Chapter 12
ELSIE
The stack of papers in front of me is thinner than my nerves. Three stapled pages make up my grandmother’s will. One half-crumpled sheet of notes I started last night and abandoned before it could make sense. That’s all I have to bring into tomorrow’s committee meeting.
No deed or official records. Not even a plot map. Nothing with real weight.
I flip the notebook open and stare at my crooked handwriting. My stomach sinks. I need to come up with property files, but Bobby’s already told me I can’t pull any permits yet. The survey, structural sign-off, and legal probate transfer are all stuck in limbo until the designation is decided.
So, what am I supposed to gather in the meantime to keep this thing moving?
“This is pathetic,” I mutter.
Across the table, Wells sorts through an old toolbox. “You said it, not me.”
“I can’t show up with nothing.”
He’s joking, but it still twists something in my chest. I haven’t stopped feeling guilty about his hand, no matter how many times he brushes it off. If I hadn’t insisted on helping with things I didn’t know how to do, if I’d kept to myself like I planned, he wouldn’t have ended up hurt.
It wasn’t entirely my fault, but it still feels like mine.
And maybe that’s why I keep trying to make myself useful now, while I still can.
So that when I finally do leave, when I actually rest, it’ll be because I earned it.
Not because I crumbled under burnout or dread, but because I did something right.
I close the notebook with a thud. “What am I supposed to do?”
Wells finally looks up, maddeningly calm. “The committee won’t expect you to have everything in order already. That’s why we’re meeting—to get it straightened out for the designation.”
“And how do you think we’re gonna straighten it out? Bobby hardly knows what day it is, let alone the procedure. He was supposed to file this mess last year.”
“We can go to town hall and have a look, if you want.”
I pause, suspicious. He wants the designation to go through because he thinks it’ll protect the inn, but he also clearly wants to stall it. He’s been slow rolling this process since the day I got here. So, what gives? Why offer to help now?
“Now?”
“Uh . . . sure?”
I shove back from the table. I won’t question a sudden change of heart if it provides me a little leverage. “Give me two minutes.”
I jog upstairs, pulling on whatever layers I can find: two sweaters, the thick coat from the back of the door, a hat that only half covers my ears. In the lounge, Hemingway has taken up residence on the windowsill, tail flicking slowly.
I bend down, kiss the top of his head. “Don’t disappear again while we’re gone.”
I say it lightly, but I’m holding my breath. Now that I know he’s still alive, it’s like part of me is waiting for the trick to end. Like he might dissolve back into the walls the moment I turn my back.
When I barrel down the hall, I nearly plow into Wells at the landing. He catches me by both arms, steady and warm, his hands anchoring me through the layers. It startles me, how solid he feels. My pulse trips over itself.
“The documents aren’t going anywhere,” he murmurs, the corner of his mouth tipping up.
The winter light hits him just so. Hair rumpled from the hat he hasn’t put back on, jaw shadowed, eyes too sharp for this hour. Rough edges, arranged unfairly well.
I shouldn’t be noticing. Shouldn’t be looking. Why does a man who wants me gone have to look like that.
I clear my throat and step back. “If we’re doing this, let’s move.”
He smirks. “Bossy.”
“Efficient,” I shoot back.
The path from the inn into town is still half-buried in snow, drifts piled higher than my boots, but Wells moves through it like it’s nothing. His stride never falters. I have to jog every few steps to keep up, breath fogging in quick bursts.
“Can you slow down a little?”
He glances sideways, the faintest tug of a smile pulling at his mouth. “God, I almost forgot.”
“What? That my legs are a good five inches shorter than yours?”
“That it’s your first Blue Willow winter in a very long time.”
I wince. “Yeah, and my last.”
He trudges ahead, slowing enough for me to match him. Tall, infuriating man.
People call out to him as we pass into Main Street—the postman with his satchel slung low, Mrs. Fallon sweeping salt onto her stoop, a boy dragging a sled down the lane. Wells nods to each of them without missing a step, like it’s reflex.
They all know him.
I suppose they know me, too, and I don’t need to guess what they think. The Hart heir, back at last, only to sell the inn out from under the town that’s loved it longer than she ever did. The interloper with a claim she doesn’t deserve.
I don’t belong here, where snow piles up in familiar patterns and everything has roots. What else is new? I keep my eyes down, pretending to be fascinated by the way ice feathers along the fountain’s stone lip.
By the time we round the corner, the brick facade of town hall rises ahead, windows frosted, steps scraped clean. Its bell tower looms like a sentinel, watching who belongs and who never really will.
