Trigger Warnings by Chapter

Forewarned Section

• Grief and bereavement
• References to trauma and healing
• Brief mention of death

Prologue

• Murder/homicide
• Body disposal
• Death of a child (referenced)
• Extreme grief
• Self-harm (reference to scar)
• Dark humor about death
• Violence

Chapter 1

• Child death (past event, heavily referenced)
• Extreme grief and depression
• Suicide ideation (implied)
• Substance abuse (moonshine/alcohol)
• Social isolation
• Self-harm (accidental cutting)
• Disturbing dreams/nightmares
• Missing/murdered teenager
• Sexual assault (implied)

Chapter 2

• Discussion of murdered teenager
• Grooming of a minor
• Sexual predation
• Child loss and grief
• Police corruption
• Substance abuse (smoking)
• Sexual assault (heavily implied through text messages)

Chapter 3

• Vandalism/property destruction
• Discussion of child murder
• Corruption and cover-ups
• Threatening behavior
• Psychic/supernatural visions of violence
• Chase scene involving victim

Chapter 4

• Body discovery (corpse in trunk)
• Death/murder
• Spousal abuse and infidelity (discussed)
• Child loss
• Extreme grief
• Substance abuse

Chapter 5

• Nightmare involving dying child
• Blood and gore
• Discussion of murder
• Self-harm (reference to past cutting)
• Grief and trauma
• Planning violence

Chapter 6

• Discovery of corpse
• Spousal betrayal
• Child trafficking (implied)
• Murder of a spouse
• Infidelity
• Grooming

Chapter 7

• Corpse/dead body
• Discussion of murder
• Spousal abuse and betrayal
• Infidelity (multiple instances)
• Child death
• Abandonment during grief

Chapter 8

• Sexual content (implied/performed deception)
• Kidnapping
• Images of sexual violence against a minor (discovered evidence)
• Child sexual abuse material
• Violence (assault with weapon)
• Pedophilia

Chapter 9

• Kidnapping
• False imprisonment
• Sexual deception (pretending to be someone’s sexual partner)
• Planning murder
• Violence

Chapter 10

• Body disposal
• Murder
• Extreme violence
• Digging graves
• Death
• Dark humor about murder

Chapter 11

• Murder by shooting
• Graphic violence
• Body disposal
• Interrogation under duress
• Confession to multiple murders
• Serial predation
• Death of a parent (discussed)

Chapter 12

• References to body disposal methods
• Murder planning
• Substance abuse (smoking)
• PTSD
• Dark humor about violence

Epilogue

• References to past murders
• Corruption
• Implied future violence
• Blood (on another person)
• Trauma response

General Content Warnings Throughout:

• Extreme grief and child loss
• Vigilante justice
• Murder and violence
• Body disposal
• Dark humor about death and violence
• Substance abuse (alcohol, smoking)
• Self-harm (past and referenced)
• Sexual predation and grooming
• Child sexual abuse (referenced, not graphic)
• Police corruption
• Infidelity and spousal betrayal
• PTSD and trauma responses
• Suicide ideation (implied)
• Disturbing imagery
• Psychological manipulation

Note: This book contains extremely dark themes and should be approached with caution by readers sensitive to any of these topics. The dark humor throughout does not diminish the serious nature of these themes.

Prologue

I could tell you a thousand lies, a hundred truths, and none would touch reality. They might brush against it, like fingers testing bathwater for a baby who’s already drowned.

But nothing compares to the truth that waits beneath.

I’d rather tell the story. The fable. The myth. The version where justice comes in courtrooms instead of orchards.

But not today. Today my heart aches. Today I’m here for a different reason.

The moss feels soft beneath my knees—soft enough to sleep on, if you don’t mind the company six feet below. My therapist would call this mindfulness practice. She’d probably revise that opinion if she knew what I was being mindful of. Or maybe not.

Dr. Zanheim has surprised me before.

The earth here drinks differently than it used to. Greedier now. It knows what I bring.

“I’ve brought you a gift,” I whisper to the branches swaying above me. To the mountain that keeps my secrets. “Hope you’re hungry, because this one’s a feast.”

My apple tree stretches its roots deeper with every body I feed it. The fruit tastes different now—richer, complex. Like terroir, but for justice. My grandmother would say the earth recognizes its own kind. My therapist would say I’m projecting. At 2 AM with dirt under my fingernails and a corpse at my feet, both explanations seem equally valid.

That first apple after him?

That first bite brought me to my knees. Not metaphorically—literally collapsed in the dirt, laughing and sobbing like I’d discovered God in produce. Which, in a way, I had. He would’ve laughed at that. He always said my jokes were better after midnight and three drinks deep.

