Faith comes before proof.
For a moment, I let myself believe the orchard might want me here, too.
That everyone might. That I could fit, and stay put, and somehow not crumble from the weight of it all. That keeping the inn wouldn’t be the kind of failure that drags me under and swallows me whole, taking the Hart name right along with it.
“I really do love Blue Willow, you know? And I loved my grandmother. A lot.”
She frowns. “No one’s saying you didn’t.”
“I know. It’s just ... being here is hard for me. It’s not that I think I don’t deserve the house, but I left it behind. I triedto make a different life somewhere else. And now I don’t know what to do with all this—magic, and history, and people who remember me from before. I can’t picture running an entire inn all alone.”
“You would never be expected to be on your own, Els.” She rests her wrist on the handle of her shears. “Wells is here. I’m here. Half this town would be at your side if you asked. We’d rally.”
“Because you all loved Elspeth that much.”
“Because we loved Elspeth, yes.” Her gaze softens. “But also, because we loved you. And because we’d like the chance to again. I get that you’re hurting. I get that it’s hard. But you have options, lovely girl. You have people and places that want you to stay.”
I bite my lip. “Did Wells tell you? When you talked on the phone?”
“Tell me what?”
“That we . . . that I . . .”
“That he has a soft spot for you?” She shrugs. “Anyone can see that from a mile away.”
My face burns. She smiles, but gently, teasing without prying. I don’t deny it. I don’t explain anything, either. What happened between us still feels too new, too breakable to put into someone else’s hands.
She must sense it because she changes course. “I was planning to go to the cemetery this afternoon. Bring fresh flowers. Maybe a bottle from the cellar. For my great-aunt.”
I tense. “Oh.”
“You should come,” she says, and it’s not a demand or a plea, but an open door. “If you’d like. We can pay our respects to Elspeth, too.”
“I haven’t gone to see her yet, actually.”
The confession tastes metallic on my tongue. Shame, or something like it.
I didn’t go to the funeral, either. I told myself that grief in public was for other people. Something performed with tissues and polite sobs and casseroles. Funerals are built for those left behind, for them to tidy their sorrow into something presentable.
And when Elspeth died, I felt ... unmoored. Hollowed out.
I was afraid that if I went to see her, I wouldn’t cry at all. Afraid I’d look detached, ungrateful. Worse, I was afraid I’d cry so much that I’d never be able to stop.
So, I stayed away. I told myself she wasn’t in that coffin anyway. Not the real her. Not the version who hummed while she cooked or whispered to stairwells to behave. And now, a year later—weeks into being back—I still haven’t walked the short stretch down the lane to her grave.
It felt too strange. Too final and too lonely.
Isla studies me, the pruning shears forgotten in her hand. “Then maybe this is the time.”
Going alone has always felt impossible. But going with Isla ... it feels like stepping into cold water with a hand waiting on the other side. I might be able to come back from it, I think, without drowning in the ache.
I nod, swallowing around it. “Okay.”
She smiles once. “We’ll go after lunch, then.”
I glance back at the blooming tree, its out-of-season petals stubborn and alive against the frost. Some things bloom when they’re ready, not when they’re supposed to. And maybe grief doesn’t follow calendars, either.
Honeywild Farm lookslike something out of a Thomas Kinkade painting. The lavender fields are browned, hives tucked in their neat white rows, smoke curling from the chimney of a little yellowed cottage.
