🥧 The Forty Pies Before Sunrise

Chapter 17 - The Tape for Rowan

They played June’s tape at Agnes’s hospital bedside because Rowan could not bear to hear it anywhere else.

Cora stood near the window, arms wrapped around herself. Lila sat on the floor with her back against the wall, knees pulled up, old enough to be included and young enough that Rowan wanted to shield her from every word. Officer Chen had brought a small recorder from evidence, and Officer Harris stood outside the room to give them privacy.

Agnes held Rowan’s hand.

That was the first time.

Not a careful touch. Not polite comfort.

A grandmother’s hand, cool and veined, holding on as if the years between them had weight that could be shared.

Chen pressed play.

Static.

Then June’s voice.

“My sweet Rowan. If you ever hear this, it means I failed to come home right.”

Rowan closed her eyes.

June sounded older than on the first tape. Tired. Southern vowels softened by years of hiding. But the voice slipped into Rowan’s heart with humiliating ease, as if blood had been waiting by the door.

“I have written this tape a hundred times in my head. In those versions, I explain everything so beautifully you forgive me before the end. But real life is not kind enough to make cowards poetic.”

Cora made a small sound.

June continued.

“I left you with Robert because I thought Warren wanted Cora more. Elise had hidden proof with her baby, and I believed if I took Cora away, Warren would follow us and leave you safe. I told myself I would be gone three days. Then a week. Then long enough to find someone powerful who wasn’t already bought.”

Agnes whispered, “Oh, June.”

“I tried to come back. Twice. First time, Robert had moved you. Second time, Warren found me before I found you. After that, I knew any path I took toward you made you visible. So I did the cruelest thing a mother can do. I loved you from far away and called it protection.”

Rowan’s tears slid down silently.

Lila crawled across the floor and leaned against her leg.

“I watched you once,” June said. “You were nine. Leaving school in a yellow raincoat. You had a library book hugged to your chest, and you turned around like you felt me. I nearly ran to you. God help me, I nearly ruined everything because I wanted my baby to know my face.”

Rowan remembered that day.

Not clearly, but enough. A yellow raincoat. A strange woman near a sycamore tree. Robert yanking her into the truck harder than necessary and saying, don’t stare at strangers.

“Cora knows some of this,” June said. “Not all. I was selfish with her too. I made her carry my fear and called it caution. If she is with you now, tell her I am sorry I taught her to run before I taught her to stay.”

Cora turned toward the window, shoulders shaking.

The tape hissed.

“I don’t know if I will live long enough to fix this. There is a man named Harold Voss at Augustine Ridge. He is not the richest man in the room, which means he is usually the one holding the match. Warren wanted the land. Harold wanted what is under it. If I disappear for good, do not stop at Warren.”

Officer Chen, despite being family-adjacent only by circumstance, reached for her notebook.

June’s voice softened.

“Rowan, you owe me nothing. Not forgiveness. Not understanding. Not tears. But you owe yourself the truth. You were wanted. By me. By Agnes. By a whole line of stubborn women who made bad choices and kept walking anyway.”

Agnes began to cry openly then.

Rowan squeezed her hand.

“I loved you enough to try,” June said. “I am sorry I did not love you well enough to succeed.”

The tape clicked off.

No one moved.

Hospitals are never truly quiet. Machines hum. Shoes squeak. Voices murmur beyond doors. But inside Agnes’s room, the silence felt sacred, like the moment after a hymn when even people who don’t believe keep their heads bowed.

Cora wiped her face with her sleeve. “Harold Voss is still alive.”

Officer Chen looked up. “How do you know?”

“He came to my food truck last year.”

Rowan turned.

Cora’s face had gone pale.

“I thought he was just some old rich guy slumming it for barbecue. He asked if my mother ever gave me papers. He said family stories could be expensive if told to the wrong people.”

Agnes’s eyes sharpened through tears. “Voss wanted the mineral rights.”

“What’s under the ridge?” Lila asked.

Agnes looked at Rowan.

“Shale,” she said. “And something rarer. Warren thought selling the surface was the prize. Harold Voss knew the underground rights were worth ten times more.”

Rowan thought of the ledgers. The contracts. The development company that had waited thirty years.

A knock sounded at the hospital room door.

Officer Harris stepped in, expression tight.

“Warren Whitfield just made a deal offer through his attorney,” he said.

Agnes snorted. “Naturally.”

“He says he’ll testify against Harold Voss.”

Rowan’s breath caught.

“In exchange for what?”

Harris looked at her.

“He wants Agnes to sign the farm over to him before the hearing.”

For one stunned second, nobody spoke.

Then Agnes laughed.