What Grows in the Hollow
June Calloway knows the language of roots, the way a phalaenopsis presses against its clay pot, the patience orchids demand, the secrets a stem will keep until it's ready to bloom. She has built her life around that quiet certainty, tending her coastal flower shop and keeping the rest of the world at arm's length. But when a long-lost relative dies and leaves her the crumbling Ashford Hollow estate, June's careful order unravels overnight. The Ashfords are not pleased. Rowan Ashford, the brooding eldest son, has spent years pouring his own inheritance into saving the family grounds, and he is convinced June is a fraud or worse, a reminder of something the family has worked hard to bury. His sister Maggie sees an opportunity to finally leave. His mother Nora treats June like an outsider already too close to the truth. When Lena Voss arrives with documents that suggest the estate was never meant to pass outside the Hollow at all, the family fractures further. As June digs into the earth of her own buried past, she uncovers a tangled history of betrayal, an unspoken love affair, and a choice someone made decades ago that is still shaping every life touched by the Hollow. Every secret she unearths pulls her deeper into Rowan's orbit, and closer to a truth that could give her the home she has never had, or cost her the only one she has finally found. She can take the settlement, walk away, and pretend the Hollow never called her. Or she can stay, risk her heart, and find out what truly grows in the ground she has inherited.