Chapter 13 Wells
WELLS
“Sixty days,” Alma says, pen tapping like a metronome. “That’s all we’ve got.”
Bobby clears his throat. “Sixty days of interim protection. In that time, we document the inn, file the packet, and hope the county board has a shred of sense.”
I lean back, arms crossed. If Blue Willow is worth keeping on paper the way we know it is in bone, the county will stamp it. If not, Elsie’s free to sell to any buyer with a checkbook, and this place might as well be stripped for parts.
And sure, I could rattle off a few names who could afford to take it on. But I wouldn’t trust a single one of them with it. Beau, for starters—he’s got the money and the motivation, but not the right reasons.
If he got his hands on the inn, that would give him control over half the town’s magic. And he’s the kind of man who’d treat that like leverage. I’ve long suspected he helped push the Ashbys out of Copper Hollow just so he could claim the bog for himself.
That’s not how this town was built. The founders set up a system—shared, balanced. Each family responsible for one part of the whole. You start consolidating that kind of power and you mess with the fabric of what keeps this place right.
If I could afford it, I’d be the first in line to buy the inn myself. But I’ve got enough saved to stay here, keep the place patched together, and live quietly. That doesn’t cover a down payment, let alone whatever number Beau (or some other greedy bastard) might offer to beat me out.
As I contemplate the grand tragedy of my bank account, Jack volunteers for roof and foundation inspections, promising a guy two towns over who won’t gouge us.
Alma takes form-keeper duty—drafting, outlining, keeping us from wandering into adjectives when the county wants measurements.
Bobby will wrestle the liaison and get the checklist.
I offer to sort through the records we dug up at town hall and make a list of what’s missing: probate copies, old insurance, utility histories, the deed trail back to Dorothea Hart and the south-wing addition.
When Alma asks for “documentary evidence of use”—proof that the inn hasn’t just existed all this time, but served the public—Elsie finally pitches in.
She says she’ll dig through the attic for photographs, menus, ledgers, guest book signatures.
Whatever’s buried under quilts and dust that shows guests came and went.
When Alma says we’ll need community testimony, too, Elsie nods quickly, volunteering to collect statements from longtime patrons. The Motts. The Ashbys. Mrs. Fallon.
It’s almost funny, the way she keeps straightening up in her seat like she’s answering questions in class. Not exactly pathetic, but earnestly out of her depth. And intimidated as hell by Alma, who hasn’t even raised an eyebrow at her yet.
We set the schedule. Weekly meetings here since the quilting guild has claimed town hall Fridays and it’s the only evening the doctor has available. Ten-day progress reviews. Nonnegotiable.
The meeting winds down without a single mention of the word sale, but Elsie twitches every time Bobby says transfer. She’s antsy for this all to be over. The rest of us are toeing the line.
When everyone files out—Alma with her shawl folded neatly, Jack pocketing a scone like contraband, Bobby blessing both the house and the plumbing—the door shuts, and the air holds their shape.
I clear dishes because my hands want a task. Add a split log to the fire because silence, after company, can turn on you. I’d rather not give myself space to think about all the ways I’ve failed Elspeth since she passed.
Elsie lingers. She sits where Alma sat, shoulders folded in, fingertips smoothing the edge of a page that doesn’t need it. The lamp casts a halo on the table. A single crumb catches the light, pale and stubborn.
I want to say something to ease the knot in her posture, but I’m still a little pissed she arranged the meeting here in the first place.
The house didn’t need to listen to all that.
I know she’s trying her best, but still, it’s like she doesn’t understand the cost of dragging something sacred into bureaucracy.
“Everyone here sort of hates me, don’t they?” she asks, quiet and self-effacing. “Well, except Bobby. I don’t think he has a hateful bone in his body.”
I reel back. “Do you actually care?”
If she’s worried about being liked, she’s going about it sideways. You don’t drop back into town with a real estate broker’s checklist and expect confetti. You don’t call your inheritance a burden and expect people to cheer.
She’d have to be delusional to think that’s how this works.
She frowns. “Sure, I do.”
“Your plan is to get the hell out of Dodge, isn’t it? To never see these people again?”
