Page 17 of Where the Roses Bloom (Gospels & Grimoires #1)

Rhett

We came down the attic stairs quiet.

Willow walked beside me, her fingers still wrapped in mine, the other hand curled protectively around that bundle of letters like she could feel the heat of Hazel’s words through the envelopes. I didn’t blame her. The weight of it settled between my ribs too—dense and humming.

We didn’t head to the kitchen or the porch or anywhere else that might distract from what we held. We went straight to the front room, the one Hazel always called the heart of the house. The lace curtains swayed a little with the breeze, casting slow-moving shadows across the floorboards.

I sank onto the couch and tugged Willow down beside me, pulling her in close without thinking. Her head fit against my shoulder like it belonged there.

For a moment, we just sat there. Breathing.

Then she tipped her head up toward me. “You wanna read them out loud?”

I nodded. My voice wouldn’t work yet, but my hands knew where to start.

I unwrapped the bundle again and pulled the top letter free. The paper was stiff with age but still strong. I swallowed and started to read.

My dearest boy,

If you’re reading this, it means she’s come. The woman I saw in my dreams, the one the roses spoke of. The one who changes everything.

I know you don’t believe in curses—not really. Not the way I did. But love is older than any curse, and she is the proof. I don’t know her name. I only know how she made me feel when I saw her: like the world was turning the right way again.

You’ll try to protect her. Of course you will. You’ve always carried too much on those shoulders. But she doesn’t need saving, baby. She needs someone to stand beside her. Someone who’ll walk into the dark and let her light the way out.

Let her. Trust her. And when the time comes…don’t be afraid to follow her lead. She’s not just yours—she’s ours. She belongs to this land. She’s the bloom that breaks our curse.

My throat locked up.

Willow didn’t say anything, but her hand moved against my chest, fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt.

I closed my eyes.

Hazel had known. Not just about the curse—but about her. About us.

About what this love would mean.

I folded the letter slowly, careful not to damage the paper.

“She knew,” I said. “Hazel knew it’d be you.”

Willow didn’t answer right away. She just leaned into me, her cheek against my shoulder, heart beating steady through the space between us.

“She saw me before I even got here,” she murmured. “What do you think that means?”

“I think…” I cleared my throat. “I think maybe this wasn’t an accident. You coming here. Us. Any of it.”

She looked down at the stack of letters still wrapped in the linen, then slowly unbound the next one.

The paper was different this time—thinner, brown at the edges, the ink faded. Hazel’s handwriting was still there, but older.

“Looks like she wrote this one years before the last,” Willow said softly.

“What if…” I swallowed. “What if she spent her whole life trying to find a way to break the curse? And the closer she got, the more she saw of you?”

Willow glanced at me, her expression unreadable. “You think I’m part of the fix?”

“I think you are the fix,” I said. “Hazel said you were the bloom that breaks the curse. That sounds like more than just metaphor.”

Willow ran her fingers over the edge of the next envelope, brow furrowed. “Then what’s in these? Instructions? Warnings? Visions?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I think we’re supposed to find out together.”

I thumbed open the second letter, this one dated nearly twenty years ago. The paper had yellowed deeper at the edges, and Hazel’s handwriting looked a little shakier.

I began to read.

My dearest boy,

I don’t know how to talk about this without my hands shaking.

Your daddy used to say that grief was like a storm: sudden, loud, cruel—and then gone. But I know better. Grief is a seed. It grows. Twists itself around your ribs and finds ways to bloom when you least expect it.

They were good people, your mama and daddy. They loved each other so much it scared me sometimes, because I knew what that meant for a Ward. And now they’re gone. Taken in a way that feels too sudden, too cruel—even for this cursed bloodline.

The curse doesn’t always strike like lightning. Sometimes it just waits.

I stopped. Pressed the edge of the letter to my lips for a second. Swallowed hard.

Willow reached for my hand. “You don’t have to read the rest out loud.”

“I want to,” I said. “I think I need to.”

I kept going.

I should have done more. I should have tried harder to break it back then. But I was afraid. Afraid that digging too deep might wake something worse. That trying to lift it might shift it onto your shoulders too soon.

But now you boys are all that’s left, and I won’t let this thing take you too.

If the first letter had felt prophetic, this one felt like a confession, a wound torn open on the page.

Willow blinked hard, swiping at her cheek. “She was trying,” she whispered. “She didn’t know how, but she was trying. Maybe…maybe that’s why she told you magic was nonsense—because she was keeping you safe and doing the work in secret.”

I nodded, throat too tight to answer. I reached for the next envelope in the stack—older still, the ink almost sepia now. The seal wasn’t glued but tucked, like it had been reopened a hundred times.

On the front, in her familiar, looping hand:

To no one. To him. To the air.

I didn’t even have to open it to know what it was.

Willow must’ve known too, because she whispered, “Your grandfather?”

I nodded, then opened the envelope.

I swore I wouldn’t write this down.