Turns out they’re best while committing felonies.

I brush leaves from the stone, my fingers finding the grooves I carved myself. The name that started it all. The name that taught me what justice looks like when the sheriff’s golf buddy walks free, when evidence gets lost, when a nineteen-year-old’s mother will search forever because no one else will.

The shovel feels light in my hands now. Or maybe I’m just disappearing—twenty pounds lighter since she died, all sharp edges where soft used to be. My wedding ring slides off without trying these days. I buried that last week, right next to my faith in system reform.

That first time, the shovel kept slipping from my trembling fingers. I stopped three times to vomit in the azaleas. Cried so hard over his body I thought I might drown in my own snot.

Kept apologizing—”Sorry, sorry, this is my first time, I’ll get better at this, I promise.” Like I was bad at sex instead of body disposal. Like he deserved courtesy after what he’d done.

Not tonight. Tonight my hands are steady. Tonight I’m a professional. I approach it like I used to approach a story—who, what, where, when, why. Except now the why is always the same. because three judges, two prosecutors, and one lawyer decided she was asking for it.

And the who is about to be fertilizer.

The sky opens above me, because of course it does. Even Pennsylvania weather has a sense of dramatic timing. Or maybe God weeps when justice is served cold. I’ve lost track of which things are signs and which are just these mountains being themselves.

I tilt my head back, let the rain wash away the salt on my skin. These aren’t tears of grief—they’re tears of completion. The kind that taste like copper pennies and settled scores. The kind that would make my mother say, “Evelyn, you’re being dramatic.” Yeah, well, Mom’s not the one with an orchard that could make the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was supposed to file the reports, trust the system I’d spent years writing about. Let them tell me there wasn’t enough evidence while he walked free, hunting his next girl. I was supposed to be a good victim’s mother. Quiet. Grateful for thoughts and prayers.

Start a fucking foundation or something.

For a split second, as lightning illuminates my work, I let myself believe the lie. That things would have been different if I’d stayed quiet, stayed helpless, stayed good.

I used to believe the system worked. That dead daughters got justice. That investigators investigated. Stupid, really, even when I was one of them, asking the questions that nobody wanted answered.

But imagination dissolves like rain into blood-rich ground. The truth lives in my bones now, carved as deep as my scars.

Some lessons can only be learned with dirt under your fingernails.

That first night, I learned I had a talent for this. Like discovering you can sing opera at forty-two, except the aria is a shovel and the audience is ghosts. “Would you like to hear some Puccini while I work?” I ask the corpse. “No? More of a Wagner night? I feel you.”

At least I don’t have to wipe the tears away. The rain’s good for that much.

I look at the world around me. What started as a small memorial garden has become something beyond my wildest imagination. Each rare bush, each shrub, each blade of grass fed by men who thought girls were disposable. Men whose lawyers played golf with judges. Men whose fathers donated to the right campaigns.

If they only knew.

Visitors will come tomorrow to walk these paths, admiring my rare botanical collection. They’ll taste apples from my tree, not knowing what makes them grow so sweet. They’ll photograph flowers that bloom from decay. They’ll leave five-star Yelp reviews about the transcendent apple cider and the mystical atmosphere, and I’ll screenshot every single one for my collection. Evidence of a different kind.

My daughter—my perfect girl who called me a monster the night before she died, who wasn’t wrong—is the reason for every breath I take, every shovel of earth I turn, every prayer I whisper over fresh graves. Every inappropriate joke I make to the darkness because if I don’t laugh, I’ll never stop screaming.

The visitors don’t know, and I have a body to bury. Number who knows, technically, though I should probably keep better records. Document it properly, like the journalist I used to be. But some stories are better left unwritten.

Some evidence is better left buried.

The earth opens for me like it recognizes my footsteps. Like we’re old dance partners now. As I roll him into his grave—this man who thought a woman was his to break, whose father owns half the county, whose mother will hire private investigators who’ll find nothing—I whisper the ritual words I learned that first night, when grief became something with teeth.

“You took something that wasn’t yours. Now you feed something that is mine. Circle of fucking life.”

The soil drinks him down like wine, like it’s been waiting all its life for this vintage. My left hand finds my scar again, that old comfort, that old reminder of the first time I tried to let the pain out and learned it doesn’t work that way.

And somewhere in the darkness, I swear I hear her laughing. That bitter sound she made when I’d promise things would get better, when I swore the system would protect her. Or maybe that’s just me, finally getting the joke.