My Grandson Called Me At 5 A.M. And Said, “Grandma, Don’t Wear Your Red Coat Today”

The phone rang at 5:00 a.m., sharp as a winter nail driving through silence.

I was already awake in the rocking chair by the kitchen window, watching Montana’s dark surrender to a bruise-blue dawn. My cherry-red coat hung on the peg by the door like it always does in December—bright, practical, impossible to miss on country roads where the snow swallows everything else whole.

Danny never calls this early. Never.

“Grandma,” he whispered, voice shaking like a screen door in a storm, “please, don’t wear your red coat today. Promise me.”

My hand tightened on the receiver. “Danny, what’s wrong? Are you hurt? Where are you?”

“I can’t explain. You’ll understand soon.”

Click.

The dial tone hummed in my ear like a warning I couldn’t translate. I sat there in the gray light, the phone still pressed to my face, my heart doing something it hadn’t done in years—racing like I was seventeen again, running through wheat fields with my shoes in my hand.

Danny is twenty-three. He works in Billings doing something with computers I pretend to understand. He calls on Sundays after church and always asks if I need anything from town. He doesn’t call at five in the morning with his voice cracked open like that unless something is very, very wrong.

I looked at the red coat. Wool, double-breasted, warm as a hug. I’d worn it every winter for the past eight years, ever since my daughter Grace bought it for me at the outlet mall in Great Falls. “So the drivers can see you, Mom,” she’d said, tucking the tags into my purse. “Bright and safe.”

I got up slowly, knees protesting the cold, and pulled my old brown barn jacket from the closet instead. It smelled like hay and diesel and forty years of Montana winters. It had been my husband Carl’s before the cancer took him. I hadn’t worn it in public in a decade.

But if Danny said don’t wear the red coat, I wasn’t wearing the red coat.

The Bus Stop

At 9:00 I walked to the county road in my brown barn jacket, my boots crunching through frost that hadn’t melted since Halloween. The morning was the kind of cold that makes your lungs ache, the kind where breath turns to fog and hangs in the air like unspoken truths.

The bus stop sat at the intersection of County Road 47 and the old Miller property—a wooden shelter with a bench and a roof that leaked when it rained. I’d been catching the senior shuttle there every Tuesday and Thursday for five years, riding into town for groceries, library books, and the kind of small-town conversation that keeps you tethered to the living world.

But there was no bus.

Police cruisers instead—lights washing the frost in bloody red and cold blue. Yellow tape around the shelter where I’ve read chapters of worn paperbacks and watched wheat bend under wind for half a decade.

My stomach dropped like a stone into deep water.

Sheriff Tom Whitlock met me halfway up the road, that careful neighbor-look he saves for bad news carved into his weathered face. We’d gone to high school together a lifetime ago. He’d been at Carl’s funeral. He knew the shape of my life.

“Alexia…” He took off his hat, worrying the brim between his thick fingers. “A woman was found at six this morning. She was wearing a red coat. Cherry red.”

The world went slant. He caught my elbow as my knees loosened.

“You’ve gone pale,” he said, guiding me to sit on the cruiser’s bumper. “You need water? Clara’s got a thermos—”

“Danny called me,” I said, my voice coming from somewhere outside my body. “At five. Told me not to wear mine. My red coat.”

Tom’s expression changed. Not surprise—something sharper. Recognition. The look of a puzzle piece clicking into place.

“What did he say exactly?” Tom asked, pulling out a small notepad.

“He said, ‘Grandma, don’t wear your red coat today. You’ll understand soon.'” My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against my thighs. “Who was she? The woman?”

Tom glanced back at the yellow tape, at the shape under the tarp they hadn’t moved yet, at the evidence markers glinting in the cold light.

“Rachel Morrison,” he said quietly. “Works—worked—at County Records. Forty-two. Single. No next of kin in state.”

The name meant nothing to me. I shook my head.

“Never heard of her.”

“She had your grandson’s number in her phone,” Tom said. “Called him six times yesterday. He called her back twice.”

My breath caught.

“That’s impossible. Danny doesn’t know anyone at County Records. He works in Billings. He’s barely home.”

Tom studied my face for a long moment.

“Alexia, when’s the last time you saw Danny?”

“Sunday. Family dinner at Grace’s house. He helped me carry the pie to the car.”

“And since then?”

“Nothing. Just the call this morning.”

