2. New Girl in Town
Chapter two
New Girl in Town
The coffee shop was called The Daily Grind, and by my third day in Magnolia Creek, the woman behind the counter knew my order.
"Large black, extra shot?" She was already reaching for a cup before I nodded. "You're the new girl at the old Thornwood estate, right?"
Word traveled at the speed of Rowena's casseroles, apparently.
"News travels fast," I said.
The woman, Mel according to the hand-painted name tag pinned to her apron, grinned at me.
The expression transformed her face from pleasant to striking, sharp cheekbones catching the light, eyes crinkling at the corners.
But something about her smile made me look twice.
Her teeth seemed slightly too sharp, the canines a fraction longer than they should be.
A detail easily missed unless you were used to looking over your shoulder; paying attention to every little detail.
I blinked. Looked again. Normal teeth. Normal smile.
The Louisiana heat was getting to me. That, or the sleep deprivation. Or the constant low-grade anxiety that hummed beneath my skin like a second heartbeat, making everything feel slightly off, slightly threatening, slightly wrong.
"Small town," Mel said, sliding my coffee across the worn wooden counter. The surface was scarred with decades of cup rings and carved initials, the kind of finish you couldn't fake. "Plus, you're renting from the Voss boys. That's news."
"Why?"
"They've never let that place out to anyone that wasn’t family before." Her eyes danced with something that might have been amusement, might have been something else entirely. "That makes you special. People are curious." A pause, weighted. "Envious too, I'd wager."
"Oh?" I reached for the coffee, but she didn't release it immediately. Her fingers brushed mine on the cup, and I felt that same strange warmth I'd felt when Rowena touched me. A flicker of something, recognition or assessment or both, passing between us in a heartbeat.
Then she let go, already turning to the next customer, and the moment dissolved like sugar in hot water.
I stood there for a moment, coffee warming my hands, turning her words over like stones in a riverbed. That makes you special. Such a small phrase. Such a simple sentiment. It shouldn't have landed the way it did.
But I'd spent three years being told I wasn't special at all.
That I was difficult, ungrateful, impossible to love the right way.
That I asked too many questions, had too many opinions, took up too much space.
That I'd be nothing without him, that no one else would ever want me, that I should be grateful he put up with me at all.
Marcus's voice slid through my head like oil, that particular tone he used when he was explaining, for the hundredth time, why I was wrong. Why I was too much. Why I needed to be less.
I gave myself something physical to focus on. The burn of too-hot coffee on my tongue. Pain resetting my brain. A trick I'd learned in the bad years: when the thoughts got too loud, give yourself something physical to focus on. Something real. Something that couldn't be gaslit or explained away.
The coffee was excellent. Dark roast with chicory, locally sourced according to the chalkboard menu, with that slight bitterness that meant the beans had been roasted recently.
My designer brain catalogued the details automatically: the hand-lettered signs, the mismatched vintage furniture, the way the morning light fell through windows that hadn't been replaced since the building was new.
Someone had put thought into this space. Someone had cared about the details.
Outside, the morning sun was doing its best to convince me that everything was fine.
That I was just a woman in a new town, starting over.
No triggers. Nothing chasing her. The kind of fresh start that happened in movies, where the protagonist drives away from her problems and finds herself in a charming small town full of quirky locals and romantic possibilities.
I wanted to believe it. I'd driven across multiple states to make it true.
But I could still feel Mel's eyes on my back as I walked out the door.
She'd directed me to a design studio two doors down, a converted brick building that had probably been a general store or a bank in another century.
The exposed beams were original, dark with age and oil.
The floors were wide-plank pine, worn smooth by generations of footsteps.
And the windows, tall and arched and facing north, let in the kind of light that photographers and artists would kill for.
My designer's heart sang.
The owner, Lila Tran, had the energy of someone running on coffee and pure determination. She was small, sharp-featured, with ink-black hair cut in a severe bob and glasses that kept sliding down her nose. Her hands were never still, always gesturing, adjusting, reaching for something.
