Chapter 5 #2
"Possibilities like what?" Sabrina asked, though her stomach knotted at the thought of planning anything beyond the next hour.
"Rebuilding in some form," Kara said. "Maybe not an identical inn. Maybe something scaled differently, designed for who you are now instead of who your grandparents were then. But we can talk about all of that when you're ready. You don't have to have that conversation today."
Sabrina nodded, her head feeling heavy. "Today I can barely stand here."
"That's enough," Kara said gently. She glanced at Colby briefly, some kind of silent exchange passing between them. "You good with me leaving you two to walk the property? Get some air?"
"Yeah," Colby said. "We've got it."
Kara touched Sabrina's arm, a light, professional comfort that somehow didn't feel hollow. "I'll call you tomorrow. No pressure. Just checking in."
"Okay."
Kara gave her a last, sympathetic look, then walked back toward her SUV, her heels careful on the uneven ground. Sabrina watched her navigate the gravel, open her door, and slide inside with practiced grace.
The moment the engine started, and the vehicle pulled away down the service road, the space around Sabrina felt larger. Quieter. Too quiet.
She stared at the spot where Kara's SUV had disappeared around the bend, then let her gaze drift slowly back over the land. The ruins, tape, and grass that had somehow survived.
"So," Colby said, his voice low. "You all right?"
"No," she inhaled deeply and let it out slowly. "But I'm here, and I'm feeling stronger."
"That's good."
She huffed out a breath that was almost a laugh. Almost. "I've never been brought so low."
He unfolded his arms, letting them hang loose at his sides. "You want to get away from the rubble for a minute?"
She blinked. "Where would we go? It's all rubble."
"Not all of it." He tipped his head toward the back of the property, toward the tree line she'd been carefully not looking at. "Walk with me."
Her first instinct was to refuse. Exhaustion, grief, and sleeplessness weighed down her legs. Her head ached. But standing here, staring at blackened beams and thinking about developers with glossy brochures and bulldozers, made the walls close in even without walls around her.
"Okay," she said.
He lifted the yellow tape so she could duck under without snagging the borrowed sweater Bree had found for her—soft gray cashmere, too nice for this, but warm.
They skirted the worst of the debris, following the curve of the old driveway around the side of the house.
The asphalt was cracked in places, weeds pushing up at the edges, but the line of it was familiar under her feet.
She'd walked this path a thousand times.
Once they passed the ruin, the land opened up.
Grass stretched out behind the house site, uneven and a little wild, where guests had rarely wandered.
The old kitchen garden lay dormant, beds overgrown with weeds and the rusted ghosts of tomato cages neither she nor her grandmother had ever gotten around to replacing.
Beyond that, the ground sloped gently down toward the tree line, where afternoon light filtered through branches to dapple the earth in shifting patterns of gold and green.
She had spent countless evenings back here as a kid, picking raspberries until her fingers stained red, listening to her grandparents trade stories and gentle teasing while they pulled weeds and checked on seedlings.
She had avoided this angle since the fire, her attention pulled again and again to what she had lost at the front. Now, with Colby beside her, the view shifted. Expanded.
He stuck his hands in his pockets as they walked, his stride easy and unhurried. "You ever notice how big this place is?"
"It's always been this big," she said.
"Yeah, but did you notice?" He nodded toward the trees. "From out front, it feels like the inn and the driveway and the porch. That's the story the property tells. Standing back here, you can see the rest. You've got room."
"For what?" she asked.
"Whatever you want," he said.
She let her gaze travel across the landscape. The slight rise near the tree line, catching the light. The natural clearing to the left, where overflow parking had gone during festivals. The way the land dipped just enough in one corner to hide the road from view entirely.
She had always known these things in the way a person knew their own kitchen in the dark—instinctive, unremarked. She had not thought of them as anything more than background. Scenery behind the main event.
"You sound like Kara," she said.
"I do not own a blazer," he said. "And I'm not trying to sell your land out from under you. I'm just pointing out what's here."
"What's here is a burned-out house," she said.
"What's here is a burned-out house on good land with utilities and a killer view," he said. "That part matters too."