Tom wrote something down, his jaw tight.

“I’m going to need you to come to the station later,” he said. “Detective Merrick will want to talk to you. And Alexia—don’t go anywhere alone today. You understand me?”

I nodded, not understanding anything.

The Detective

By noon, I was sitting in a gray room at the county sheriff’s office, staring at my reflection in a two-way mirror while Detective Linda Merrick asked me about my routines.

“You take the senior shuttle every Tuesday and Thursday?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Always at 9:15?”

“Yes.”

“Always from the same stop?”

“Yes.”

“Who knows your schedule?”

I thought about it. “Everyone, I suppose. It’s a small town. People see me walking. The driver knows. My daughter knows. My grandson—”

“Let’s talk about Danny,” Merrick said, leaning forward. She was younger than me by thirty years but had eyes that looked like they’d seen twice as much. “How often do you speak with him?”

“Sundays, mostly. Sometimes he stops by the farm if he’s driving through.”

“Does he have financial troubles you’re aware of?”

“No. He has a good job. Why?”

She didn’t answer directly.

“Do you have a will, Mrs. Keller?”

The question felt like a slap.

“Of course I do. The farm goes to Grace and Danny when I die. Split down the middle. It’s been that way since Carl passed.”

“And the farm is worth?”

“About four hundred acres. Prime wheat land. Carl’s family homesteaded it in 1902. It’s been appraised at—” I stopped, suddenly understanding where this was going. “Around two million, depending on the market.”

Merrick wrote something down.

“Mrs. Keller, I’m going to show you something. It may be upsetting.”

She slid a folder across the table. Inside was a photocopy of a property deed.

Alexia Marie Keller hereby transfers ownership of the property located at 4721 County Road 47, comprising approximately 400 acres…

The signature at the bottom looked like mine. But I’d never signed it.

“This was recorded three weeks ago at County Records,” Merrick said. “Rachel Morrison processed it. The property was transferred to a trust. Do you know anything about this?”

My mouth went dry.

“No. I never signed that. I would never—”

“The notary stamp is from a mobile service that operates in Cascade County,” Merrick continued. “The witness signature belongs to someone named V. Halloway. Does that name mean anything to you?”

V. Halloway.

Vanessa Halloway.

My daughter-in-law.

Danny’s mother.

Sunday Dinner

I remembered Sunday dinner now—details I’d let slip past me in the moment suddenly sharpening into focus like frost forming on glass.

Vanessa pushing glossy brochures across the table, past the mashed potatoes and the green bean casserole. “Independent living. Safer for everyone, Mom.”

She’d never called me Mom before. It had always been Alexia, clipped and formal, a name that kept distance between us like a wall you can’t see but always feel.

“I’m fine where I am,” I’d said, pushing the brochures back.

“Are you?” Vanessa had smiled, the kind of smile that doesn’t reach the eyes. “You’re seventy-eight, Alexia. That’s a lot of land to manage. A lot of risk. What if you fall? What if something happens and no one finds you for days?”

“I have my phone.”

“Cell service is spotty out there. You know that.”

Grace had been quiet, picking at her pot roast, not meeting my eyes. Danny had excused himself to help with dishes, his shoulders tight, his movements too careful.

And Vanessa had kept talking, her voice sweet as poison, about safety and security and how much easier things would be if I just let them handle the property, let them take care of things, let them move me somewhere with other people my age.

“You’d love it, Mom. There’s bingo on Wednesdays.”

I’d laughed then, a sharp sound that made Grace flinch.

“I’ve lived on that land my whole life,” I’d said. “Carl proposed to me in the north field. Grace learned to walk in the kitchen. Danny caught his first fish in the creek. You think I’m going to leave that for bingo?”

Vanessa’s smile had frozen.

“Of course not,” she’d said. “I’m just worried about you. We all are.”

We all are.

But Grace hadn’t said a word.

And Danny had stayed in the kitchen until it was time to leave.

Now, sitting in the detective’s office, staring at a forged deed with my daughter-in-law’s name on it, I understood what I’d been too stubborn—or too trusting—to see.

Vanessa wanted my farm.

And Rachel Morrison had been helping her get it.

The Morning After

Detective Merrick kept me at the station until three, asking the same questions in different ways, looking for cracks in my story that didn’t exist because I was telling the truth.

Finally, Tom drove me home in his cruiser, the silence between us heavy with things neither of us knew how to say.

