Chapter Twenty-one – Lark
Hadley does not ask. That should probably be the first thing I understand when she knocks once on my bedroom door and pushes it open before I’ve had time to answer.
Morning light spills in around her, catching in the waves of her hair and the sunglasses pushed up on top of her head, and she looks like she walked in already halfway through the day while I’m still trying to catch up to mine.
“You’ve got twenty minutes,” she says.
I lower the sweatshirt I’m halfway folding and stare at her over the edge of it. “For what?”
“For the plan.”
“That sounds suspiciously vague.”
“It’s intentionally vague,” she says, leaning one shoulder against the frame like she has nowhere else to be and all the time in the world to wait me out. “If I gave you details, you’d start making excuses.”
“That implies I don’t want details.”
“That implies I know enough now to be right.”
I should argue. Instead, I look past her toward the hall, listening for signs of the rest of the house.
It’s quieter than usual. Holt is on shift.
That absence still lands in me before I can stop it, a quick, familiar awareness that leaves me annoyed every single time I notice it.
It’s ridiculous how quickly a person can become something you notice in their absence.
How fast silence starts sounding different when you know exactly who isn’t filling it.
Hadley follows my line of sight.
“He left before six,” she says casually.
I snap my attention back to her too fast.
Her mouth curves.
“That was not subtle.”
“I wasn’t asking.”
“No.” She pushes off the frame and takes two steps into the room, reaching down to scratch Rook between the ears where he’s sprawled across the rug pretending he has no responsibilities at all. “You just looked like someone who wanted the answer and hated that about herself.”
I blow out a breath and toss the folded sweatshirt onto the bed. “You’re exhausting.”
“Yet,” she says, straightening, “you still have twenty minutes.”
“For the plan.”
“For the plan.”
Rook stands, stretches long enough to make a production of it, then trots to Hadley and leans against her leg like he’s already chosen his side.
Traitor.
“What if I say no?”
“You won’t.”
“You seem very sure.”
She tilts her head, studying me with a kind of easy confidence I don’t think she’s even aware she has.
“I am,” she says. “Because I know exactly what happens if I leave you here. You’ll go to the inn, you’ll work until your shoulders lock up, you’ll pretend that qualifies as coping, and by tonight you’ll be so wound tight no one can have a conversation with you without risking bodily harm. ”
“That feels dramatic.”
“That feels accurate.”
I start to tell her she’s wrong and stop halfway through because, unfortunately, she isn’t.
Hadley smiles slowly, like she knows she’s won before I’ve admitted it. “Exactly. Twenty minutes. Wear something cute enough that Bailey won’t sigh at you.”
Then she’s gone, just like that. Leaving the door open behind her and the room full of the kind of restless energy that means she’s made herself impossible to ignore.
I stand still for a second longer, one hand braced against the edge of the dresser, and look around the room like the answer might be hidden somewhere obvious.
Holt’s room still doesn’t feel like mine, and maybe that’s part of what keeps catching me off balance.
The quiet is his quiet. The bed is his bed.
The air carries traces of soap and clean cotton and something warmer beneath it that I stopped pretending not to recognize sometime last week.
That should make this easier. It doesn’t.
Rook huffs once like he’s tired of waiting for me to keep up.
“Fine,” I mutter. “We’re participating in friendship.”
He blinks. Unmoved.
I end up in jeans and a soft cream sweater because Hadley would absolutely call me out if I tried to pass off work clothes as town clothes, and because some part of me knows she’s right.
About all of it, really. About the inn swallowing whole days.
About work becoming a hiding place if I let it.
About how quickly I’ve defaulted to action every time something emotional gets too close to the surface.
Maybe that’s what scares me most about this place. Not the inn. Not the fire. Not even Holt, though he should probably rank higher on the list than he does. What scares me is how easy it would be to settle into something here. To let people care without having to earn it first.
By the time I make it downstairs, Hadley waits by the front door with Bailey and Ivy, all three of them holding coffee like they came armed for this exact mission.
Lila is there too, one hip against the wall, pastry box in hand and sunglasses hooked into the neck of her sweater.
