“What?”
“You told me last week you hadn’t cried in eight years.”
She studies my face. “I put things in boxes. That’s how I made it through college. Through ... a lot. I made a box for Blue Willow when I left. Tied it with ribbon, shoved it high in the closet. I shoved my mother under the mattress. I put my fatherin a drawer I didn’t open. If I took any of them out, it became too much. So, I didn’t. Not if I wanted to function.”
“Compartmentalizing,” I say. “I’m familiar with it.”
“I know you are.” She looks at my hands. “You make neat stacks. You like lines straight. Your face stays the same even when your knee hurts. You put all the words you don’t say somewhere where only you can get to them.”
I swallow and feel the old habits line up, ready to deflect. Instead, I give her something of me in return for her candor.
“My parents and I weren’t close, either,” I tell her. “People assume adoption makes you a miracle. For mine, it was more like an acquisition. They tried to dress it up—the photos, the church announcements, the family portraits in matching sweaters. They had a box for the life they wanted, and they put me in it.”
“That sounds—” She stops. “Small.”
“It was. They weren’t cruel, just committed to the picture more than the person. So, I learned to be the picture. School, grades, good attitude. Architecture on top of that because it photographed well.”
“Then you fell,” she says softly.
“Then I fell,” I echo. “Nerves turned traitor. The box they had for me didn’t have room for pain that stayed. Neither did I, if I’m honest.”
She turns a little on the bench. “And here, in Blue Willow, there are no big expectations. No measuring tape.”
“I don’t feel like I’m about to fail an exam or get scolded for slipping up. The pressure’s gone. Life goes on here without keeping score. The magic is a bonus.”
She watches as cups are refilled at the end of the lane. “It’s been the opposite for me since I came back,” she says. “It’s like the walls lean in and press. And I hate that I’m the one makingit feel that way. I know I’m the variable. I just don’t know how to stop.”
I study her profile—the slope of her shoulders, the ribbon loose again at her wrist, the way she keeps her gaze on the firelight like it might offer instructions.
She loves this place. Loves her grandmother. Loves the sound of the wind in the inn’s chimney and the pencil marks in the upstairs hallway where Elspeth once measured her height. And still, it costs her something to be here.
Maybe that’s what I have trouble understanding.
That being here takes effort. That honoring a legacy can feel like standing beneath its weight. That she isn’t wrong for wanting to lay it down, even if it means the rest of us have to bear it.
And yes, it frustrates me. Makes me angry in that quiet way that settles in my jaw and doesn’t move. But it doesn’t make her selfish. It doesn’t make her heartless.
“I get why you want to sell,” I say at last. “At least, I get why you think you have to.”
“And still . . .”
“And still, I wish you didn’t.”
She doesn’t look at me, and I don’t push it. But things feel steadier than they have since she arrived, and I figure I might as well try while the door’s open. We’re not at the house, and the rules don’t apply.
Out here, it’s just the two of us.
“Have you thought any more about the trust?” I ask.
She nibbles on her lower lip. “There hasn’t really been time for me to think, has there?”
“There’s always time,” I say stubbornly. “You just have to make it.”
She huffs a laugh. “Right. Tell that to the dead.”
“You always this dramatic?” I ask. “Or is that a seasonal thing?”
Her mouth curves, and the tension in her shoulders eases. We’re both quiet as the lantern light pools and thins. The brass band manages a tune this time, and the whole lane hums along. A robin lands in the next tree over and tilts its head.
