Mira looked at him—this man with no ghosts, no shadows, nothing but steady warmth and stubborn faith. And for the first time in her life, she looked at a reflection and didn’t flinch. Because when she caught her own eyes in the dark glass of the workshop window, she saw not fear, but courage. And love.

He grabbed her wrist. “That’s the name of the woman who built my farmhouse. Isabelle Byrne. My great-great-grandmother. She disappeared in 1918. No one ever knew why.”

The man arrived three days later, in the form of a flat tire on a rain-slicked back road. Mira was driving home with a load of Depression glass when she saw the vintage Ford pickup pulled over, hazards blinking. A man stood in the downpour, his dark hair plastered to his forehead, muttering curses at a lug wrench.

Mira’s throat went tight. “You believe me?”

Two months later, a woman came into the shop. She was elegant, silver-haired, dressed in cashmere that cost more than Mira’s rent. She carried a small, velvet-wrapped object. “I was told you might help me,” the woman said. “You have a reputation for… discretion.”

That night, she took the locket to Caleb’s farmhouse. The rain was coming down again, drumming on the tin roof of his workshop. He was carving a newel post, sawdust in his hair, looking so solid and real that she almost turned back. But she couldn’t carry this alone anymore.

And the story— their story—was just beginning.