Mystery
At
Greenhollow

There would be no more funerals.

Summer emerged softly onto Greenhollow, lengthening the grass and bowing it low to the ground beneath a blue-and-cloud pinstriped sky. Every day, Emma and Red were outside, faces turned to the sky. The light after the endless winter was welcoming and reassuring. There were no secrets to hide in the sunshine.

The night Hannah had gotten arrested was a bit of a blur, even now. Emma remembered Red being loaded into an ambulance, and Hannah shoved, face bloody, into the backseat of a patrol car. Officer Davis had pulled Emma aside, where she stood, soaking wet and shivering, shoulder braced against the panels of the corral. “What happened here?” he had asked.

“It was Hannah,” Emma heard herself say. “She killed Catherine. And Herring… and Hart.”

Davis frowned and lightly brushed a thumb across Emma’s cheek before holding it up to show it shining with blood. “You’ve hit your head.”

“I was concussed. Last week, in a horse accident. But I’m not making it up,” Emma insisted. “She tried to kill Red- he’ll testify.”

“I believe you,” Davis said. “But- why?”

Emma closed her eyes. Rain slicked down her eyelids, dripping down her neck, her shirt. Her arms shook beneath the weight of the crutches, and as she paused to rebalance, she felt a hot blast of air from behind her. Spartan, wandering over to the fence to investigate the commotion. “Her horse,” Emma finally said. “He’s… wild. Nobody wanted him at their barns. I think she got desperate to find him a home.”

“Her horse,” Davis said flatly. “She did all this for… her horse.”

Emma thought of Willow, and her soft eyes and questioning ears, and the view of the farm between her ears on their dawn rides. She thought of Red, and the way he carried his grief for Grimm. She even thought of Hannah, and the way she tried with Spartan, really tried, even though the horse was truly the most inconsolable creature she had ever encountered, and Emma nodded. She couldn’t forgive Hannah, but she could understand her.

“Yes,” she said, and held a hand out. Spartan whuffed at it, ears flicking uncertainly, but for the first time he did not pin them. “She did all this for him.”

The rain began to fall in earnest.

Now Emma and Red made their way up the hills above Greenhollow. It was a gorgeous summer evening, windswept, with wildflowers in full bloom dotting the landscape. Grimm’s horseshoe swung from Red’s hands, a picture of Catherine pressed between glass in the middle of it.

“Are you sure?” Emma asked.

“I am,” Red said. They walked slowly. Emma’s ankle still ached, and Red stopped every few seconds to watch her with concern, but their pace had less to do with that and more to do with the reverence with which they climbed the hill. “It’s time to move on.”

They were going to put the horseshoe in one of the small sapling oaks that grew on the fringes of Greenhollow. It had survived the winter, and it would survive many more to come, and though Red intended on putting the shoe on one of the lower branches, in a few years it would grow, carrying Catherine’s image high so she could watch the farm she had so proudly built from above.

Emma glanced over her shoulder. Horses grazed beneath them, shining in the summer sun. Willow was one of them, finally allowed outside again. Emma found her slender bay form easily, standing in the shade of the barn, head lowered and one hind leg cocked in rest.

Beyond Willow’s paddock was Spartan, massive and gleaming. They’d finally turned him out with a small herd of geldings, and though he wasn’t quite settled, he was beginning to learn how to behave like a horse. Emma wasn’t sure what the future had in store for the gelding. He was as talented as he was difficult. It was possible that his story was just beginning, but it was possible that it was at an end, too. Maybe Hannah had finally found him a home.

Not that she would ever be able to appreciate it. When Emma thought of her, she didn’t think of the betrayal, of Hannah living beneath the roof of the woman she’d killed. She didn’t even think of her casting doubt upon Red. No, when she thought of Hannah, she thought of her desperate love for her horse, and how she had thought there was no other option.

“I don't want that to happen again,” Emma said out loud, and Red gave her an odd look. "What happened to Hannah. I don't want people to feel like they and their horses are unsafe, the way she felt about Spartan.”

"You can't control the world," Red said.

"No, but I can control what happens here. I want Greenhollow to be a home." She felt something shift in her, then. She wasn't running Greenhollow for Catherine anymore. This was her home now, her future. She wanted it to be as bright as possible.

Red studied her for a long moment. She couldn't read his expression as he finally said, "I think my grandmother would've liked that."

They stopped beneath the cool shade of the tree. A breeze lifted Emma's hair from the back of her neck and tossed the collar of Red's shirt. "Here?"

"Here," Emma agreed, and Red stretched onto his toes to hang the shoe up over one of the branches before stepping back to admire his handiwork.

"That shoe's been in my room ever since Grimm died," he admitted. "I wasn't sure if I would be ready to ever let it go. But it seems right that he and Catherine be here. She's the one that brought Grimm and I together. Greenhollow's where my story began."

A chill ran down Emma's spine. This felt like a goodbye.

"I graduate this fall." Red's eyes were cast on the branches above. "I may… I may leave."

“I want you to stay,” she said instantly. Red didn’t move, but Emma saw the way his breath caught in his chest. She added, softer, “I need you to.”

"You've done incredible work with the farm. You don't need me."

But it wasn't running the farm she was thinking about. It was wrestling Christmas trees into place and tossing bits of yarn at Rocco the barn cat. It was "Emma? Oh, thank god," and her heartbeat smashed against his. It was late nights grieving and late nights laughing. It was looking at him and knowing that he understood her in a way nobody else ever could.

It was the thing she had never been brave enough to say before. "I'm not talking about Greenhollow."

Silence rippled through the valley. The grass bent and the wind murmured on. They stood there for a long time, watching the shadows lengthen and the sun creep back towards the horizon. Emma had nothing left to say. She'd laid her heart as bare as she could. Red stood beside her, and they gazed up into the tree, Catherine smiling down at them, Grimm's shoe flashing and glittering in the late summer sunset.

“Come on,” Red finally said, and he held a hand out to Emma. “Let’s go home.”

She took it, and together they turned, walking through the wildflowers, back down the hill where Greenhollow and all its inhabitants were spread out beneath them like a perfect little map.