Chapter 3 Elsie
ELSIE
I tap my 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.
“I do understand where you’re coming from,” he continues. “Of course, I do. But since you’re not yet the legal owner of the house, my hands are tied.”
“Tied,” I repeat flatly.
“Tied up real tight. Triple-knotted.”
I stare at him.
Bobby is, somehow, both the mayor of Blue Willow and the manager of the hardware store. His coffee mug reads World’s Okayest Mayor, and he’s exactly as official as the title suggests. Strangely, I’m not comforted by his bureaucratic inflexibility.
“You can’t just . . . expedite the transfer?” I gesture vaguely at the stack of forms between us.
“See, expedite is a real government word, and I try not to mess with those. Gets dicey. Last time I expedited something, the gazebo fell apart.”
I blink. “Fell apart?”
“Well, eventually. Not necessarily because of the expediting. But who’s to say?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Bobby, I’m trying to sell the inn to someone who has the time and energy to give it what it needs. Which I—unfortunately—do not. But I need permits to do that. A survey. A structural sign-off. A legal verification of probate transfer—”
“Oh, that’s the big one,” he says, nodding gravely. “The inn’s one of the town’s most beloved historical properties. People would riot if they knew you had plans to sell.”
Of course they would. The magical old house with the blue shutters and the ghost of good tea. It wasn’t just my grandmother who loved it—everyone who stayed there, visited, lingered too long in the front parlor with a scone and a story—they all loved it, too.
But that was then, and this is now.
Its magic is fading. You can feel it in the way the house creaks, how the broken furnace makes it impossibly cold inside, how the lights stay stubbornly off, no matter how many times you flip the switch.
I would know. I stayed there last night, and none of it—the small comforts, the uncanny warmth—none of it showed up. The house is angry, I think, or maybe just grieving. And I can’t blame it for that. But I don’t know how to fix something that clearly wants to be let go.
Hart legacy be damned.
“People?” I ask finally.
“The other town founders. Willa Mott. Definitely Mrs. Fallon, but we know she’s delicate. Still hasn’t forgiven me for the bench repainting incident of ’21.”
I drop my hands to my sides. “So, what can you do?”
He shrugs, entirely unbothered. “I can staple things.”
I resist the urge to scream. Instead, I breathe. In. Out. Remind myself I just survived a frost-covered death march to get here.
Because, for the record, what looked like a charming blanket of snow from my bedroom window turned into a shin-deep slog by the time I was halfway down Wick’s Ridge.
The pathway into town isn’t long—maybe half a mile—but when the snow reaches the top of your boots and turns your socks into frozen coffins, it feels like twenty.
You’d think the magic might help with that somehow. Maybe tuck the wind behind the trees, salt the path ahead of time. But not everything here is enchanted; some things are just stubborn and old.
Others, however, are steeped in it. The inn. The orchard. The apiary. The cranberry bog down at Copper Hollow, where I’m fairly certain I lost the memory of my first kiss, swallowed whole and fed to the reeds.
Four distinct places in Blue Willow, each rooted where the founding families once made their homes. Each filled to the brim with quiet, deliberate magic.
Even then, they carry it close to the chest—subtle enough that a stranger wouldn’t notice. Nothing too obvious or showy. Nothing that would make someone stop in their tracks. And maybe that’s why it’s lasted this long. Because it knows how to keep itself hidden.
Forgetting about it certainly helped me stay gone. Pretending it wasn’t here made it easier to believe I belonged elsewhere. But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and somehow, I’ve been brought back to Blue Willow all the same.
Half-frozen, under-caffeinated, standing in front of a man who once tried to schedule “Emergency Duck Awareness Week,” and who currently holds all the power in this town.
“Listen, Bobby, you and I both know my grandmother left me the house. Her lawyer filed the will. I signed everything. You notarized something with a stamp that said Very Official Document in Comic Sans. The UPS man back in Ocala laughed out loud when he saw it.”
He winces. “I’ve since upgraded to Papyrus.”
“Bobby.”
