Chapter 3
HAZEL
The dream started soft.
Warm light on skin. A man’s low laugh, roughened by sleep.
He stood behind me, tall enough that I had to tip my head back to meet his gaze.
His face was shadowed, but I knew he was beautiful in that unpolished way—the kind of beauty that didn’t ask to be noticed.
His hands slid over my waist, palms calloused, reverent.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. Every brush of his fingers said I was safe, desired, claimed.
I leaned into him, greedy for the comfort, for the warmth that moved through me like honey. When his mouth found the base of my throat, I sighed, the sound embarrassingly needy. The world blurred, all golden edges and breathless promise.
I’d never felt wanted like that. I could almost believe this was real, that someone like him might exist in the same world as spreadsheets and late-night emails.
“Stay,” he whispered against my ear. His voice was deep, familiar in a way that made my pulse stutter.
I turned in his arms to see his face—
—but the scene fractured.
The light went out.
The air thickened, and somewhere far off a woman screamed.
“Hazel!”
I froze. My name, torn through the dark, high and desperate.
“Mom?” My voice broke on the word.
No answer—just the ragged echo of her crying for help. I ran toward it, bare feet slapping the floor, hands clawing through blackness. Doors appeared and vanished. I pushed one open and found nothing. Another, and only waves crashing over empty beds.
“Where are you?” I shouted. “Mom!”
The sound came again—closer, then farther. My chest hurt. The darkness pressed down until I couldn’t tell if I was running or drowning.
And then—silence.
Utter, total silence.
It was worse than the screams.
I opened my mouth to call again, but the air wouldn’t move. A hand—someone’s—closed around my wrist from behind. Hard. I gasped, terrified. The dream tilted.
The next thing I knew, I was awake.
I sat bolt upright in bed, breath coming fast. The room was washed in pale morning light, soft but unforgiving. My heart pounded against my ribs like it was trying to get out.
Ouch.
The inn creaked around me, slow and steady, as if it had heard the whole thing and wasn’t impressed. The sheets clung damp to my skin.
For a second, I didn’t move. I just sat there, staring at the pattern of cracks on the ceiling, trying to separate what was real from what was memory. My mother’s voice still echoed somewhere deep in my bones, even though she’d been gone for years.
Not gone, I corrected myself. Taken.
I shoved the thought away before it could consume me.
Focus. Reality. Tasks.
That was how I kept the ghosts in their corners.
I swung my legs out of bed, bare feet finding the worn rug. The morning smelled of rain and something faintly metallic—old pipes maybe. The faint hum of cicadas came through the half-open window. A single gull cried out over the dunes.
Everything looked different in daylight.
Last night, the house had seemed mysterious, even a little romantic in its decay. This morning, it was just sad.
The wallpaper that might have been charming in the dark was peeling in long strips. The mirror on the dresser leaned so far forward I had to catch it before it toppled. Dust coated everything in a thin film, glittering meanly in the sun.
I opened the curtains. The glass panes were streaked with salt, blurring the view of the dunes beyond. Outside, the porch railing sagged. Paint peeled from the columns. The yard was more sand than grass, dotted with stubborn tufts of sea oats and the half-buried remains of a garden bench.
My stomach tightened. What in the world was I supposed to do with this?
I had been here once before, when I was maybe six or seven.
My parents brought me down for a week in the summer, back when the inn still smelled of polish and sugar cookies instead of dust. I remembered flashes more than moments—the sound of the waves through the screen door, my grandmother’s voice humming from somewhere unseen, a pink seashell I found on the shore and left on her desk.
The rest was gone, worn smooth by time like the shells on the beach.
I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to fully picture the woman my grandmother had been—stubborn, proud, independent. She must have loved this place fiercely to hold onto it. Maybe too fiercely.
She could have sold years ago, pocketed the money, lived comfortably. But instead, she’d kept running a six-room inn that no longer had guests. Maybe, she couldn’t let go. Maybe, she was lonely.
Or maybe, she was protecting something.
I shook my head. No. Don’t start with mysteries. Start with lists.
That was the only language I spoke fluently.
I grabbed my notebook and pen from the suitcase. The first page already had a heading:
Bradford Inn – To Do Before Sale (One Year Clause)
Under it, a bulleted list:
· Assess property condition
· Inventory furniture
· Review financial records
· Contact repair services
· Determine resale potential
I stared at the last item for a long moment. The words looked practical, impersonal. But they hummed with the truth beneath them: I couldn’t even think about selling until a year had passed. A full turn of the sun, my grandmother’s lawyer had said, reading the clause like a spell.
Why a year? What difference did it make? It felt less like a condition and more like a punishment.
I pressed the pen harder than I needed to, dotting the page.
One year.
Three hundred sixty-five days in this place.
If I was going to survive it, I needed order. Structure. A plan.
I got up and moved around the room, straightening things that didn’t need straightening. Pillow. Lampshade. Curtain tie. The motions calmed me.
The shower in the tiny en-suite bathroom groaned when I turned the knob, spitting brown water before clearing to lukewarm.
I scrubbed fast, hyper-aware of every sound the house made—the groan of plumbing, the thump of wind against the siding.
