“I don't know how to do this,” she admitted.
“Do what?”
“Want something for myself.”
He smiled slightly. “It's not that complicated. You just... want.”
“It is complicated. You're working on my inn. My grandmother is paying for it. I'm a mess of obligations and grief and…”
“Kate.” He said her name like it was complete sentence. “I'm not asking for anything. I'm just... here. Whenever you're ready. If you're ever ready.”
He walked away, leaving her at the harbor with the darkening sky and the sound of waves on stone. Kate wrapped her arms around herself, cold now without his warmth beside her.
When she got back to the inn, she found Pop calm, eating dinner with Amy. Dani was in the kitchen with Marcy, laughingabout something. The inn felt warm and alive and full of people taking care of things.
For the first time in years, Kate wasn't needed urgently anywhere.
It should have felt like freedom. Instead, it felt like falling.
CHAPTER 8
Kate heard the whispers before she saw the looks. She was at the hardware store, picking up paint samples, when Donna Wagner and Marie Brennan stopped talking mid-sentence. Their eyes followed her to the paint display, voices dropping to that particular pitch of gossip barely contained.
“Whitfield money,” she caught, and “buying her way back,” and worst of all, “poor Elizabeth would be mortified.”
Kate kept her back straight, selected three shades of blue as if she couldn't hear them. But her hands shook slightly as she headed to the register.
“Katie.” George McAllister, who'd run the hardware store for thirty years, gave her a sympathetic look. “Heard you're doing big renovations up at the inn.”
“Some repairs, yes.”
“With your grandmother's help.” It wasn't a question. In a town this small, everyone knew everything within hours.
“That’s what families do, George, they help,” Kate corrected, though the words tasted wrong.
George nodded slowly. “Your mother was a proud woman. Never took a dime from anyone.”
The implication hung there, that Elizabeth would be disappointed, that Kate had somehow failed by accepting the money. She paid for the paint samples and left, feeling the eyes on her back.
At the inn, she found chaos. Dani was in the lobby directing two men who were carrying out the old furniture.
“What are you doing?” Kate demanded.
“Replacing these awful chairs. They're from the seventies, Kate. And not in a good vintage way.”
“You can't just…” Kate stopped, seeing Lillian in the corner, examining the worn reception desk with a critical eye. “What is she doing here?”
“She wanted to see the improvements,” Dani said, as if this were perfectly reasonable. “And she had some suggestions.”
“Suggestions.”
“This desk should go,” Lillian announced, not looking up. “It's giving entirely the wrong first impression.”
“That desk has been here for thirty-six years,” Kate said.
“Precisely my point.” Lillian straightened, and Kate noticed how well she looked for someone supposedly dying of cancer. Her color was good, her energy seemingly endless as she moved around the lobby pointing out flaws. “The whole entrance needs updating. Something more sophisticated.”
“Our guests like the authentic Maine inn experience.”