I’m not usually this coldhearted, this sharp around the edges. But this town and all its ridiculous delays and folklore logic . . . it’s like being slowly strangled with a pretty silk ribbon. And it hurts, to be back here. To care more than I want to.
“Okay, okay. Yes, the will was filed. But there’s still the matter of the historical designation review.”
I stare at him. “The what now?”
“The inn was nominated last year for local historical status. It’s pending.”
“For how long?”
He shrugs in a way that makes me want to launch something across the room. “We were supposed to finalize it last spring, but then I had a knee thing, and the committee sort of dissolved after Eileen moved to Florida.”
“So, it’s just . . . sitting in limbo?”
“Not limbo,” he says quickly. “More like a respectful pause.”
“And because of this ‘pause,’ the house is stuck.”
“If the designation goes through, it changes the zoning and the terms of what can be done to the property. The first registered historic site in Blue Willow. A real milestone for the town. Until that’s resolved, the transfer’s frozen.
It’s a preservation clause—meant to protect the town’s character from, well, getting chipped away bit by bit. ”
“How do we unfreeze it?”
“We can wait a few weeks while we reinstate the committee. Then you can show up at the hearing and make a case.”
“I’ll still be able to sell it in the end, won’t I?”
“You should be able to, yes. But the new owner will have to abide by preservation guidelines. Might limit renovations, signage, modernizations—stuff like that.”
That’s a relief, but, “What am I meant to do in the meantime?”
His face is all false innocence and maple-syruped concern. “You could hang around a bit. Let the paperwork catch up. The house isn’t going anywhere. Who knows, maybe if you stay a while, you’ll change your mind about leaving.”
I raise a brow. “I don’t think so.”
“Either way,” he says with a grin, “the Rourke boy is good company.”
“Wells?” I ask, and he nods enthusiastically. “Is there a reason he’s still living at the inn? I’d rather not have him evicted, but—”
“Evicted? Oh no, Lil’ Miss, you can’t do that.”
“I’m not going to. I assumed—”
“No, I mean legally. Like I said, the transfer’s frozen. Wells is still Elspeth’s tenant, and until the property’s officially yours, you’ve got no authority to remove him.”
Of course I don’t. Of course Elspeth would find a way to tether me to both the house and the aggravating man living inside it. I love my grandmother. I always have and always will. But the woman was a control artist with a flair for long-game sabotage.
I force a smile. “Thanks, Bobby. Really. You’ve been—so helpful.”
He beams. “Anytime, Elsie. Always happy to serve.”
I step back out into the snow, which has somehow doubled in depth and spite since I went inside. The wind nips at my ears and worms down the back of my coat as I trudge through it, my boots sucking against the slush with every step.
Charming, postcard Blue Willow is starting to feel more like a themed endurance test than a snow globe sitting on an old mantel.
As I make my way down Main Street, the cold needles through my coat, and the hush of snow muffles everything. Not many people are out. Most of Blue Willow seems to keep to their porches in the early hours or sleep in when they can.
I pass the grocer, its front window full of canning jars and pyramid stacks of winter citrus, then the old bookshop I used to frequent. The snow keeps falling, light and steady, and I wonder, fleetingly, if I’ll ever stop being cold again.
The bell over the café door jingles as I step inside Juneberry Café.
Warmth hits me instantly, along with the smell of cinnamon, sugar, and something floral I can’t quite place.
Behind the counter, a girl with dark chestnut hair pulled into a low bun and a plum-colored apron dusted in flour is arranging pastries behind the glass.
When she finally looks up, she smiles like she knows me.
“Elsie,” she says, already reaching for a mug. “Hey! You want coffee?”
I blink. “Uh. Yeah. How did you—?”
“I remember you,” she says. “Of course I do.”
She pours without asking what I’d like. Sets the mug in front of me, perfectly hot, perfectly tinted with cream, a dusting of cinnamon floating on top. No lid.
“Isla Winslow,” she says, wiping her hands on her apron.
The name hits a spark. “You live at the orchard, right?”
She nods. “Mmhmm.”
