Chapter Fifteen #2
“She gave me a box,” Eva said carefully, aware of how the air in the room seemed to thicken with his presence. “And with the key I found I was able to open it. Florence must have known they’d be a match. She said Margaret wanted—”
“Margaret’s dead,” Charlie cut her off, his voice sharp as winter wind. “She doesn’t want anything anymore.”
“Charlie—”
He interrupted her—“ahh I see, you’re running away already?
” His voice was bitter, as he cast his eyes over the clothes haphazardly laid out on the bed.
The sight seemed to confirm something for him—his shoulders sagged slightly, as if he’d been expecting this.
“God, I should have seen this coming. Things get complicated and before you know it, it’s time to hop on a flight back to the bloody US of A.
Or did you get bored and decide this little trip was over? ”
Eva felt anger flare, hot and sudden. Her hands clenched at her sides, nails digging into palms. “You don’t know anything about me. Or why I’m here.”
“Don’t I?” Charlie stepped into the room, his presence filling the small space like smoke.
“You’re here because you’re running from something.
Bad breakup, wasn’t it? So you decided you needed an adventure, a distraction for now and then a story to tell your friends back home.
‘The Christmas I solved a mystery in York.’ How charming. ”
“That’s not—”
“And now you’ve got your story, haven’t you? My grandmother’s tragic love affair, the lost American, the family secrets. Perfect material for whatever blog post or Instagram story you’ll no doubt share.”
“Stop it,” Eva said, her voice low and dangerous. She could feel her pulse in her throat, taste copper in her mouth. She’d never been so angry in her life. Or had she, but never been honest enough with herself to truly feel it?
“Why? Because the truth hurts?” Charlie’s eyes were wild, the careful control she’d seen him maintain cracking like ice under pressure.
“You’re treating Margaret’s story like a fairy tale.
Like something with a happy ending just waiting to be discovered.
It’s not a fairy tale—it did not end happily ever after.
” He laughed bitterly. “You know what happens when you devote yourself to stories and books instead of life? You end up like one. On the shelf. Collecting dust. That’s what happened to her—surrounded by other people’s stories because she couldn’t write her own ending, the one she got instead was sad and lonely. ”
“I know that!” Eva shouted, surprising them both. The words echoed in the small room, seeming to bounce off the sloped ceiling. “I’ve read her diary, Charlie. Every painful entry. I felt her heartbreak, her regret. I understand—”
“You understand nothing!” Charlie roared back.
His face was flushed, a vein pulsing at his temple.
“You didn’t catch her crying every year on the fourth of July like clockwork.
You didn’t see her flinch when American tourists asked us for directions.
You didn’t hold her hand when she was dying and hear her whisper a name that wasn’t my grandfather’s. ”
The silence that followed was deafening. Charlie stood there, chest heaving, his breath visible in the cold room—when had it gotten so cold? He looked as surprised by his outburst as Eva felt.
“Walter,” Eva said softly. “She said Walter’s name?”
Charlie’s face crumpled. It was like watching a wall collapse—sudden and complete. “She just asked him over and over ‘why did you do it?’ It was awful. My mum tried to tell her it was okay, that Grandad—Thomas—understood. But she just kept apologising to a ghost.”
Eva moved without thinking, reaching for the wooden box on her desk. The wood was warm under her fingers, as if it had been waiting. “Charlie, there’s something you need to see.”
“I don’t want—”
“There’s a letter.” She thrust the box at him. Her hands were shaking slightly still, the adrenaline in her veins from the fighting made the contents rattle—a sound like bones. “From Walter in 1946. She didn’t get it until later, she never opened it.”
Charlie stared at the box like it might bite him. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “No.”
“You need to read it. You need to understand—”
“I said no!” He snatched the box from her hands, clutching it against his chest. She could see his knuckles white with pressure, could hear his breathing—ragged and uneven. “Whatever’s in here, whatever excuses or explanations he had, it doesn’t matter. He left her. She waited, and he left.”
