Buck fixed the sign. Not fully, but enough that STARLIGHT flickered blue at dusk for the first time in years.
Darlene started sending coffee out to volunteers.
A muralist from Flagstaff offered to restore the courtyard wall if he could sleep in one of the repaired rooms.
Truckers using the old highway began stopping to ask when we’d open.
Hannah and I painted doors, scrubbed bathtubs, hauled old mattresses, repaired locks, and worked by floodlights at night. I sold my truck tools to buy supplies. Buck cursed every wire ever manufactured. Darlene fed half the county from styrofoam containers and called it “community investment.”
Somewhere in there, the Starlight stopped feeling like a last desperate bet.
It started feeling like inheritance.
Not just from blood. From choice.
From Ray, who raised me.
From Lucy, who protected me.
From Evelyn, who saved a place for me without ever meeting the man I’d become.
The hearing on the trust lasted all day in county court.
Mercer’s attorneys argued that the unrecorded transfer was invalid, that Evelyn had been unstable, that the recordings were inadmissible, that I was an opportunist exploiting dead people and folklore.
Then Hannah testified about the archival chain of custody.
Buck testified about the hidden pump chamber and intact valve system.
Darlene testified that Mercer had tried to pressure me off the property within hours of the sale.
Sheriff Mendoza introduced the break-in report and footage from a nearby road camera showing one of Mercer Freight’s security trucks heading toward the motel the night the office was ransacked.
And then the judge listened to Jud Mercer’s voice threaten to make the whole place disappear.
You could feel the room change.
Wade Mercer never looked at me directly after that.
The judge upheld the trust for preliminary control pending final title quieting, ordered a freeze on any adjacent development actions that might affect the water source, and referred the arson evidence for criminal review.
It wasn’t the end.
But it was the first real crack in the wall.
Mercer chose the night of our soft reopening to strike back.
Leave a Comment