She looked toward the inn's remains. From this distance, they looked almost small against the stretch of property behind them. Less like a catastrophe and more like a single piece of a larger puzzle.
Colby pointed with his chin toward the overgrown garden beds. "Those were your grandmother's, right?"
"Yeah." Sabrina's mouth softened despite herself. "She used to rope me into weeding out here every summer. Said it built character."
"How'd that go?"
"I got blisters and a lifelong appreciation for grocery stores," she said. "But guests loved her tomatoes. They were better than anything you could buy. She'd put them out in a bowl on the front porch with a little handwritten sign that said, 'Take one, leave a story.'"
He glanced at her. "Leave a story?"
"She kept a notebook on the porch table," Sabrina said, the memory surfacing with unexpected clarity.
"Spiral-bound, nothing fancy. People would sit there after breakfast and write whatever came to mind—a memory, a joke, something that happened on their trip.
She said the house needed new stories to stay young.
That buildings got old and creaky when people stopped telling tales inside them. "
He smiled at that, a small curve of his mouth, and something in her chest loosened.
"Imagine this without the house for a second," he said. "Not replacing it. Just... editing it out of the picture. What do you see?"
She frowned. "Why would I do that?"
"Because right now, every time you look at this property, you see what used to be there." He stopped walking and turned in a slow circle, taking in the field, the trees, the sky overhead, going soft with the late-afternoon light. "Try looking at what is here, not what was."
She stood where she was and tried.
Without forcing her gaze to the ruins, she took in the land's slope.
The way the tree line curved instead of running straight, creating natural alcoves and sheltered spots.
The patch of ground on the left stayed dry in the spring because of its higher elevation.
Hidden from the road, mature oaks flattened and dipped the back corner.
Patience seemed to emanate from the land. Like it was waiting for whatever came next without judgment or expectation.
"I see grass that needs mowing," she said.
He huffed. "Besides that."
She let her eyes move again, slower this time.
Taking in details instead of dismissing them.
"There's the rise near the trees. The evening light hits it really nicely—turns everything gold for about twenty minutes before sunset.
That's where my grandfather built the little bench for my grandmother when they first bought the place.
He proposed to her there, actually. Before they even started on the foundation. "
"Okay," Colby said. "That's one thing."
"The clearing over there," she added, nodding to the left. "We used it for overflow parking during festivals and big events. It never floods, even in heavy rain. There's a natural drainage line just past it that carries water away toward the back of the property."
"Two things," he said. "You've also got distance from the road, privacy from neighbors on three sides, and access to the trail that runs behind the property toward the state park."
She blinked. "How do you know about the trail?"
"I've run it." He shrugged one shoulder. "Firehouse guys use it for training sometimes when we want terrain instead of pavement. It's quiet. Good hills. Connects to about six miles of marked paths if you keep going."
She pictured him running those familiar paths, sweat darkening his shirt, focus locked in, breath steady and controlled. The thought unsettled her stomach in a way she didn't want to analyze.
"Point is," he said, "you have more than a pile of ash. You have ground that people want for a reason. Good reasons."
"So they can pave it," she said.
"So they can build something," he corrected. "You don't have to like what they want to build. But it tells you something about what you have. About what's possible here."
She shoved her hands into her pockets, fingers brushing the folded tissue she'd forgotten there from this morning. "What good does it do me if I don't intend to sell?"
"Who said you have to sell?" he asked. "You could build something here yourself."
She let out a short, humorless sound. "With what money? Kara saw a windfall. I see liability and a bonfire."
He didn't argue. He just looked at her, steady and patient, like he could wait out the layer of sarcasm and defensiveness until she ran out of it.
She turned in a slow circle, taking in the full sweep of the property again. For the first time since the fire, her mind didn't go immediately to loss.
It went... blank.
Blank in a way that felt like a clean page before the first stroke of ink. Like possibility instead of emptiness.
If she were starting from nothing—if there had never been an inn here, never been a wraparound porch and a carved front desk and a hand-painted sign with her family name on it—what would she see?
The thought struck so sharply she actually inhaled, a quick catch of breath.