They’re coming tomorrow with the surveyors. I’ve hidden the deed in the only place they’ll never think to look. Not inside the house, not under the earth. Somewhere in between. Lilly—if anyone finds this, if anyone is listening—please. The glade is more than trees. It’s where the world remembers how to breathe.

Lilly didn’t cry. Not then. She walked back to the manor, the deed pressed against her heart, and called the number her mother had pinned to the fridge—the historical society, the one fighting to save the last green spaces in town.

But Lilly’s heart was a drum. Somewhere in between.