“You think Danny’s involved?” I asked as we turned onto the gravel road that led to my house.

Tom’s hands tightened on the wheel.

“I think your grandson called you at five in the morning and told you not to wear a coat that might’ve gotten you killed,” he said. “That tells me he knew something. Whether he was part of it or trying to stop it—that’s what we need to figure out.”

He pulled into my driveway, the old farmhouse rising up in the late afternoon light like a ship anchored against the prairie. Carl had painted it yellow the year before he died. It needed another coat.

“Don’t answer the door unless you know who it is,” Tom said. “Don’t go anywhere alone. And Alexia—if Danny contacts you again, you call me immediately. You understand?”

“I understand.”

But I didn’t plan to follow that last instruction.

Because if Danny was in trouble—if he’d tried to warn me, tried to save me—then I wasn’t going to throw him to the wolves.

Not my grandson.

Not the boy who used to help me feed the chickens and read to me from library books on Sunday afternoons and called me every week just to hear my voice.

I waited until Tom’s cruiser disappeared down the road, dust rising in its wake like smoke signals. Then I went inside, locked the door, and sat at the kitchen table with my phone in my hand.

At midnight, it buzzed.

A text from a number I didn’t recognize.

Grandma. Meet me at the old mill. Come alone. Remember strawberry summer.

Strawberry summer.

The code we’d made up when Danny was eight and convinced someone was following us at the farmers market. If one of us ever needed help and couldn’t say it out loud, we’d use those words.

I grabbed my keys, my brown barn jacket, and the .38 revolver Carl had taught me to shoot forty years ago.

Then I drove into the dark.

The Old Mill

The Jensen Mill had been abandoned since the eighties, a sagging skeleton of wood and rust off Highway 89, half-hidden by pine trees and time. Kids used to dare each other to go inside. Adults pretended it didn’t exist.

I parked a quarter mile away and walked in, my flashlight cutting thin paths through the dark. The forest pressed close, pine needles muffling my footsteps, the cold so sharp it felt like breathing glass.

I’d driven carefully, watching for headlights, taking backroads and doubling back twice to make sure no one followed. Tom would be furious if he knew. Merrick would probably arrest me for obstruction.

But this was my grandson.

The mill rose up out of the darkness like a monument to something forgotten. The main structure was three stories, the upper floors accessible by an exterior staircase that looked like it might collapse if you breathed on it wrong.

I climbed carefully, one hand on the rusted railing, one hand on the revolver in my pocket.

Danny was waiting on the second floor, silhouetted against a broken window, shaking like a man coming apart at the seams.

“Grandma,” he said, his voice cracking. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

I crossed to him and pulled him into a hug, feeling how thin he’d gotten, how his heart was racing against my chest like a trapped bird.

“Tell me what happened,” I said quietly.

He pulled back, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, looking twelve years old again in the dim light.

“Mom came to me three months ago,” he said. “Said she needed help with something legal. Said you were getting older, that we needed to protect the farm in case something happened to you. She had papers. She said you’d already agreed, that you just needed someone to witness the signature for the notary.”

My stomach turned.

“I didn’t know,” Danny continued, his voice breaking. “I swear to God, Grandma, I didn’t know she was forging your name. I thought—she showed me texts from your number. She said you were embarrassed about needing help, that you didn’t want to admit you couldn’t handle things anymore.”

“She faked texts from me?”

“She had your phone at Sunday dinner. Remember? You left it on the counter when you went to the bathroom. She said she was just checking the time.”

I remembered. I’d come back and found Vanessa holding it, smiling.

“When did you figure it out?” I asked.

“Two weeks ago. I went to County Records to get a copy of the deed—Mom said she’d lost hers. Rachel Morrison pulled the file and I saw the signature. I know your handwriting, Grandma. I’ve seen it on birthday cards my whole life. That wasn’t you.”

He pulled a thumb drive from his pocket, holding it like evidence at a trial.

“I confronted Rachel. She broke down. Said Mom paid her five thousand dollars to process fake paperwork. Said there were others—two other properties Mom had ‘acquired’ the same way from elderly clients at her real estate firm. Rachel wanted out. She was terrified. She said she’d go to the police with me, that she’d testify, but she needed proof first. She asked for my help getting into Mom’s office files.”

“That’s why she called you,” I said.

Danny nodded.

