I rub my gloved hands together, hiding the sting crawling up my fingers. A breeze skims down from the ridge, kicking a flurry of snow across the walk, tugging at the chimes until they give a single, hollow note.
Wells shifts his weight and follows my gaze up to the house. His jaw ticks. “I really, really don’t think you do.”
“Think what you want. I’m done holding on to something that stopped holding on to me a long time ago.”
“Blue Willow?” He frowns. “You think this place let go of you?”
I shrug, helpless. “Elspeth stopped writing. She stopped calling. We fought, and I stayed away. When she died, I didn’t come back. You think the inn wrapped itself in warm quilts and waited for me to forgive myself? It’s moved on.”
If it had been waiting—if it wanted me here—I think I would’ve felt something when I walked through the door. A spark, a hum, even a flicker of recognition. But all I felt was dust. Cold corners. Silence. Whatever magic used to live in this place, it’s dulled now. Not dead, maybe. But distant, like it turned its face away.
“Elspeth never stopped waiting,” he says, blunt. “She kept your attic room the same. She made excuses for you to the whole town. Every spring, she bought those damn violets you liked and put them in the Wisteria Suite. You think she didn’t hope?”
I glance away, out toward the trees. A crow rustles somewhere in the pine. I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth to stop it from trembling.
My grandmother was the only person who ever made me feel like I wasn’t broken. Everyone else tried to fix me. Teachers called me bright but difficult. Doctors labeled me sensitive. My mother said I was exhausting. Too picky. Too quiet. Too much.
But Elspeth never asked me to be less. She never blinked when I couldn’t make eye contact, never told me to stop fidgeting and spinning or to smile more. She gave me space to be, and in that space, I felt safe. I felt whole.
Until I didn’t.
When I told her I was leaving for college, she asked me to stay here with her.Just a year, she said.To rest. You can let the inn hold you, because the world beyond Blue Willow might not know how to. You’ve always been so tender-hearted, she added as a last-ditch effort.
Maybe she meant it with love, but what I heard was doubt. That I wasn’t ready. That I’d always need something, or someone, to shield me. That I couldn’t survive anywhere else.
So, I told her I didn’t want her old house or her small-town fairy tales. That I didn’t need her magic at all. It was cruel, but I thought cruelty would make the break cleaner. I felt ready for college, and she wanted to keep me wrapped in her cocoon.
When I fought hard enough, she didn’t press me. So, I packed up, left, proved I could build a life outside this place. Outside her. And I never came back.
All she left me was the house, and the savings from my old job are almost gone. There’s no safety net waiting for me anymore.
“I can’t fix what happened between us,” I say finally. “So, I’m finding a way to move on now, even if it’s not clean.”
Wells stares up at the slow-dripping pipe. “Get rid of what you can’t reconcile, right? Better yet, have someone else fix it for you, then get rid of it.”
I open my mouth, then close it again. He’s not wrong, and that digs at me.
“Okay, so don’t fix the steps or the gutters or the misaligned everything. Show me how to fix it, will you?”
His brows skyrocket. “You want me to teach you how to fix gutters?”
“And the trim. The steps. The hinges on the pantry. If I’m going to sell this place or rent it to someone who can take care of it properly, I want to do it with both eyes open.”
His mouth twitches. “That’s oddly noble for a girl who’s been shivering and stuttering after standing out in the cold for all of ten minutes.”
It is freezing out here, and I’m not used to being outdoors for this long without a plan. I’m a homebody by nature. I always have been.
I spent my early twenties holed up in small apartments with even smaller routines. Early mornings at the clinic, afternoons with clients, nights curled on the couch rereading old novels I could practically recite. I used to joke that my therapist’s office was the warmest place I knew, and I wasn’t really kidding.
When I quit my job as a speech pathologist—left it, lost it, unraveled from it, whichever word fits best—I stopped leaving the house altogether. My world got smaller, quieter.
And now here I am, standing in six inches of snow in the dead of a Connecticut winter, in front of an inn I technically don’t even own yet, with little icicle needles stabbing into my toes.
“I can do small bits at a time,” I say stubbornly, blowing on my fingers. “Just show me what to do.”
Wells tilts his head, considering. “You know it’s not just paint and hammer swings, right? Some of this is going to suck. It’s cold, it’s finicky, and it’s repetitive.”
“Sounds like my last relationship,” I mutter.
