He turns halfway, one brow raised.
I clutch the mug a little tighter. “Did you move things around in here?”
He pauses. “What?”
“Nothing is where it used to be.”
He eyes me, unreadable. “Your grandmother reorganized everything a long time ago. I’ve only been following her lead.”
I nod like that explains everything, though it only makes me want to punch a wall. “Next time,” I mutter, “at least leave my favorite mug where I can reach it.”
He gives a slow blink. Then, with the faintest twitch of a smirk, “Noted. I’ll file it under urgent priorities.”
He disappears down the hall, up the stairs to the left, and doesn’t look back. No slammed door, no muttered parting shot. A quiet retreat from the grumpy stranger. And I’m left sitting alone, clutching a chipped mug, wondering what exactly I’ve walked myself into.
The magic that once welcomed me here? Certainly not.
2
WELLS
Unfortunately,Elspeth’s granddaughter is exactly as self-important as I expected. Maybe even more so.
It’s been over a year since Elspeth’s funeral, and Elsie’s absence has spoken for itself. Disappearing in the immediate aftermath—fine. Grief does strange things to people. But staying gone while the house fell into disrepair, while the rest of us tried to keep her grandmother’s legacy upright?
That’s something else entirely.
You’d think the place would hold together better with me here full-time, a hammer always within reach. But lately, things seem to break faster than I can mend them. Hinges rust overnight, floorboards bow where they were straight a month ago.
The house feels tired. The magic that once hummed through its walls is dimming, and for the first time, I’m not sure I can bring it back.
Still, I keep showing up. Someone has to. This house has been severely lacking a Hart, and it shows. But now, one is back, after all this time, rooting around in the kitchen like she never left.
I would’ve turned around the second I saw her, made myself scarce. But there was something strange about her. Something that stopped me in my tracks. She’s got the same honey curls from all the old photos Elspeth used to show me, the same stillness and softness to her face. Only now, there’s something sharpened at the edges.
She’s pretty, of course. That irritating kind of pretty that sneaks up on you when you’re not looking. Tiny freckles across her nose. A stubborn little tilt to her chin. Soft, glossy hair that clearly used to be blonde before she darkened it on purpose.
A golden edge for a girl who walks like she knows it’ll catch the light.
It’s frustrating that I’ve noticed. More frustrating still that she scared the hell out of me by scaling the kitchen cabinets like a sugar-starved raccoon.
Elspeth died without a single word from her. This house turned into something barely recognizable, and I patched every creak and leak, kept it standing out of sheer loyalty and habit.
Now she thinks she belongs here, and I don’t?
Sure, she can call Bobby. She can stomp through the rooms in borrowed nostalgia and pretend she still fits here. But I’ve been here.
I know how this place breathes. I know how the floorboards sigh in winter and the windows fog when a storm rolls in. I know the way the house listens when you speak softly, the way the light pools a little brighter when you need comfort and flickers sharp when you don’t.
I understand the magic that runs deep beneath this place—quiet, domestic, intentional. The kind stitched into corners and soaked into wood. The kind that remembers who’s come and gone. Who’sstayed.
Which means I understand even more so why it’s gone quiet over the past year; the inn knows when someone has turned their back on it.
I stretch my legs, heels propped against the battered old trunk at the foot of the bed. The space heater hums in the corner, fighting a losing battle with the draft sliding through the warped windowpanes. I pull the blanket tighter and stare up at the ceiling, where hairline cracks spider through the plaster.
For a long time, the house has been still. Not asleep, exactly, but settled into a kind of holding period. Now, there’s some movement again. A presence that doesn’t belong. Annoying. Disruptive. Alive.
There are five guest rooms in the inn. Two downstairs, three tucked beneath the eaves. I know them all by heart, not from brochures or Elspeth’s stories, but from long nights fixing radiators and chasing leaks through walls.
