Number eight: The way Wyatt’s hand felt on my waist is not something I should be thinking about.
I cross out number eight, then I write it again. Then I leave it, because maybe part of being a real person is admitting what you feel, even when it’s inconvenient.
I look at Mavis’s photo wall. At the picture of me as a gap-toothed child. At all the images of a life lived fully and authentically.
“I’m starting to understand,” I tell the empty room, “what you were trying to show me. Why you left me this place.”
Of course, the room doesn’t answer, but I swear I feel something. An approval. A sense that I’m heading in the right direction.
I go to bed with aching feet, sore cheeks from laughing, and a full heart.
For the first time since I arrived in Copper Creek, I start to dream about staying. And not because I have to. Not because of the will. But because maybe this is where I’m supposed to be.
The next morning, I wake up early and do something I’ve never done before. I go outside for a walk with no destination in mind. I have no idea where I’m going. Hopefully, I don’t get lost in the mountains because that would be very bad.
The mountain air is crisp and clean, and the sun is just starting to warm the valley. I walk past the bar, past the church, past the town square with its beautiful white gazebo. I walk until I reach a spot where the road curves, and suddenly and unexpectedly, I can see the whole valley spread out below me. Copper Creek in miniature, surrounded by mountains, the gleaming gold and green in the morning light.
It’s beautiful. Genuinely, achingly beautiful.
I used to think that the view of downtown Atlanta from a high-rise was quite lovely, but it doesn’t even come close to this. Standing there and looking at the town I never even knew existed a month ago, I feel something shifting around inside of me.
I’ve spent my whole life trying to live up to what I thought other people wanted. Trying to meet standards that I didn’t even set. Achieve goals that I didn’t choose for myself. Become a person I’m not even sure I ever wanted to be.
But here, in this tiny town with its potlucks and pickup trucks and line dancing nights, I’m starting to see something very different. A life where success isn’t measured in client lists or social standing. A life where showing up matters more than being impressive. A life where love for the community, for a place, for people who become like your family, and maybe even more than your family, is reason enough to stay.
I don’t know if I can become that person. I don’t even know if I can unlearn thirty-four years of conditioning and shed this armor that I’ve built up around myself.
But once I start watching the sunrise over the Blue Ridge Mountains, I know one thing for sure.
I think I want to try.
CHAPTER 9
The call comes on a Thursday afternoon while I’m in my office still trying to make sense of the way Mavis filed things. I don’t know that I can ever accomplish that task, but I’m going to give it my best shot.
I’ve been at this for about three hours, sorting the receipts into piles that I think make logical sense, creating spreadsheets to replace the chaos of sticky notes, and making very little progress. It’s tedious work, but it’s comforting. A task I understand. A problem I hopefully know how to solve.
And that’s when my phone buzzes with a familiar Atlanta code, area code, so I answer without thinking.
“Hello? Eleanor Whitfield.”
“Ellie.” The voice is smooth, polished, and instantly recognizable. It’s Archie.
My stomach does some sort of complicated flip. I feel dread. I feel nostalgia. I feel something I can’t quite name.
“Archie, this is unexpected.”
“I know, I know. I should have called you sooner.” He sounds the same - confident, charming, utterly certain of himself. “I heard about your inheritance. Cynthia mentioned it at the Hendersons’ cocktail party last week. A bar in the mountains? I have to admit, I chuckled.”
“It’s a honky tonk, actually.”
“A honky tonk,” he repeats, laughing. It’s a cultured chuckle I used to find sophisticated, and now I find it slightly grating. “Eleanor Whitfield, owner of a honky tonk. Your mother would have had a stroke.”
“That’s what Cynthia said.”
“Great minds.” I can picture him sitting in his corner office, his feet propped up on his mahogany desk, looking out over the Atlanta skyline like he owns the place. “Listen, I’ve been thinking about your situation, and I want to help.”
“My situation?”
