Chapter 18 Wells
WELLS
Lantern light threads the orchard lane in a patient line. It wobbles where the ground heaves and steadies where I sank the stakes earlier to string them up.
Kids thump pot lids with wooden spoons. Someone wrestles with a brazier that won’t catch until it suddenly does, fire climbing in a clean, bright column.
Old Twelvey. The night we wake the trees and remind the town it knows how to outlast a season. There’s something about these rituals I’ve loved since the first year I moved here. It’s not like home, where the calendar changed but nothing else did.
Blue Willow’s traditions return each year without being asked, holding their shape even when everything else tilts or fades. It’s something to admire, something to cling to.
“Last ten,” Isla calls, appearing halfway down the row with a crate of beeswax tapers from Honeywild. “If you break them, I’m billing you personally.”
“They’re recycled candles, Isla.”
“They’re my candles,” she says, mock stern. “And they’re perfect.”
The wassail bowl sits at the end of the lane, waiting. If I could replay the look on Elsie’s face when I pulled it from under the tea towels, I would. She looked at me like she hated that I was a step ahead—but also like she might trust me for it.
I liked that look.
Around us, the crowd is settling: wool coats, breath puffing in small storms, a hundred low voices softening toward the part where we hush, and the trees listen. I’d call it superstition if I didn’t already know better.
The magic here is real, and it’s everywhere.
I spot a head of chestnut curls near the table. Isla has tied a silver ribbon at Elsie’s wrist and is talking to her with wild, earnest hands. Elsie listens, chin tipped down, eyes up.
“Lanterns first,” Isla calls. “Then toast. Then cider.” She catches my eye and points toward the far end. “Your stakes are holding well. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” I say. “Wind’s a jealous guest.”
I pass a candle to a woman who’s already lit two. She grins like I’ve handed her something better than beeswax, holds my gaze a moment too long.
I nod, polite, and move on.
It used to happen more often when I first moved here. Women testing me, seeing if I’d answer a look with something more. And I used to, rather willingly.
These days, I’m more interested in whether or not a joint will hold.
Elsie meets me in the drift between groups. “How many did you need to fix?”
“Four,” I say. “Ground’s like stone.”
“Looking good,” she says, then stumbles. “I mean the line. It looks steady.”
“Thanks.”
She lifts a slice of toast from a plate and dips it into the steaming cider. The bread soaks fast. She makes a face when it threatens to fall apart, and I slide the bowl closer.
“Lift slow,” I say. “Let it drip.”
“Do you naturally know how to do everything, or are you just making it up as you go?”
“I was born this way.”
She snorts, and something in me unwinds.
The brass band from the church starts up with something almost—but not quite—in tune. A hush passes from one end of the lane to the other. Bobby Brindle clears his throat at the head table as Isla squeezes past us, cheeks bright, hands full of matches.
“You ready?” Isla asks.
“I’m upright,” Elsie says. “I think I can talk to the crowd for a few minutes.”
“Good luck.” Isla squeezes her wrist and moves on, lighting wicks with quick, sure touches.
Elsie looks down the row. “Where do I put this?”
“Pick a tree,” I say. “First one you liked when you were little, maybe.”
“I don’t remember which was first.”
“Then pick the one that looks like it wants company.”
She studies the nearest trunk, then another two down. She walks ahead and stops at one with a low branch. There’s a scar on the east side where lightning must have kissed it.
“This one,” she says.
“You sure?”
“I like the scar. Looks like an old seam someone stitched shut.”
She tucks the toast into the crook of a branch. The ribbon slips loose at her wrist and flutters; she catches it, ties it higher with neat, strong fingers. The lanterns along the lane answer with a soft, collective flicker.
Bobby starts the old words. Folks repeat them in the easy cadence of people who’ve said them all their lives. When it comes time for the last lines, Isla tips her chin toward Elsie.
When we first arrived, Bobby told her she’d be reciting the final verse in her grandmother’s place. She blinked at him like he’d asked her to sing solo at a wedding. I thought she might bolt.
Now, she reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out a folded square of paper. Elspeth’s handwriting stares back as Elsie takes the microphone.
She reads:
“Wake, old roots, from your silver sleep,
Drink the warmth the hearthfires keep.
Bloom again when the robins sing,
And guard the hearts that guard this spring.”
Fucking Christ. I didn’t expect her voice to carry so steadily. Didn’t expect the words to sound like they belonged to her, but they do. Like she was always meant to be the one saying them.