The sight of all four of them together—comfortable, bright, entirely too alive for this early in the day—hits me with a strange, immediate warmth that I don’t know what to do with.
Bailey’s gaze sweeps over me, approving. “Good. You look like a person.”
“I have always looked like a person.”
“Debatable,” Hadley says.
Lila lifts the pastry box between us. “I brought backup in case the hostage negotiation got difficult.”
Ivy glances down at Rook, who hid in the corner when the girls arrived, but after a soft pat on the head no weaves through everyone’s legs like he’s known them forever. “He seems willing.”
“He would sell me for a croissant,” I say.
Bailey smiles. “Then we’re all set.”
The morning air outside feels lighter than it did when I first woke up.
Cooler too, carrying the scent of salt and cut grass and the faint sweetness from whatever Claire must’ve planted near the porch years ago.
We pile into Bailey’s SUV because, according to Hadley, “it has the best music and the least amount of judgment,” which says more about their group dynamics than any of them probably realizes.
I end up in the back with Ivy and the pastries, Rook sprawled across the seat between us like he absolutely belongs here.
Hadley claims shotgun. Lila takes the driver’s seat after one quick argument with Bailey about navigation that is clearly part of a routine neither of them dislikes enough to stop repeating.
The ride into town is loud in the easy way I’m still getting used to.
Not overwhelming. Just full. Hadley talks with her whole body, turning halfway in her seat every time she has something to say, which is often.
Bailey edits the running commentary with the dry precision of someone who’s known her too long to let exaggerations stand.
Lila laughs low and often, the kind of laugh that sounds lived-in, and Ivy cuts in every now and then with one quiet line that settles better than anything else said before it.
I listen to most of it. Then, slowly, I stop just listening and start answering.
The first stop is more coffee. The second is Bailey’s bookstore because apparently no trip into town can happen without it.
The place is quieter this early, sun cutting through the front windows in wide golden bands that catch dust and paper and the soft edges of old wood shelves worn smooth with time.
The bell over the door rings when we step in, and something in me settles the second I smell the familiar mix of books, coffee, and sea air drifting in from outside.
This place feels like a refuge.
Hadley disappears toward the front display with a dramatic gasp over a new romance release.
Lila heads toward the children’s section, already muttering something about a book Dean promised he’d remember to pick up and definitely forgot.
Ivy wanders toward the back with Rook pacing loyally at her heel, one hand trailing lightly over the spines of books as she passes.
Bailey lingers near the register beside me, rearranging a stack of bookmarks that do not need rearranging.
“You can breathe in here,” she says quietly.
I glance at her, but she doesn’t look up from the display.
“Was I not?”
“You were,” she says, “but more like someone forgot to let it fill your lungs.”
That earns a short laugh out of me before I can stop it.
Bailey finally looks over. “There she is.”
Something about that phrase catches me wrong and right at the same time.
Because my father used to say it whenever I came back to myself after getting too quiet.
There she is, Little Lark. Usually, when I’d spent too long sketching by myself at some jobsite or had gotten angry enough to retreat into silence and needed a hand pulling me back without it feeling like a rescue.
I look away before the ache gets too visible. Bailey catches it anyway.
“He said that,” I say, keeping my voice low. “My dad.”
Bailey’s hand stills on the edge of the register. “There she is.”
I nod once.
The silence between us stretches, but it doesn’t turn uncomfortable. The women in this town have a way of letting silence hold without making it a burden. It’s one of the things I’m still learning.
“He sounds like he knew you,” she says.
The answer rises so quickly it surprises me.
“He did,” I say. “Or he tried to. Better than anyone else, anyway.”
Bailey waits and doesn’t rush me. The store murmurs around us—pages turning, Hadley laughing at something from the next aisle over, the low rustle of movement deeper in the stacks. Safe sounds. Steady ones.
“My mother likes certainty,” I say after a moment.
“Or the appearance of it. Plans. outcomes. What things should look like to other people. My dad…” I glance toward the window, where the light catches the display table near the front.
“He liked possibility. He liked old things and second chances and projects that made no financial sense if you looked at them too hard.”
Bailey smiles faintly. “Sounds familiar.”
“It should,” I say. “That’s why he wanted the inn.”