“Yesterday, Rachel said she had everything. She was going to meet you at the bus stop this morning, confess everything, give you copies of all the documents. She said she’d wear your red coat so you’d recognize her from a distance—she’d seen pictures of you on Mom’s phone.”

The pieces clicked into place with the sound of a gun cocking.

“Your mother knew,” I said.

“I think Rachel told her,” Danny whispered. “Or Mom figured it out. I don’t know. But yesterday afternoon, Mom called me and asked if I’d spoken to anyone at County Records lately. She was too calm. Too careful. I knew something was wrong.”

“So you called me at five.”

“I didn’t know what else to do. I was terrified. If Rachel was going to wear your coat, and Mom knew Rachel was planning to confess—”

His voice broke completely.

“I thought Mom might—I didn’t want to believe it, but I thought she might hurt Rachel thinking it was you. I thought if you didn’t wear the coat, if Rachel was alone—”

He stopped, realization dawning on his face like a curse.

“Oh God,” he whispered. “I got her killed. Rachel died because I was trying to save you.”

I grabbed his shoulders, forcing him to look at me.

“No,” I said firmly. “Your mother did this. Not you. You tried to stop it. You saved my life.”

Footsteps echoed below us. Heavy, deliberate. The creak of someone on the stairs.

Danny’s eyes went wide with terror.

“I think I was followed,” he whispered.

I pulled the revolver from my pocket, the weight of it familiar and terrible in my hand. Carl’s voice in my head: Always know what you’re aiming at, Lexie. No warning shots. If you pull that trigger, you mean it.

A deputy’s silhouette filled the doorway, flashlight beam cutting through the dark. Deputy Marcus Chen, young and earnest, one of Tom’s best.

“Mrs. Keller?” he called. “Danny? Sheriff Whitlock sent me. He said—”

He stopped.

Because behind him, framed in the doorway, was Vanessa.

She was holding a gun.

The Confession

“Mom,” Danny said, his voice hollow. “What are you doing?”

Vanessa stepped forward, the gun steady in her hand, her face composed in a way that made my blood run cold. This wasn’t panic. This wasn’t desperation. This was someone who’d made a decision and intended to see it through.

“Protecting my investment,” she said calmly.

Deputy Chen’s hand moved toward his holster. Vanessa shot him.

The sound cracked through the mill like the world splitting open. Chen went down hard, clutching his shoulder, blood spreading dark across his uniform.

Danny lunged forward. “Mom, stop! What are you—”

“Stay back,” Vanessa snapped, swinging the gun toward him. “Both of you. Don’t move.”

I kept my revolver low, hidden in the shadow of my jacket. Carl’s voice again: Surprise is the only advantage you get once. Use it.

“You killed Rachel,” I said, keeping my voice steady.

Vanessa’s smile was cold as the Montana wind.

“Rachel made a choice,” she said. “A stupid choice. She was going to ruin everything because she got scared. Well, scared people make mistakes. And mistakes have consequences.”

“She was going to confess,” Danny said, his voice shaking. “She was going to tell the truth.”

“The truth,” Vanessa repeated, almost laughing. “The truth is that Alexia is seventy-eight years old and living alone on four hundred acres of prime real estate that’s worth a fortune. The truth is that she’s one fall, one stroke, one winter storm away from dying out there and no one finding her for weeks. The truth is that I’ve been managing her affairs—quietly, efficiently—to make sure that when something does happen, the transition is smooth. Legal. Proper.”

“You forged my signature,” I said.

“I protected an asset,” Vanessa corrected. “You’re stubborn, Alexia. You won’t admit you need help. You won’t admit you’re too old to manage that property. So I did what needed to be done.”

“You committed fraud,” Danny said.

“I secured our future,” Vanessa shot back. “Your future, Danny. That land is worth millions. Do you know what we could do with that kind of money? The life we could have?”

“I don’t want it,” Danny said quietly. “Not like this.”

Vanessa’s expression hardened.

“You don’t get to choose,” she said. “Rachel was going to destroy everything. She was going to wear that ridiculous red coat and play hero, hand over documents that would’ve sent me to prison and left us with nothing. So I made sure she couldn’t.”

“You shot her,” I said.

“I removed an obstacle,” Vanessa corrected. “I followed her to the bus stop this morning. It was easy. She thought I was coming to apologize, to offer her more money to stay quiet. She turned her back. It was quick.”