"You do branding? Thank God." She clasped my hand with both of hers, pumping enthusiastically.
Her grip was stronger than I expected, her palms callused in ways that spoke of more than desk work.
"I've been drowning in client work since my last contractor moved to New Orleans.
Couldn't take the small-town thing anymore, she said.
Not enough culture." Lila rolled her eyes.
"As if New Orleans isn't just a bigger small town with better food. When can you start?"
"I—today?" The conversation was moving faster than I could track. "I just came to introduce myself. I wasn't expecting—"
"Perfect. I'll show you the studio." She was already pulling me inside, not quite dragging but close.
"Fair warning: the Wi-Fi gets spotty during storms. Something about the old wiring in this part of town.
The Voss place too, I'd imagine. Those buildings are all connected to the original Thornwood Estate lines. Been here since the town was founded."
"How long ago was that?"
"1832. Though the Thornwood family's been here longer, if you believe the stories." She said it casually, tossing the words over her shoulder as she led me past a reception desk that was really just a repurposed farmhouse table, but something flickered in her expression.
"What stories?"
Lila stopped walking. Turned to look at me with an expression I couldn't quite read.
"Oh, you know," she said, and her voice was lighter now, deliberately so.
"Old families in old towns. People talk.
Speculate. Make things more interesting than they probably are.
" She waved a hand, dismissive. "Now, let me show you where the good snacks are hidden. That's the real important information."
Something in her tone made me mark it. Added to the list I was building: the too-sharp teeth, the golden eyes, the howling in the preserve, the way everyone seemed to know exactly who I was and where I was staying.
The way they looked at me like I was expected, like I was part of a story they'd been telling for a long time.
I let Lila show me the snack drawer, the coffee maker that was temperamental but produced excellent results, the corner desk that would be mine if I wanted it.
I wanted it.
I worked until late afternoon, losing myself in color palettes and typography the way I always did when I needed to stop thinking.
There was a logo that needed refining: a local restaurant rebranding for the tourist season.
The existing design was cluttered, trying to communicate too many things at once: we're authentic, we're modern, we're family-friendly, and we're sophisticated.
The visual equivalent of someone talking too loud at a party, desperate to be heard.
I stripped it back. Found the core. Let the negative space do the work.
Lila checked in once to bring tea, fragrant and herbal and not from any brand I recognized.
Another time she appeared to ask my opinion on a logo that wasn't working, and I spent twenty minutes explaining why the kerning was fighting the concept, why the typeface choice undermined the message, why sometimes the best design decision was to throw everything away and start over.
She listened. Asked questions. Took notes.
Normal things. Professional things. The kind of easy interaction I'd almost forgotten was possible.
With Marcus, I'd learned to be small. To take up less space, make less noise, have fewer opinions.
Every creative choice had been filtered through the question of whether he would approve, whether it would make him feel threatened, whether I was being too ambitious, too confident, too much.
My work had suffered for it. It's hard to be creative when you're constantly calculating the emotional cost of every choice.
Here, Lila just wanted to know if the kerning was right.
It was such a small freedom. It made me want to cry.
I walked back to the apartment as the sun began its descent, taking the long way through town because I could.
Because no one was timing me. Because no one would ask where I'd been, why it had taken so long, whether I'd talked to anyone, and if so, what exactly had I said and why had I smiled like that and who did I think I was, acting like I had the right to exist without his permission.
The freedom of it was dizzying.
The fear underneath it was worse.
I passed the courthouse with its distinctive ironwork, various symbols scattered throughout the design in a repeating pattern.
The church where the founding families had worshipped, its steeple white against the deepening blue of the sky.
A hardware store that looked like it hadn't been updated since the fifties, the owner nodding at me through the window like he'd known me all my life.
Everyone nodded. Everyone smiled. Everyone looked at me with that same expression, curiosity and something else, something that felt like anticipation.
I told myself it was small-town friendliness. I told myself I was being paranoid.
I told myself a lot of things.