“Sells?” I echo. “You’re selling the inn?”
She shrugs. “That’s the plan.”
Holy fucking shit. She’s serious. I don’t know what I expected her to do—move in, kick me out, bake celebratory muffins? Cry in the stairwell like a normal person?
“You’re not selling Elspeth’s house.”
She straightens. “Myhouse. My grandmother’s old house. And I’ll do whatever I want with it.”
Despite her detached tone, this house is more than a house; it’s a cornerstone. The inn has been in the Hart family for generations—tended, loved, and laced with intention. It’s where the town’s magic gathered and grew.
Even if the spark’s gone quiet now, it shouldn’t be sold off like scrap. It needs time and care and patience. Someone who remembers what it was and still believes in what it could be.
Properties in the neighboring towns are already changing hands. Old inns gutted for “luxury experiences,” general stores replaced with candle bars and paint-your-own-pottery studios.Quaint becomes content. History gets rewritten in cursive font on a chalkboard sign.
I’ve seen it happen too many times, and the thought of it happening here makes my stomach turn. I can’t trust an outside buyer to know what this place is—what it means.
And I can’t think of a single towns member who could afford it. Not the taxes. Not the upkeep. Not the weight of what it holds.
The house isn’t just a landmark. It holds a quarter of the town’s magic. That’s not metaphor. That’s fact. Sell it to the wrong hands and they won’t even realize what they’re draining away until it’s gone.
“That’s a hell of a way to honor her,” I mutter.
She exhales. “Can you go bother someone else, please? I have a lot to do today, and I’d rather not spend my first morning back in Blue Willow bickering with you.”
“You have to be—”
“You can call me cold. You can think I’m heartless. Either way, there are legal documents on the agenda and probably four plumbing emergencies waiting in the wings. So, unless you’re here to help, I suggest you get out of my way.”
“Fuck if I will.”
She keeps going—something about the water pressure, maybe Bobby’s spare keys—but I’m not really listening. I’m too busy unraveling.
Because this is the part where I realize she means it. She’s really going to take this place apart piece by piece, box up the bones, and walk away like it never meant anything.
Like it hasn’t been mine, too.
She’s a young woman who lost her grandmother and doesn’t know what to do with the grief. But she’s also fucking evil, casually cruel. And she can pry this inn from my cold, dead hands. I won’t let it go without a fair fight.
“Are you even listening to me?” she snaps.
“Nope,” I say, deadpan. “Not a fucking word.”
She rolls her eyes and brushes past me, all business and bite, every step a statement. Entitled and pushy; what a lethal combination.
It’s a shame it looks good on her. An even bigger shame that we’re going to war.
3
ELSIE
I tapmy foot impatiently on the warped floorboards of Bobby Brindle’s town hall office. A full heel-toe rhythm of irritation, muffled slightly by the thick wool rug that’s covered the same square of floor since the Reagan administration.
“Lil’ Miss Elsie,” he says, fingers laced across his very large, very disorganized desk.
I wince. He’s called me that since I was seven years old. Back when I was small and loud and endlessly convinced I knew better than everyone else. I adored it then. Thought it made me sound important and grown-up.
Now, it feels misplaced. Or maybe too sentimental for someone trying to cut the past cleanly in half.