Chen groaned on the floor, trying to reach his radio. Vanessa kicked it away, the sound of plastic skittering across wood sharp in the silence.

“And now,” Vanessa said, turning the gun back toward me, “we’re going to finish this. Alexia, you’re going to come with me. We’re going to drive back to your house. You’re going to write a note—a suicide note—about how you couldn’t handle being alone anymore, how you wanted to end things on your terms. Then you’re going to take the pills I brought, go to sleep, and this will all be over.”

“You’re insane,” Danny whispered.

“I’m practical,” Vanessa said. “And you’re going to help me, Danny. Because if you don’t, I’ll tell the police you were part of this from the beginning. That you helped forge the documents. That you paid Rachel. That you killed her when she threatened to expose you.”

“No one will believe that,” I said.

“Won’t they?” Vanessa smiled. “You’re biased, Alexia. You love him. But the evidence is clear. Danny’s number all over Rachel’s phone. His fingerprints on the deed. His truck seen near the bus stop yesterday afternoon—yes, I made sure of that. If I go down, he goes down with me.”

Danny looked at me, his eyes wet, his face pale.

“Grandma, I’m sorry. I’m so—”

“Don’t,” I said. Then, to Vanessa: “You won’t get away with this.”

“I already have,” Vanessa said. “Rachel’s dead. Chen will be too, once we’re done here—unfortunate accident during a confrontation with suspects. You’ll be gone by morning. And Danny will keep his mouth shut if he knows what’s good for him.”

She raised the gun, aiming at my chest.

“Now,” she said. “Let’s go.”

I pulled the revolver from my jacket and shot her in the leg.

The Aftermath

Vanessa went down screaming, the gun flying from her hand, clattering across the floor. Danny grabbed it before she could recover, his hands shaking so badly he nearly dropped it twice.

I kept my revolver trained on her, my heart hammering, Carl’s voice steady in my head: Center mass if you’re trying to kill. Extremities if you’re trying to stop. You chose mercy, Lexie. Now make sure it counts.

“Call for help,” I told Danny. “Use Chen’s radio.”

He scrambled to comply, his voice cracking as he called for backup, for an ambulance, for Tom.

Chen was conscious, pale but alive, applying pressure to his shoulder with shaking hands.

“You shot her,” he said, almost laughing. “Mrs. Keller, you shot her.”

“I shot at her,” I corrected. “Big difference.”

Vanessa was sobbing now, clutching her leg, blood seeping between her fingers. “You can’t do this. I’m your daughter-in-law. I’m family.”

“Family doesn’t forge signatures,” I said. “Family doesn’t commit murder. And family sure as hell doesn’t threaten grandmothers at gunpoint.”

Within ten minutes, the mill was swarming with deputies. Tom arrived looking like someone had told him the world was ending and he’d missed the memo.

“Alexia,” he said, taking in the scene—Vanessa on the floor, Chen bleeding, Danny pale as death, me holding a smoking revolver. “What in the hell happened here?”

“Evidence,” I said, handing him the thumb drive Danny had been clutching. “Rachel Morrison was going to testify against Vanessa. She was murdered for it. Everything you need is on there.”

Tom took the drive, his jaw tight.

“You should have called me,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “But he’s my grandson. And she was going to kill him too.”

The paramedics loaded Chen first, then Vanessa, who was still screaming about lawyers and rights and how this was all a misunderstanding. Danny sat on the floor, his head in his hands, shaking.

I sat down next to him, close enough that our shoulders touched.

“You saved my life,” I said quietly.

“I almost got you killed,” he whispered.

“Almost doesn’t count.”

He looked at me, his eyes red and raw.

“What happens now?” he asked.

“Now?” I said. “Now we go home. Now we fix what needs fixing. Now we remember that family is the people who show up when things fall apart, not the people who try to profit from it.”

Tom drove us back to the farm as dawn broke over the prairie, the sky turning from black to gray to that particular shade of Montana gold that makes you believe in new days even when you’ve survived the worst nights.

Grace was waiting on the porch, her face streaked with tears. She ran to Danny, pulled him into her arms, whispered apologies into his hair.

“I didn’t know,” she kept saying. “I swear, I didn’t know what Vanessa was planning. I thought—I just thought she was trying to help.”

“I know, Mom,” Danny said. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”

But we weren’t okay. Not yet. Maybe not for a long time.

