Beau Miller had not seen Maple Hollow in twenty years, but the place still stank like moldy corn and old sins.

  He stepped out of his rented car into the thick July heat and looked around like he had just cracked open a coffin. Nothing had changed. Same chipped white church at the end of Hollow Road. Same peeling diner signs and dirt-streaked gas pumps. The same old men on the same damn bench outside the hardware store, glaring at him like they recognized his face and hated it.

  Maybe they did. Maybe everyone did.

  Maple Hollow had a memory like a barn cat, mean and long. It remembered who you were, who your parents were, and who you slept with behind the church during prom. You could not hide in a town like this. Not from your past. Not from yourself.

  The funeral was small, just like he expected. Closed casket. Some whispered that was for the best. Roy Miller had not died peacefully. He had been found with half his face gone, torn off by wild dogs or something worse. They buried him with a photograph on the lid of the casket. Roy Miller, young and smiling.

  Beau stood at the edge of the churchyard with his hands stuffed in his pockets, trying not to puke. Not because of grief. That had passed somewhere around the state line. But because of who was coming up the gravel path in a tight black mourning dress and heels too high for a funeral.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Cassie Juno.

  She had been the hottest girl in school. Captain of the cheer team. Blonde and blue-eyed. Curvy. The kind of girl who could make you forget your own name with one glance. Now she was thirty-eight, just like him. And even hotter. Even curvier. Something about the way her hips moved, the way her eyes glittered like she knew secrets he did not want to learn. She had not aged so much as sharpened. Still the hottest woman in town.

  She hugged him. Her hug lingered too long. Her breasts pressed against his chest. Her hair still smelled like strawberries and sin.

  "I missed you, Beau," she said, her lips brushing his ear.

  Beau swallowed hard. His voice caught somewhere between his ribs and regret. She had not changed, not really. Just got more gorgeous.

  It had been twenty years since he left this town behind. Twenty years since he last saw her. Twenty years since the killings.

  He looked past her toward the cornfields swaying behind the church, tall and thick and whispering in the wind. They always whispered here. They never stopped.

  Maple Hollow was a place that clung to its secrets. A place where the past never stayed buried. A place that watched and waited.

  Beau felt something cold crawl down his spine.

  He had come back to bury a father he had not spoken to in two decades.

  But something else had been waiting for him.

  And it was not done yet.