Mirabelle Grove. Rows of heirloom plum trees tucked along the edge of Old Bell Road. Elspeth used to take me there in the spring to see the blossoms—soft pink and white like confetti—and let me run barefoot through the grass while she bought jam from Isla’s mom at the farmstand.
“We’d play near the pond behind the cider shed,” I say slowly. “You brought a frog in a mason jar once and told me it was your cousin.”
More than that, Isla and I were real friends once. One of my only. But we lost touch even before I moved away—drifted the way kids do when one belongs and the other only visits.
Isla grins. “Still one of my better lies.”
“Do you work here now, too?”
She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear and nods toward the counter. “Nope, I just dropped off jam and figured I’d lend a hand. June’s swamped this week.”
She gestures behind her at the stack of receipts and a flour-dusted phone that looks like it’s been ringing off the hook and ignored every time.
“This is on the house,” she adds, nudging the cup toward me.
I squint at it. “Why?”
She winks. “Because Elspeth helped June start this place, and we pay that kind of thing forward here. Generation to generation.”
“Well, thank you.”
I lift the cup and take a sip. It’s exactly how I like it. Not similar or close—exactly the way Elspeth used to make it when I was fifteen and trying to act grown-up. Coffee that tastes like home and effort and something warmer than memory.
“Tastes just like my grandma used to make it,” I say, a little misty-eyed. “It’s good.”
“We all miss her, too,” she says. “Loads.”
I clear my throat, trying to shake the sudden lump forming there.
“Thanks,” I say again. “Really.”
I stare into the cup as the café hums around me, soft and slow. The town has its own rhythm, and it’s not interested in adjusting to mine. I take another sip—to clear my head—and lean against the counter.
Then the door chimes. Rather than turning, I close my eyes for a beat and pray it’s anyone but—
“Hey there, stranger,” comes the voice, smug and gravel-warm. “Looks like Blue Willow’s treating you real nice. Did Bobby make all your dreams come true?”
I open my eyes and pivot slowly on my heel. Wells is standing inside the doorway, snow clinging to his boots and the cuffs of his jeans. His dark blond hair is tousled like he ran a hand through it on the walk over, but his jaw is sharp and clean-shaven.
He’s holding a cardboard box labeled Foxglove Florals–Returns, and he’s staring at me with an infuriatingly calm expression. He has nothing but time, it seems, and the full intent to waste mine.
“Actually,” I say, forcing a smile. “It’s all wrapping up much faster than expected.”
“Mmm.” He shifts the box to one hip. “That so?”
“Just a few forms. Maybe a committee vote. But nothing that’ll slow things down for long.”
He snorts. “I’m sure it’ll be smooth sailing.”
Isla watches the exchange from behind the counter, chin propped in her palm, beaming.
Wells glances at her, then back at me. “Don’t suppose you’re heading back up to the inn soon? I’ve got some nails to finish driving into the porch steps you must’ve tripped over yesterday.”
“Good I didn’t break anything,” I reply sweetly. “Would’ve sued the handyman.”
He grins. “And lost.”
I blink at him. “Are you enjoying this?”
“It’s a fine coffee run,” he says, stepping up to the counter and setting down the box. “Despite the detour into municipal delusion.”
“Would you like June’s special? A cinnamon fog with a splash of vanilla,” Isla finally cuts in, “or just your usual today?”
Wells gives her a crooked smile. “You pick.”
“I’ll surprise you,” she says.
I grab my cup and head toward the front, fully prepared to flee. I don’t like feeling out of place, though I often do. Crowds tend to magnify the wrongness in me.
“See you back home,” Wells calls.
I stop. “It’s not your home.”
“Oh, sugarplum,” he drawls, annoyingly. “Keep telling yourself that.”
The words hit like an unwanted kiss—too close to ignore, smug to the bone. I falter, and my boot slips on the wet tile. Hot coffee sloshes over the rim, straight down the front of my cotton sweater.
I hiss, straighten, and keep walking. Behind me, I hear Isla gasp softly and the clink of Wells setting down his box. I’m too embarrassed to look back, so I don’t. Not even once.