Vanessa was charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, fraud, and a list of other crimes that would keep her in prison for the rest of her life. The thumb drive contained everything—emails, financial records, forged documents from three other victims, payment records showing she’d hired Rachel and then tried to silence her.

Grace filed for divorce before the arraignment. She moved back into the farmhouse with Danny, into the rooms they’d grown up in, the rooms that still held the echoes of better days.

We didn’t talk about Vanessa much after that. What was there to say? She’d made her choices. She’d live with them.

Six Months Later

Spring came to Montana the way it always does—late, grudging, beautiful. The wheat fields turned green, the creek ran high with snowmelt, and the red coat hung on its peg by the door, unworn.

I couldn’t bring myself to wear it anymore. Couldn’t separate the color from the blood, from Rachel Morrison’s cold body at the bus stop, from the woman who’d tried to wear my life like a stolen garment.

Danny gave me a new coat for Mother’s Day. Blue, soft as clouds, warm enough for Montana winters.

“No one will mistake you for anyone else in this,” he said, helping me try it on.

“That’s the idea,” I said.

We were sitting on the porch, watching the sun set over land that had belonged to my family for four generations and would belong to it for four more, when Tom’s cruiser pulled up the drive.

He got out slowly, hat in hand, the careful walk of someone bringing news.

“Alexia,” he said. “Got something you should know.”

“Bad news or good news?”

“Complicated news,” he said. “They found two more victims. Women Vanessa targeted the same way she targeted you. One in Great Falls, one in Bozeman. Both elderly, both living alone on valuable property, both with forged deeds transferring ownership to shell companies Vanessa controlled.”

My stomach sank.

“Are they—”

“Alive,” Tom said quickly. “Both alive. The properties are being returned. But Alexia… without Rachel’s testimony, without what Danny found, they never would’ve been discovered. You saved more than just yourself.”

I thought about Rachel Morrison. Forty-two. Single. Scared. Trying to do the right thing in the end and dying for it.

“I want to pay for her funeral,” I said. “Proper headstone. Whatever it costs.”

Tom nodded.

“I think she’d like that.”

After he left, Danny and I sat in the quiet, watching stars prick through the darkening sky.

“You think about her?” he asked. “Rachel?”

“Every day,” I said. “She tried to save me. She died in my place.”

“She died because Mom—” He stopped, correcting himself. “Because Vanessa was a murderer.”

“Both things are true,” I said.

We sat with that truth, with the weight of it, with the unfairness of a world where good people die for trying and bad people almost get away with it.

“Grandma,” Danny said finally. “That morning. When I called you. I was so scared.”

“Me too,” I admitted.

“But you came anyway. To the mill. Even though it was dangerous.”

“You’re my grandson,” I said. “I’d walk into hell for you. The mill was just inconvenient.”

He laughed, a sound like breaking ice, and leaned his head on my shoulder the way he used to when he was small.

“I love you,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “That’s why you called at five a.m. and told me not to wear my red coat.”

We sat there as the stars came out in full, as the prairie wind carried the smell of growing things, as the farmhouse lights glowed warm behind us.

The red coat stayed on its peg.

But the blue one hung beside it, ready for the next cold morning, the next walk to the bus stop, the next ordinary day that proves you’re still alive, still here, still fighting for the land and the life and the people you love.

Because in the end, that’s what family is.

Not blood. Not obligation. Not claims on property or forged signatures or glossy brochures about independent living.

Family is the person who calls you at five in the morning to save your life.

Family is the detective who keeps digging until justice is served.

Family is the deputy who takes a bullet and still calls for backup.

Family is the daughter who comes home when things fall apart and says, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Let me help fix this.

Family is the grandmother who drives into the dark with a revolver in her pocket and the memory of strawberry summer in her heart, ready to fight for the boy who once helped her feed chickens and still calls every Sunday just to hear her voice.

The farm stayed in the family.

The land stayed ours.

And every Tuesday and Thursday, I still catch the bus into town—wearing my blue coat now, bright and warm and impossible to mistake for anyone else.

Because I’m Alexia Keller.

I survived seventy-eight winters, a bad marriage, a good one, three droughts, two floods, and a daughter-in-law who tried to steal my life.

And I’m still here.

Still standing.

Still watching the wheat grow and the stars rise and the seasons turn.

Still wearing my coat—the right one this time—and walking the roads my family walked before me, on land that will outlast us all.