I toweled off and pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, practical clothes for facing disaster.
Downstairs, the scent of coffee greeted me.
Maude stood by the stove, humming to herself as she poured two mugs. She wore the same floral dress as yesterday, but with a fresh apron. Her gray hair was pinned in its immaculate twist, not a strand out of place.
“Morning, Miss Bradford,” she said with a smile that reached her eyes. “Sleep all right?”
“Fine,” I lied. “But please—call me Hazel,” I said, wrapping my hands around the coffee mug she offered. “Miss Bradford makes me sound like a schoolteacher.”
“Hazel, then. Dreams’ll be loud your first few nights here,” she said knowingly. “The sea gets in your head. It pulls up memories you think you buried.”
That hit too close. I busied myself adding sugar to my coffee I didn’t really need. “I was planning to walk the property today. Take stock of everything.”
Maude looked pleased. “That’s the spirit. I’ll come with you. Got to make sure you don’t fall through a loose board or get turned around near the marsh.”
“I can manage—”
“Maybe,” she interrupted gently. “But it’ll go faster with two. Your grandmother and I used to do our morning rounds after breakfast. Old habits die hard.”
Something about her tone made it sound less like an offer and more like a law of the house.
“All right,” I agreed. “Let me grab my notebook.”
While she finished breakfast, I walked through the foyer again, noting details I hadn’t noticed the night before.
The guest ledger sat on the front desk, a fine layer of dust coating the cover.
I ran my finger along it, leaving a clean line behind.
The brass door knocker shaped like a gull gleamed faintly in the daylight, watching me.
I added a line to my notebook: Polish brass fixtures. Replace chandelier bulb.
The list grew quickly as we began our tour.
We started with the kitchen, where Maude pointed out the quirks of each appliance. “Oven’s temperamental—kick it twice, if it won’t light. Ice machine’s fickle. Washer’s fine as long as you don’t overload it.”
I wrote everything down, trying not to let the disrepair overwhelm me. Each problem was a puzzle to solve, a thing I could control.
From there we moved through the common rooms—the sitting area with faded armchairs and a fireplace that hadn’t been cleaned in years, the dining room with its long table set for no one. Dust motes floated in the sunbeams slanting through the windows.
“Your grandmother always said the guests liked the place cozy,” Maude said, straightening a crooked picture frame. “She didn’t care for those fancy resorts up the coast. Said they lacked soul.”
“Maybe soul doesn’t pay the bills,” I muttered before I could stop myself.
Maude shot me a look, not unkind. “Maybe not. But she wasn’t one to measure life in money.”
I hesitated, then asked the question that had been clawing at the back of my mind since I saw the roofline sag. “Did she leave anything aside for repairs? The attorney mentioned a small discretionary fund, but it sounded more like pocket change than a budget.”
Maude pursed her lips. “A few thousand, maybe. Enough to keep the lights on and fix what’s urgent. Beyond that …”
“Beyond that, it’s on me,” I finished for her. I tried to sound resigned instead of panicked. “I’ll use my savings, for now. I’ll get it back when I sell.”
Maude’s expression softened, though her eyes stayed sharp. “You might find this place has other ways of paying you back, Hazel.”
I bit back a sigh.
Outside, the air was thick with the smell of salt and wet earth. The storm had washed the world clean, leaving everything bright and raw. Seagulls cried overhead. The sand in the yard squelched under my sneakers.
The porch steps groaned as we descended. “Watch that middle one,” Maude warned. “Soft wood. I keep telling myself I’ll fix it, but …”
“I’ll put it on the list,” I said automatically.
She chuckled. “You like your lists, don’t you?”
“They help me think.”
“Nothing wrong with that. As long as you remember not everything worth keeping can be written down.”
Her words lingered as we made our way around the property.
Behind the inn, a narrow path led toward the marsh. The air grew quieter there, heavy with the buzz of insects and the faint splash of something unseen in the reeds. Maude walked ahead, steady and sure.
“She used to come out here at dawn,” she said. “Said it helped her remember why she stayed.”
“Why did she stay?” I asked, genuinely curious.
Maude paused, eyes scanning the horizon. “Some people can’t leave the things that built them. Your grandmother was one. This place—every board, every nail—it was her story.”
I nodded slowly, though I didn’t really understand. I couldn’t imagine being bound to anything so completely.
When we circled back to the front, sweat dampened my hairline. I’d taken dozens of photos on my phone, each one evidence of more work to do: warped shutters, cracked plaster, a sagging roofline that made my stomach sink.
I looked down at my notes. The neat bullet points had already sprawled across the page, branching into sublists. Priorities, contingencies, action items. I underlined the last one three times.
Control the controllable. That was my mantra. Always had been.
Maude leaned against the porch railing beside me, wiping her hands on her apron. “She’d be glad you’re here, you know.”
I gave a small laugh. “You don’t even know me.”
“I know enough. You came.”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
We stood in silence, watching the gulls wheel over the water. The sunlight glinted off the waves, bright enough to hurt.
One year, I thought. One year to make sense of this place, to survive the ghosts and the memories and the silence that already felt too intimate.