But grief has a way of rotting in the bones if you don’t bleed it out .

I don’t know where you went, John. I don’t know if the river swallowed you or if it was something else. All I know is you walked out into the woods that night, and you never came back.

They searched for you for weeks. Dogs. Volunteers. Flashlights cutting through fog and kudzu. But I knew better. I knew the moment you stepped off that porch, I’d lost you.

You said you didn’t believe in curses. That I was letting old stories turn me into a shell. You laughed when I salted the windows and burned rosemary under the full moon. You told me the past couldn’t hurt the future unless we let it.

But maybe the past didn’t need our permission.

You were good. You were steady. And I think the curse hated that about you.

Our son was born with your eyes.

And every time I looked at him, I swore I’d never let this curse touch him. But then the years passed. And the signs started showing again—dreams, deaths, things blooming where they shouldn’t.

Sometimes I wonder if Isadora’s blood runs thicker than ours. If this land loved her more than it ever loved us. Maybe it should have.

If you’re still out there…

If something took you…

I want you to know I loved you. I still do. And I’m still trying to break this thing before it takes anyone else.

I don’t want our son to grow up thinking love is a punishment.

I stopped. Let the page lower into my lap.

Willow was crying openly now, like Hazel’s pain was hers, too.

“She lost him before she ever had a chance to say goodbye,” she whispered.

“Just like Silas,” I said. “Just like my parents.”

“And yet she kept trying,” Willow said. “Even after all that. Even when it hurt.”

I nodded, jaw clenched hard.

“Rhett,” she said softly, touching my cheek. “She didn’t leave these letters just to confess. She left them because she believed someone could finish what she started.”

I looked down at the stack still resting on the coffee table.

“Then we better keep reading,” I said. “Because I’m done losing people I love.”

Willow nodded. “Me too.”

The next envelope was older—almost brittle. The paper had yellowed to a parchment hue, and the ink had bled a little at the edges. The handwriting was neater than Hazel’s, more formal, and the signature on the back read: Clara Ward.

“My great-grandmother,” I murmured. “Hazel’s mother-in-law. ”

Willow leaned in. “She must’ve kept this for Hazel. And Hazel kept it for you.”

I cracked the seal carefully, unfolding the pages slow. The writing inside was smooth and slanted, the kind of penmanship they don’t teach anymore.

To the women who come after:

If you are reading this, then I pray it means you’re ready to stop running.

I married into the Ward family when I was just seventeen.

I didn’t know the stories then—not really.

Just whispered things. Things you don’t repeat over tea.

But I knew the land felt heavy sometimes.

I knew the men didn’t laugh as much as they should.

And I knew love here had a way of blooming wild and dying young.

I lost my sister-in-law when I was twenty-two. I lost my own daughter before she turned thirty. I watched my husband mourn his father and his brother and say nothing when another tree split down the middle after a lightning strike. They all acted like it was just life. Just bad luck.

But it wasn’t.

It was the curse. And it knows us.

I tried to keep a record. Tried to mark the signs. The roses, always blooming out of season. The animals that won’t go near the grove. The way children here dream things they shouldn’t.

If you’re reading this, you’ve seen it too.

Maybe you’ve lost someone already.

Maybe you’re the first in a long time to love without fear.

Either way—keep going. Keep asking. The curse isn’t just a sentence. It’s a thread. And threads can be unspooled if you follow them all the way back.

Somewhere, there’s a knot waiting to be untied.

The curse was never just a warning. It was a map. Buried in bloom and bone. And if you want to find the end of it—start where the roots remember. Walk backward through what they burned.

She’ll guide you. She always does.

—Clara

I stared at the words, a cold shiver crawling down my spine. “What the hell does that mean?”

Willow’s eyes were still fixed on the page. Her lips parted slowly. “You said that Isadora was hung from a tree close to here, right?” she said. “I…I feel like I’ve seen it. A big tree in a clearing…a willow tree, split down the middle—right?”

I stared at her. “You can’t know that.”

“I know,” she whispered. “But I do. Rhett…I think we’re supposed to go.”

The wind outside shifted, brushing against the house. The lace curtains fluttered, even though the windows weren’t open.

“Tomorrow,” I said.

The windows rattled . Willow met my eyes.

“Not tomorrow. Today.”

I blinked. “ You sure?”

She nodded. “Whatever’s out there…it’s waiting. I can feel it.”

The wind rose once again, curtains swaying. A creak ran through the bones of the house, like it knew we were listening.

Willow stood, still holding the stack of letters. “I don’t want this hanging over us a single night longer. I need to know.”

I stood with her. “Then we’ll go.”

She looked at me, and for a second, I saw her not as the stranger who’d shown up in my driveway…but as the bloom Hazel had written about. The one the land had been dreaming of for generations. The one who would break the curse.

And as I looked into her eyes, I caught the faintest scent on the air.

Roses.

Blooming, out of season.

Calling us home.