By the time we round the corner, the brick façade of town hall rises ahead, windows frosted, steps scraped clean. Its bell tower looms like a sentinel, watching who belongs and who never really will.
Inside, it’s close and still. The woodwork is dark and glossy with age, every wall hung with framed photographs of parades, harvest fairs, and ribbon cuttings. Another place that hasn’t changed in fifty years and doesn’t plan to.
The front desk clerk perks up when he sees Wells. “Morning, Rourke.”
“Morning,” Wells replies with easy familiarity.
When the clerk’s eyes shift to me, his smile falters. “And you must be—?”
“Elsie Hart,” I say. “Elspeth’s granddaughter.”
“Ah.” He nods, like that settles everything. “What can I do for you?”
“We’re looking for any property files on the inn you might have. For the, um, the historical designation committee.”
“Records are through there,” he says coolly. “Second room on the right.”
Wells thanks him, and I follow with my tail tucked.
The archive room is small, lit by a single buzzing fluorescent tube. Shelves sag with manila folders and leather-bound ledgers, labels curling, spines cracked. Dust hangs in the corners.
Wells is already pulling boxes down, setting them on the oak table, and moving through the motions he clearly knows by heart.
“You’ve done this before,” I say.
“Once or twice. Your grandmother needed things, and after a while, she couldn’t climb these stairs herself.”
I know he doesn’t mean it as a dig, but it lands anyway.
I ease into the chair opposite him, flip open a folder at random, skim names and dates that blur together, and wonder if I’ll ever learn how to read this town the way he does. I won’t need to, I guess. Not after the sale goes through.
A sound breaks through my fog: the muted creak of the hallway floor, followed by the soft thud of boots. The door swings inward, and a man steps inside, brushing snow from his broad shoulders.
Chestnut-brown curls fall in deliberate disarray across his forehead. Fair skin, flushed cheeks, and a dark mole at the corner of his mouth. An angel, a prince, or maybe a wolf in disguise.
“Beau,” Wells says, his voice flattening.
“Wells,” Beau answers, drawing the name out like it’s a private joke. The air shifts. Old tension, familiar and unspoken, settles between them.
His gaze cuts to me, sharp and curious. “And who’s this?”
“Elsie Hart,” I say before Wells can.
I straighten without meaning to, spine taut, shoulders back.
His smile spreads, slow and knowing. “Well, I’ll be damned. Elspeth’s granddaughter, huh?”
“That’s me.”
“Beau Langford,” he says, tugging off one glove and offering a hand. His grip is firm, the kind that travels all the way up to your shoulder. “I live at Copper Hollow.”
I should have assumed as much. Old money, old roots.
The Langfords are one of the founding families, and that cranberry bog he lives beside is one of four enchanted sites in Blue Willow. I remember whispers about ownership disputes, about the Ashbys and the Langfords drawing invisible battle lines across the muck.
But I was only a kid then. My world began and ended with the thrill of tugging on my rubber waders, stomping into the flooded fields, pretending the berries bobbing at my knees were jewels.
Now, the memories come quick, flickering like old photographs. The bonfires in October, jars of jelly lined on Elspeth’s counter, a harvest wagon piled so high it looked like it might tip. The impression of my first kiss, fuzzier now than it’s ever been.
