I made a rule, didn’t I? No negotiating the sale under this roof, lest I do something truly unhinged.
“Why did you stay here?” she asks. “Really.”
“I gave you the diner story already,” I say flippantly. “Hartford, bad coffee, men with fish photos.”
“I know, but before that. Why Blue Willow at all?”
I lean back and let my shoulder blades find the chair. The ache in my knee has been low and patient all day. The house’s warmth and the wine help some, but the cold worked its way in this afternoon and refused to leave.
“My parents brought me here once when I was a kid,” I say. “A vacation that wasn’t really a vacation. The kind where you do all the same things you do at home, just somewhere prettier. They ignored me the whole time, so I explored on my own. We stayed in the Garden Room downstairs.”
“So, you just waited until you were grown and then came back when you could?”
“It was after I dropped out of grad school,” I say. “Architecture. Second year, I fell off a scaffold on a volunteer site build. Landed wrong—knees, shoulder, nerves. The pain didn’t get the memo it was supposed to leave. I tried to white-knuckle it through the semester. Ended up white-knuckling the walls when it was bad.”
She goes very still. The kind of still that says she wants to reach out but knows she shouldn’t. I don’t know why I’m telling her this. Maybe because I see pieces of myself in her, the same kind of damage worn quiet.
All I know is that I don’t want her thinking she’s alone in what she’s survived or that her mother’s coldness means she somehow deserved it. Some people break others down just because they can.
“I couldn’t cope. So, I came here,” I say with a shrug. “Told myself I’d stay a month. Fix the porch rail. Make a list. It’s been years. The list has babies.”
She laughs—helpless, sudden. It loosens something in my throat.
“Does it hurt, even now?”
“Most days.” I flex my wrapped hand. The new skin pulls once, then settles. “Some hours are worse than others. But I can build my work around it now.”
“You don’t show it.”
“Why would I? I’m not after sympathy,” I say. “My goal here’s simple: fix what’s broken and protect what doesn’t need fixing from people who think it does.”
The wine’s put color back in her cheeks. She tips her mug, considers the dregs—then, God help me, holds it out for more. I pour without hesitation.
Weak man, strong drink.
“What would you have been, do you think, if you hadn’t fallen off a scaffold?”
“Taller,” I say.
She kicks my foot.
“Fine. Maybe I’d be a preservation architect. Old New England homes like this one, carriage houses. I love wavy glass, lime plaster, mortise and tenon joinery. I’m a keep-what-can-be-kept person—saved hinges, sash cords, jars of odd screws. That’s my speed.”
She goes quiet. The wine’s done its work; her shoulders have dropped by a few visible degrees, and it suits her.
We’re close enough now for my knee to register the heat of her leg through her leggings. Close enough for her hair to catch the lamplight in a way that makes me think of every corny metaphor I’d swear I don’t believe in.
“Can I ask you something?”
She sighs. “You can try.”
“When you say you’re selfish,” I start, “do you mean you just want to be content? You prioritize your own peace, right?”
It’s why she’s so adamant about selling the inn, about not staying. She wants to rest. To stop carrying things that were never hers to fix.
“Yes,” she says slowly. “I mean—I like what I like. I need what I need. When I was little, that made people tired. Teachers, babysitters. My mom, most of all. My grandmother didn’t seem to notice or care, at least for the most part.”
She presses the heel of her hand to her sternum, like there’s a knot there she can’t quite work loose. I know the feeling.