To sell your grandmother’s magical inn, a Hart legacy, and leave a quarter of Blue Willow’s magic vulnerable to consolidation, to rot. It’s already fading and dulled, as evidenced by the inn’s constant state of mood swings and half-function.
“Yes, but—”
“So, you shouldn’t give a shit whether or not they like you.”
The thing is, no one actually hates her. It’s too hard to. Even when she’s being inflexible about the sale, she’s still got that quiet intensity that draws people in. Alma sees it. Jack sees it. I’m certainly not immune.
If she weren’t so damn insistent on walking away, she’d be easy to fall for. Easy to defend. Easy to keep. But as it stands, she’s trying to escape, and I’m trying not to care when she does.
She chews her lip, near tears. Fuck if I know how to handle that.
“You did well enough during the meeting,” I add, if only to soothe the crack in her voice. “No one tried to run you out with a pitchfork.”
She looks up slowly. “Did I? Alma seemed . . . sharp.”
I keep my eyes on the fire. “Alma only corrects people she thinks can handle it.”
A tired laugh slips out of her. She leans back, lets the chair hold her. “It felt like I was a moldy specimen under a microscope, the way they were looking at me.”
“That’s just how their faces settle. They look at everybody that way, especially Jack.”
She shakes her head. “Not you.”
“That’s different.”
Her mouth tilts, then steadies. “It’s not just them. It’s not just tonight.”
“What isn’t?”
The log in the hearth settles with a soft crack, sending a ribbon of heat curling through the room. It reaches us in a thick wave. Warmth, all-encompassing. The house must be listening—reaching—toward her, toward us.
It’s trying.
And I know exactly what she means. Exactly what it feels like to stand at the edge of a place that knows everyone but you. She’s planning to walk away, and I recognize the shape of that feeling all too well.
As I sit here and try not to reach for her, the ache in my hand becomes a low throb. The plum salve has already knit the angriest edges together, but God, I need that fresh batch. Almost more than I need to keep my mouth shut and head upstairs.
“I almost left this place once,” I say to the fire instead of looking into her honey eyes. What good is conviction if I can’t offer it to someone else when they need it most? “Before I realized I belonged in Blue Willow for good.”
Elsie shifts in her chair, the blanket slipping a little lower on her lap.
“I came here after grad school,” I say. “Or after I dropped out, I should say. Thought I’d work a season, help with repairs, figure out what came next.
But one season turned into another, then another, and suddenly, three years had gone by.
I woke up one morning and realized I’d built nothing.
Hadn’t moved an inch since the day I unpacked my truck. ”
I rub my thumb over the rough edge of the table. “So, I packed it back up. Made it as far as Hartford. Pulled into a diner with really bad coffee.”
“What stopped you?”
“I called to tell Elspeth where I was.” I can still see the laminate table, the ring of the mug, the pinboard behind the counter with curling photos of men who caught fish.
“She didn’t ask me to come back. She said, ‘You’ll be here when supper’s ready,’ and hung up. Not a threat or a plea, but certainty.”
“Did you turn around right away?”
“I told myself I’d stay until morning. Find a hotel.” I give a derisive laugh. “I was back before it got dark that night.”
Elsie’s eyes find my hand where it rests on the table. There’s no bandage now, only a pink healing wound. She reaches for the mug near her elbow and nudges it toward me so I don’t have to stand.
Her fingers brush my knuckles. It’s not enough to matter to anyone with sense. It’s enough to matter to me.
“Did you ever regret it?” she asks. “Staying here all this time? Alone, even after my grandmother passed?”
“Some days,” I say. “But the longer I stayed, the more the house stopped feeling like something to fix. And the more I started feeling like something it had decided to keep.”
Her gaze flicks to the fire. “That sounds nice.”
“It was,” I say. “It is. But it took time. Longer than I’d like to admit. And it didn’t come from fighting what this place is. When it started softening around me, letting me belong in ways I never expected, it felt like proof that staying was the only choice I could live with.”
She nods once. A small motion, barely there. Like if she moves too much, she’ll fall apart completely. Her hand is still close to mine. I don’t touch it, but I don’t pull away, either.
“I thought leaving was the only choice I could live with.”
“You were only eighteen then.”
“I was stubborn.”