“But what if—”
“There is no ‘what if’,” Charlie said, already backing towards the door. “There’s only what happened. And what happened is that Margaret Wells spent her whole life paying for loving the wrong man.”
He was gone before Eva could respond, his footsteps on the stairs heavy and uneven, punctuated by the slam of the front door that rattled the windows in their frames. She stood alone in her room, surrounded by half-organised clothes and unfinished stories.
This was it—her dark night of the soul, as her English teacher, Ms Jensen would have called it. The moment when the heroine must choose: give up and go home, or stay and fight for something that might be impossible.
Eva sank onto the bed, the mattress springs creaking a familiar protest. She outstretched her arms creating a clothing snow angel and sighed amongst the mess.
Rolling onto her side she reached out and pulled her green leather journal towards herself.
The pages already held so many observations about York, about Margaret, about her own journey.
She turned to a fresh page, the paper crisp beneath her fingers.
She thought of Richard’s call, of the easy path back to Nashville and a life that would never quite fit.
She thought of Florence, signing papers she didn’t want to sign because she saw no other choice.
She thought of Charlie, so wounded by his grandmother’s pain that he couldn’t see past it to the love that had caused it.
To Sophie and the way she had broken Charlie’s heart all the same.
And she thought of Margaret, eighteen years old, looking to Walter’s empty hospital bed and choosing duty over desire.
Eva picked up her pen and wrote:
Sometimes the bravest thing is to stay.
Not because it’s easy—it’s not. Every instinct screams to run, to return to the safe and known and manageable. But there’s a different kind of courage in planting your feet and saying: this matters. These people matter. This story matters.
Charlie thinks I don’t understand, but I do.
I understand what it’s like to live someone else’s version of your life.
I understand the weight of other people’s expectations, the way they can shape you into someone you don’t recognize.
I understand the fear of wanting something so much it might destroy you.
But I also understand this: Margaret’s story isn’t finished. It echoes through generations, shaping lives, breaking hearts, building walls. Charlie carries her regret like armour. Florence holds her secrets like penance. And somewhere in an unopened letter is a truth that might change everything.
I could leave. Pack my bags, catch a flight, return to Nashville and pretend these weeks were just a strange detour. But I know now what Margaret knew then—some choices you can’t unmake. Some people you can’t unlove. Some stories demand to be finished, even if the ending isn’t happy ever after.
So, I’m staying. To fight for the inn. To fight for Charlie, even if he doesn’t want me to. Or, doesn’t want me. As hard as that is to write. But I’m here to fight for the truth of Margaret’s story, whatever it might be.
Because sometimes the bravest thing isn’t letting go. Sometimes it’s holding on.
Eva closed the journal and stood, moving to the window.
York sprawled below her, ancient and eternal, its cobblestone streets slick with frost that caught the streetlights like scattered diamonds.
Somewhere out there, Charlie was walking those streets with Margaret’s box clutched to his chest, carrying the weight of generations of heartbreak.
She had two days to save the inn. Two days to convince Charlie that some stories deserved better endings. Two days to prove that this American tourist might just be exactly what this particular fairy tale needed.
Eva began reorganising her clothes, hanging them back in the wardrobe with careful deliberation.
Each garment was a small act of defiance—the cable-knit cardigan she’d worn on her country walk with Charlie when he’d kissed her under the mistletoe, the green sweater she’d worn to the Christmas dinner, the jeans still stained with Yorkshire mud.
With each hanger that clinked against the rail, she was making a declaration: I belong here.
Through her window, the Minster bells began to toll—ten o’clock, their bronze voices carrying across the frozen city. Eva pressed her palm against the cold glass, feeling the vibration of the bells through the window, through her bones.
Margaret Wells had spent over fifty years with her hand pressed against the window of what might have been, watching life pass by on the other side of the glass. Eva Coleman wasn’t going to make the same mistake.
Not when the glass could still be broken.
Not when the story was still being written in ink that hadn’t yet dried.