The cheer goes up; the bowl starts its slow pass around the table. I gather empties, let the movement give my hands something to do. Elsie stays still a moment longer, the paper trembling between her fingers.
When she finally meets my eyes, there’s too much weight on her shoulders already, and I know better than to let anyone add more.
“Let’s walk,” I say. “Before someone hands you a second speech. Or worse, the clipboard.”
She exhales a quick laugh. “Good idea.”
We cut across the lane to the edge of the field, where the light thins. The music is a low hum behind us. There’s a bench made from a fallen limb set on two stumps. I brush the snow off with the side of my glove, and we sit.
“You did fine,” I say. “More than, actually.”
“I shook a little,” she says.
“We’ll call it enthusiasm.”
She huffs a laugh.
We watch the trees together, quiet. Words knot in my throat, so I wait her out.
“My mom didn’t like this sort of thing,” she says at last, still facing forward. “Any of it. The crowds. The small talk. The part where you’re expected to stand in the cold and be friendly to everyone.”
“Can’t blame her for the last part.”
“She hated the expectations that came with Blue Willow,” she goes on. “Yet she sent me here whenever she could. Outside of school, I was always at Elspeth’s. If there was a break to be had, I had it here.”
“And you loved it,” I remind her. “At the time, at least.”
“It was nice, being here. Being away from my mother.”
“You never got along?”
She rubs her thumb against her ribbon until the knot tightens. “When I was little, I cried at everything. Happy, sad, scraped knee, too-bright lights, a good song, the smell of peaches. It was all big. It still is—I just learned to hide it better.”
“Eight years,” I say, tipping my head like I’m thinking it through.
“What?”
“You told me last week you hadn’t cried in eight years.”
She studies my face. “I put things in boxes. That’s how I made it through college.
Through . . . a lot. I made a box for Blue Willow when I left.
Tied it with ribbon, shoved it high in the closet.
I shoved my mother under the mattress. I put my father in a drawer I didn’t open.
If I took any of them out, it became too much.
So, I didn’t. Not if I wanted to function. ”
“Compartmentalizing,” I say. “I’m familiar with it.”
“I know you are.” She looks at my hands. “You make neat stacks. You like lines straight. Your face stays the same even when your knee hurts. You put all the words you don’t say somewhere where only you can get to them.”
I swallow and feel the old habits line up, ready to deflect. Instead, I give her something of me in return for her candor.
“My parents and I weren’t close, either,” I tell her.
“People assume adoption makes you a miracle. For mine, it was more like an acquisition. They tried to dress it up—the photos, the church announcements, the family portraits in matching sweaters. They had a box for the life they wanted, and they put me in it.”
“That sounds—” She stops. “Small.”
“It was. They weren’t cruel, just committed to the picture more than the person. So, I learned to be the picture. School, grades, good attitude. Architecture on top of that because it photographed well.”
“Then you fell,” she says softly.
“Then I fell,” I echo. “Nerves turned traitor. The box they had for me didn’t have room for pain that stayed. Neither did I, if I’m honest.”
She turns a little on the bench. “And here, in Blue Willow, there are no big expectations. No measuring tape.”
“I don’t feel like I’m about to fail an exam or get scolded for slipping up. The pressure’s gone. Life goes on here without keeping score. The magic is a bonus.”
She watches as cups are refilled at the end of the lane. “It’s been the opposite for me since I came back,” she says. “It’s like the walls lean in and press. And I hate that I’m the one making it feel that way. I know I’m the variable. I just don’t know how to stop.”
I study her profile—the slope of her shoulders, the ribbon loose again at her wrist, the way she keeps her gaze on the firelight like it might offer instructions.
She loves this place. Loves her grandmother. Loves the sound of the wind in the inn’s chimney and the pencil marks in the upstairs hallway where Elspeth once measured her height. And still, it costs her something to be here.
Maybe that’s what I have trouble understanding.
That being here takes effort. That honoring a legacy can feel like standing beneath its weight. That she isn’t wrong for wanting to lay it down, even if it means the rest of us have to bear it.
And yes, it frustrates me. Makes me angry in that quiet way that settles in my jaw and doesn’t move. But it doesn’t make her selfish. It doesn’t make her heartless.
“I get why you want to sell,” I say at last. “At least, I get why you think you have to.”
“And still . . .”
“And still, I wish you didn’t.”