
"I'm not from here the way you are," I continue. "Not yet. Maybe never. And I don't get extra authority because my grandaddy owned two hundred acres and wrote letters he was too stubborn to mail."
Mabel makes a sound that might be approval.
"But I know how information works," I say. "I spent eight years makin' companies look better than they were. A good pitch gives you the part of the truth that helps the person makin' it. Wade's pitch is jobs and investment. My job tonight is to show you the part he leaves out."
I hold up the Peterson rendering.
"You don't have to trust me. Please don't. Trust documents you can read yourself. Call people in Fredericksburg. Call George Peterson. Ask Mr. Caldwell whether the complaints are public record. Ask Mateo what he verified. If I'm wrong, I want you to find it before Wade does."
Calvin crosses his arms.
"And if you're right?"
"Then what you do is still none of my business until Wade makes it my business by usin' this town against itself."
The room stays quiet.
Calvin nods once and sits.
Then a woman beside him stands.
"My name is Marcy Bell. Wade offered on my mama's place two years ago. I told her not to sell. Three weeks later, somebody reported her septic tank."
Another hand rises.
Then another.
The questions get harder.
How much did Wade offer me?
More than the ranch appraised for.
Then why didn't I take it?
Because money stopped being the only thing I was measuring.
Did Callum Brennan influence me?
Yes.
That answer makes several heads turn.
"He taught me the land," I say. "He told me what would be lost. He also told me the choice had to be mine. If Wade wants to argue that caring about somebody disqualifies you from making your own decisions, he can get in line behind my ex-boyfriend."
Darla snorts.
Somebody asks whether the newspaper story is guaranteed to run.
"No. Mateo could decide tomorrow that we can't prove enough."
"Then why are we here?" Calvin calls.
"Because whether a newspaper prints it does not change what happened to your neighbors."
That is the moment the room becomes ours instead of mine.
People stop looking at the podium and start looking at each other.
The meeting does not turn because I give a perfect speech.
It turns because Copper Creek realizes half the room has been carrying separate versions of the same story.
The room erupts.
Not in chaos—in conversation. People talkin' to each other. People askin' questions. People lookin' at the documents I've passed around. People noddin' and shakin' their heads and makin' the kinds of sounds that mean we didn't know and this changes things and we need to do somethin'.
Bob Henderson stands up.
"I want everyone to know," he says, his voice loud enough to carry, "that Wade Prescott came to my ranch last year. Offered me one point two million for forty acres. I said no. He filed a code complaint about my fence the next week."
Linda Henderson stands up next to him. "He came to our house. Sat at our kitchen table. Drank my coffee. And then he threatened to sue us over a drainage issue that ain't been an issue in forty-seven years of livin' here."
Earlene stands up. "He tried to buy Hank's Gas & Go. Offered me half what it's worth. I told him I'd rather set it on fire."
The room laughs. Even in tension, Earlene delivers.
One by one, people stand up. Tellin' their stories. Tellin' about the offers and the threats and the complaints and the slow, steady pressure of a man who sees a town as a resource to be extracted.
I stand at the podium and listen.
And I think: This is what my grandfather wanted. This is what "plant someth' and watch it grow" really means.
It ain't about tomatoes.
It's about community.
When the meetin' is over, the town votes—unanimously—to hire a lawyer to investigate Wade Prescott's property transactions and to file a formal complaint with the county.
It's the first time in ten years that the town has agreed on anythin'.
And I was the one who brought 'em together.
Callum finds me outside. I'm leanin' against my car, breathin' the night air, feelin' like I just ran a marathon.
"You did it," he says.
"We did it."
"No." He shakes his head. "That was all you, Harlow. That was—"
"That was terrifying."
"That was impressive."
I look at him. The community center lights are spillin' out through the windows, catchin' the edges of his face. His jaw. His eyes. That scar I still don't know the story of.
"I couldn't have done it without you," I say.
"Yes, you could've."
"Maybe. But I didn't want to."
He studies me before answerin'.
"Come on," he says. "I'll follow you home."
Home.
That word again.
"Okay," I say.
He follows me home.
And when I get there—when I pull up to the ranch house with the porch swing and the work boots by the door and the windmill turnin' slow against a sky full of stars—I sit on the porch and wait for him.
He parks. Gets out. Sits next to me.
We don't talk.
We don't need to.
The silence says everythin'.
And somewhere in that silence, his hand finds mine.
Just that. Just his fingers, warm and rough and sure, laced through mine in the dark.
I don't pull away.
I don't want to.
And for the first time since I got here, the ground under my feet don't just feel solid.
It feels like home.