The days that followed passed in a strange, suspended quality Wren hadn't expected — not quite normal, not quite crisis, but something in between, a town slowly exhaling after twelve years of held breath.
Ashford Hollow made the national news for exactly four days before the cycle moved on to other stories, other scandals, leaving behind a town that had to figure out how to be itself again under the weight of what it now knew about its own history. The mill site, long abandoned, suddenly drew curious visitors who parked at its edges and took photographs, an unwelcome tourism that Marlene at the Rusted Anchor complained about with a mixture of genuine irritation and, Wren suspected, some private relief that the bar's usual quiet had returned within a week regardless.
Wren stayed at the co
