The air in Alachua County didn’t just hang; it leaned. It was a wet, heavy weight, thick with the scent of damp earth and the cloying sweetness of rotting citrus .
Silas stood beneath the great magnolia, his spade biting into the black Florida soil. Above him, the tree’s waxy leaves acted as a drum, catching the first rhythmic thrum of a summer thunderstorm.
He wasn’t supposed to be here, and he certainly wasn’t supposed to be digging. But the fever had no respect for lineage or the fine lace of the manor house.
Behind him, the girl he loved—the one whose name was a secret whispered only to the creek—lay wrapped in nothing but a linen sheet.
No lead-lined casket. No stone monument to defy the sky.”I’ll leave you to the roots,” he whispered, his voice cracking against the thunder.
“And the roots will find you. You’ll be the bloom next spring, and the shade the year after. You won’t be gone; you’ll just be everywhere.
“He didn’t mark the spot with a cross. He marked it with a promise. As the rain turned the dirt to ink, the magnolia stood sentinel—a silent witness to a burial that the law would call a crime, but the earth would call a gift.
Gentle Trails journal 
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