“You still are.”
She grants me that with a small, tired smile. “You’re not exactly a walk in the park yourself.”
We sit with the quiet until it thickens. A breeze rattles the windowpanes, and Elsie pulls the blanket higher over her knees.
“Earlier, you spoke of the house like it was a person,” she says softly. “Do you think this place truly has a heart of its own? That it feels things, too. I mean, that it’s not just enchanted by magic but . . . fully sentient?”
I nod once. “Elspeth, all the Hart women—they poured so much of themselves into these walls. I know it remembers. I know it feels. Despite its dormancy, it’s always listening. And it’d be foolish to pretend otherwise.”
She folds her hands. “The thought of that scares me.”
“Because you don’t believe it?”
“Because I’m starting to,” she says, and the honesty of it pulls something in my chest. “And believing it means acknowledging I left a place that’s etched into my marrow, carved there by all the women who came before me.
A place that may have truly loved me in the way that only a living thing can.
I don’t know what to do with that, either. ”
I don’t have a clean answer. I don’t think there is one.
I look at the hearth until the heat needles my cheeks. I think of Elspeth in this chair, knitting cratered wool into serviceable blankets, telling me stories she pretended were about the town but were really about how to stay.
“You were a kid,” I say. “Kids leave.”
What I don’t say is that now she’s back—and trying to get rid of the house—that’s the real betrayal. She’s grown. There’s no excuse for walking away now. But calling her on it would break the one rule I’ve set for myself.
Her laughter is soft, a little bitter. “You just don’t want the house to hear you call me a traitor.”
“I don’t want the house to hear the parts we don’t mean,” I say. “Or the parts we do and can’t take back.”
As we fall quiet, Hemingway appears. He makes a slow circuit of the rug, taps one paw against my boot like a salute, then hops up onto the ottoman between us and settles in.
Elsie reaches out without thinking and rubs under his chin. The purr starts up slow, a little machine humming to life, and then swells until it fills the room like another presence.
“You really thought he was gone?”
“I didn’t let myself think about him at all,” she says. “Same as the rest of it.”
“How’s that working out for you?”
“It’s not,” she says with the ghost of a smile. “Not even a little.”
I take a sip of the tea she nudged toward me. It’s gone lukewarm, the cinnamon settled at the bottom like silt. I drink it anyway. The flavor reminds me of Elspeth’s kitchen and of this morning and of how steady Elsie’s hands were when she re-wrapped my bandage.
She’s not kind in the way people expect. She’s careful. That’s rarer.
“Wells,” she says quietly, not looking at me.
“Mmm?”
“Do you think the house—she—can forgive? Will she forgive me when I finally let her go for good?”
I think of the groaning floorboards that hush when we walk, the lights that flicker to guide us, the way warmth always finds the room when we need it most. I think of Elspeth’s tin voice folded into the walls, and the way the house has leaned toward Elsie since the moment she arrived—as if it remembers her. As if it’s been waiting.
The house already behaves as if she’s forgiven. As if it loves her still, and always.
“I think you should sleep,” I say. It’s not the answer she’s looking for, but it’s the only one I trust myself to give. “You’ve got names to track down tomorrow. Alma wants that inventory draft by Friday.”
She nods, slow and tired, and keeps rubbing the cat’s chin until his eyes sink to slits. Then she leans back and lets her head rest against the chair. There’s a robin’s-egg blanket bunched beside her hip; she tugs it once, doesn’t get the angle right, and gives up.
I stand. My knee complains. I take the blanket, shake it loose so the dust glitters in the lamplight, and lay it gently over her legs. She doesn’t open her eyes. Hemingway flicks an ear but doesn’t move.
“Good night,” she murmurs.
“Night,” I return.
I set the fire poker back on its hook and turn the lamp down one notch. The room goes honey dark. At the door, I stop. I always do. I look back at the hearth, at the way flame throws itself against iron.
She’s only been here a week, and already the house is shifting around her. If she stayed—if she truly stayed—I think she could bring it back to life. The way things were before Elspeth fell apart.
And I think, in a more terrifying sort of way, she could stitch herself into my bones the same way this place has. I don’t know if that would be a mercy or the thing that undoes me.