Inside, it’s close and still. The woodwork is dark and glossy with age, every wall hung with framed photographs of parades, harvest fairs, and ribbon cuttings. Another place that hasn’t changed in fifty years and doesn’t plan to.
The front desk clerk perks up when he sees Wells. “Morning, Rourke.”
“Morning,” Wells replies with easy familiarity.
When the clerk’s eyes shift to me, his smile falters. “And you must be—?”
“Elsie Hart,” I say. “Elspeth’s granddaughter.”
“Ah.” He nods, like that settles everything. “What can I do for you?”
“We’re looking for any property files on the inn you might have. For the, um, the historical designation committee.”
“Records are through there,” he says coolly. “Second room on the right.”
Wells thanks him, and I follow with my tail tucked.
The archive room is small, lit by a single buzzing fluorescent tube. Shelves sag with manila folders and leather-bound ledgers, labels curling, spines cracked. Dust hangs in the corners.
Wells is already pulling boxes down, setting them on the oak table, and moving through the motions he clearly knows by heart.
“You’ve done this before,” I say.
“Once or twice. Your grandmother needed things, and after a while, she couldn’t climb these stairs herself.”
I know he doesn’t mean it as a dig, but it lands anyway.
I ease into the chair opposite him, flip open a folder at random, skim names and dates that blur together, and wonder if I’ll ever learn how to read this town the way he does. I won’t need to, I guess. Not after the sale goes through.
A sound breaks through my fog: the muted creak of the hallway floor, followed by the soft thud of boots. The door swings inward, and a man steps inside, brushing snow from his broad shoulders.
Chestnut-brown curls fall in deliberate disarray across his forehead. Fair skin, flushed cheeks, and a dark mole at the corner of his mouth. An angel, a prince, or maybe a wolf in disguise.
“Beau,” Wells says, his voice flattening.
“Wells,” Beau answers, drawing the name out like it’s a private joke. The air shifts. Old tension, familiar and unspoken, settles between them.
His gaze cuts to me, sharp and curious. “And who’s this?”
“Elsie Hart,” I say before Wells can.
I straighten without meaning to, spine taut, shoulders back.
His smile spreads, slow and knowing. “Well, I’ll be damned. Elspeth’s granddaughter, huh?”
“That’s me.”
“Beau Langford,” he says, tugging off one glove and offering a hand. His grip is firm, the kind that travels all the way up to your shoulder. “I live at Copper Hollow.”
I should have assumed as much. Old money, old roots.
The Langfords are one of the founding families, and that cranberry bog he lives beside is one of four enchanted sites in Blue Willow. I remember whispers about ownership disputes, about the Ashbys and the Langfords drawing invisible battle lines across the muck.
But I was only a kid then. My world began and ended with the thrill of tugging on my rubber waders, stomping into the flooded fields, pretending the berries bobbing at my knees were jewels.
Now, the memories come quick, flickering like old photographs. The bonfires in October, jars of jelly lined on Elspeth’s counter, a harvest wagon piled so high it looked like it might tip. The impression of my first kiss, fuzzier now than it’s ever been.
“Keeper of memories,” I murmur.
Beau chuckles, and the sound fills the cramped room. “Breaker of illusions, some prefer.”
I don’t laugh. I’m thinking of a moment I haven’t been able to fully recall since I was twelve.
That first kiss behind the orchard’s barn, quick and sweet and sealed in a blur.
I know it happened. I remember the smell of apple peel and cold air, the brush of knit gloves.
But the name, the face, the spark of it? Gone. Scrubbed clean.
They say Copper Hollow runs on memory. That it keeps the town afloat with the slow, steady power of sentiment. The land itself is charmed—one of only two working bogs left in Connecticut, and the only one known to be tethered to a living magical source.
Its magic feeds on what matters. Core memories. Moments of joy or clarity or change. Townsfolk are meant to give freely, in gratitude for the harvest. And mostly, they do. I did, once upon a time.
But sometimes, the bog takes more than you expect. Sometimes, it feels a bit like theft. Consent by omission, maybe. You offered a thimble of memory, and it siphoned a whole well.
“What are you here for, Beau?” Wells asks, and I stiffen at the gruff, unwelcome sound.
“Nothin’ for you to worry about, buddy.”
Wells busies himself with a stack of ledgers, teeth gritted. He doesn’t rise to the bait, and I can’t tell if it’s restraint or disdain that keeps him quiet. They circle each other like two flints—too stubborn to strike first, too volatile not to spark if they get too close.