Chapter 3: Matches And Mirrors

The sun was low by the time Vivian parked behind the diner again. The Mustang’s engine ticked as it cooled, the metal echoing like a clock counting down the seconds until her next move.

Inside, the dinner crowd had settled in: farmers in muddy boots, tired waitresses with hair pinned back tight, the smell of burnt coffee and fried chicken clinging to everything. Willow Creek might have been dying, but the diner stayed alive out of stubbornness.

Vivian took the corner booth this time — back to the wall, eyes on the door. Old habits. She stirred her black coffee with a chipped spoon, watching the reflection swirl.

She’d rattled Daniel this morning. She’d seen it — the twitch of his jaw, the tightness in his grip on the glass. He’d bury it fast. He’d tell himself Vivian Hart was nothing, just a name, a coincidence. But the seed was planted. And she’d be the one to watch him rot from the inside out.

“Viv?”

The voice yanked her back — soft, disbelieving, sharp with memory. She looked up into a pair of brown eyes she hadn’t seen in five years.

Grace Miller. Her best friend — once. Before Daniel poisoned everything.

Grace looked older, tired around the edges. Her hair was pulled into a messy knot, flour dusted on her jeans — she must have come straight from the bakery her mother left her. She held a pot of coffee like a shield.

“Jesus Christ,” Grace whispered, sinking into the booth across from her. “You’re supposed to be—” She caught herself. Looked around. Dropped her voice. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

Vivian’s smile was quick and cold. “I was.”

Grace’s eyes darted around the diner. “If Daniel knows—”

“He knows something,” Vivian said. “That’s the point.”

Grace exhaled a laugh that cracked into something like a sob. “I watched them drag the river, Viv. I put flowers on that goddamn bridge.”

Vivian reached across the sticky table, covering Grace’s hand with hers. “And now you’re going to help me finish this.”

Grace pulled back, rubbing her temples. “You think I can just… what? Pick up where we left off? Pretend you didn’t let me bury you?”

Vivian’s voice hardened. “You want him to get away with it? With everything he did to me — to us? He ruined your father, Grace. He took your shop, your family’s land. I know you know it. We were both collateral.”

Grace’s eyes glistened. She stared at her coffee cup like she could drown in it. “If he finds out I’m talking to you—”

Vivian’s laugh was low, humorless. “Oh, honey. He will. And that’s the point.”

---

Outside the window, a cruiser rolled by, slow enough to make its presence known. Sheriff Jack Callahan, eyes hidden by mirrored sunglasses, one hand on the wheel. Watching her again.

Grace noticed. “The new sheriff’s good people. Better than the last. Be careful with him.”

Vivian shrugged. “He’ll keep Daniel honest — for now.”

Grace barked a soft laugh. “You planning to tell him who you really are?”

Vivian didn’t answer. She slid a slip of paper across the table — a name, an address. “Can you get me inside the bookkeeping for the pipeline deal? I know Daniel’s bleeding money somewhere. I just need proof.”

Grace stared at the paper, then at Vivian. “You’re gonna burn it all down, aren’t you?”

Vivian’s smile was sharp as broken glass. “That’s the plan.”

---

When she left the diner, the sheriff was waiting by his truck.

“Evening, Miss Hart,” Jack said, voice mild. “You find what you were looking for up there on the hill?”

Vivian stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets, cool as the night air. “Just flowers.”

Jack cocked his head, studying her face like a puzzle he wasn’t sure he wanted to solve. “You know, it’s funny. We don’t get many strangers who stroll right up to Daniel Winters’ front door. Most folks around here know better.”

Vivian stepped closer, close enough to smell the faint trace of soap and the pine from his coat. “You think I should be afraid of him?”

Jack’s jaw tightened. “I think you should tell me the truth about what you’re really doing here. Before you end up like the last woman who crossed him.”

Vivian’s smile was slow, almost sad. “Maybe I already did.”

Jack stared at her like he might say something more — like he wanted to pull the truth out of her throat with his bare hands. But he didn’t. He just opened the truck door and climbed inside, leaving her standing there in the dark with the streetlight haloed around her like a crown of thorns.

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Back at the motel, Vivian spread out her notes under the humming yellow lamp. Daniel’s fake charities. The shell companies. Offshore accounts. All connected by the same rotting thread. And at the center of it all — his desperate need to keep the world believing he was still Willow Creek’s shining son.

She thumbed through old photos — her wedding day, a perfect smile frozen forever beside a man whose hand rested a little too tight on her waist. She wondered if Jack Callahan would still look at her the same if he knew the truth. If he knew she was the ghost everyone in town had learned to forget.

She didn’t have an answer for that.

But she didn’t have time for hope, either.

Hope was for people who could afford to lose.

Vivian switched off the lamp. In the dark, she could almost hear the roses scratching at the windows of the Winters Estate. Roots deep in rotten soil. Waiting to be torn out.

She was coming for all of it.

And no one — not Daniel, not Jack, not even the broken piece of her heart still clinging to the past — would stop her this time.

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