The Storm

Chapter 22

Previously in Garden of Little Peace:

Chapter 21 turned the clock back to Thursday morning, the day after Fletcher’s arrival in Ravina Springs.

Alone for the first time since landing in North Carolina, Fletcher finally has space to confront the grief he’s been trying to outrun. Later, while helping Winston prepare the house for Hurricane Fianna, he settles more naturally into life in Ravina Springs and finds himself increasingly aware of Brennan.

After dinner, Fletcher and Brennan end up talking alone in a secluded corner of the garden. Their conversation drifts from books and the town itself to the mysterious phone call Brennan received from Leah. When Fletcher tries to press for answers, Brennan asks him to wait a little longer.

The conversation then turns unexpectedly personal. As Brennan starts to leave, Fletcher catches her hand and says something that lingers with both of them long after the moment has passed.

“You could know everything.”

Now, Chapter 22.

Garden of Little Peace, Chapter 22

Friday, late evening

The hurricane’s first rain band arrived late in the afternoon. It came without warning, drumming impatiently against the plywood sheathing covering Brennan’s windows.

Rain battered the building from every side as water sluiced through the gutters. With every window boarded up, she couldn't judge what the wind was doing beyond the walls.

Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the rain stopped. The silence unsettled her more than the noise.

She switched on another lamp. She wanted the light more than needed it. But with every window covered, the apartment had taken on the close, enclosed feel of a basement.

By early evening, the second rain band had come and gone. Downstairs, Goode Books sat dark for the first time since Easter.

She wandered from room to room. She considered calling Merritt, inviting her over, but the younger woman drew strength from familiar places. Brennan understood that.

Then her thoughts drifted to Antyn. He hadn’t come to dinner the night before. How could she coax him further out of his shell? He hadn’t earned a key to the bookstore yet. Only Lucy had one besides Brennan and Win. But certainly there was something she could do.

She pulled a folder off the dining room table and sat in her favorite chair. Maybe the Outreach’s fall lesson plans would occupy her mind for a while. She still needed a class on conflict resolution and another on job interview skills.

The routine almost worked. But the words blurred into one another almost immediately. When she reached the bottom of the first page, she realized she hadn’t absorbed any of it. She shut the folder.

“But you already know.”

Fletcher’s voice returned as clearly as if he were sitting across from her. So did the memory of his hand around hers. Then another followed, uninvited, of him standing on Win’s roof, shirt discarded in the lingering heat, moving with the easy confidence of a man who had spent a lifetime trusting his body.

She traced the edge of the folder with one finger, smiling despite herself.

Then, as though her mind had other plans, Win stepped in as he’d been days before, slipping through the darkened bookstore in his ancient jeans with that familiar look that had been leading her into trouble for years.

“Tch.” Honestly, Brennan. What are you, sixteen?

She dropped the folder onto the table a little harder than necessary. Dammit, we’re not married anymore. You can want whoever you want.

She crossed to the balcony doors, lifted the heavy bar from the storm shutters, and threw them open. Moist, warm air rolled in, fragrant with rain and the wet garden below. Thunder grumbled somewhere in the distance.

Outside, the garden vines rocked in the breeze and the paths were dark with water, but nothing appeared damaged. Not yet.

She rested her hands on the damp railing, her gaze drifting to the far corner beside the porch, hidden behind the arbor and thick greenery.

Only yesterday she'd been sitting there with Fletcher as if the world didn't exist. The conversation came back in fragments, little bits of nothing that somehow added up to something. Her eyes rested on the porch above their hiding spot.

Win had been standing there while she and Fletcher talked. She’d felt him listening, felt the unease building in him, and without thinking had spent the evening steering Fletcher away from anything that might make Win feel worse.

She didn’t want to hurt Winston. But she’d been giving his feelings more room than her own, and that wasn’t right, either.

Across the garden, Win’s back door swung open. Fletcher stepped out, pausing long enough to scan the oaks above. He wandered down into the garden, stopping here and there as if checking for damage.

Instinct sent her a step backward. A heartbeat later, she was leaning toward the railing again. “Everything all right down there?”

A stem bent beneath Fletcher's fingers, and the blossom came away in his hand. He looked up. "Oh. Hi." A sheepish smile tugged at his mouth. "Looks all right. Or it did." He brushed the crushed petals from his palm. "Couldn't stand another minute indoors."

Brennan rested her forearms back on the railing and nodded toward the apartment behind her. “Likewise.”

They both waited for the other to say something else. She was suddenly eight years old again, sitting on her grandmother's kitchen floor with Olivia, turning two refrigerator magnets over and over, watching them snap together one moment, then twist away in the next.

“Give me a minute,” she finally said before disappearing back inside.

Twilight pressed around the room’s edges, turning it the color of an old photograph. She shrugged into a rain jacket and snatched her sneakers from the bench at the top of the stairs.

Halfway down, his words found her again.

You could know everything.

Had he meant she knew something important about Leah? About what happened before he came to Ravina Springs?

Or that she could know him? All of him. Either reading fit his words.

At the landing, she slipped into her sneakers, then hesitated with her hand on the garden door.

Well. There was only one way to find out.

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© 2026 Muirae D. Kenney. Garden of Little Peace is an original work of fiction. Please share links, not copies.

Story Navigator

Prologue: One for the road · Chapter 1: The kept knife · Chapter 2: The weight of silence · Chapter 3: What remains · Chapter 4: Where none can follow · Chapter 5: The only question · Chapter 6: Twice gone · Chapter 7: Worlds collide · Chapter 8: No more waiting · Chapter 9: After after · Chapter 10: The dangerous ones · Chapter 11: The witching hour · Chapter 12: Bright as a pin · Chapter 13: Wet clay · Chapter 14: The wrong answer · Chapter 15 pt 1: On solid ground ·Chapter 15 pt 2: On solid ground ·Chapter 16: Into darkness ·Chapter 17:The walls come down ·Chapter 18:The long way round ·Chapter 19 pt 1: The breaking point · Chapter 19 pt 2: The breaking point · Chapter 20 pt 1: The calm · Chapter 20 pt 2: The calm · Chapter 21 pt 1: Before ·Chapter 21 pt 2: Before· Chapter 21 pt 3: Before ···················