Chapter 2
Grace
I had everything I was supposed to want.
The house my grandmother built. The man I'd loved for eleven years. The life everyone said was perfect.
So why did it feel like I was disappearing?
The kitchen was dark except for the light above the stove, the one Gran always left on because she said the house needed a heartbeat at night.
It was four in the morning. I'd given up on sleep hours ago.
I pulled on my robe and came down to the kitchen the way I always did when my thoughts got too loud.
The dough was sticky beneath my hands, familiar and forgiving. Cinnamon rolls. Gran’s recipe, written in her careful handwriting on an index card so worn the edges had gone soft as cloth. The kind of thing you made when someone needed comfort but wouldn’t ask for it.
I pressed my knuckles into the dough and breathed.
This was my reset.
When the anxiety crept in, that low hum I couldn't name, I came here.
I measured flour, cracked eggs, and worked the dough until my hands remembered who I was.
The kitchen didn't ask anything of me. It just let me make something real.
Marcus was coming right away. I should have been excited. He’d been in Denver for three weeks, buried in some deal that kept him on calls until midnight. When he finally texted a goodnight, it felt more like punctuation than conversation.
It was going to be a working weekend, he’d said. He mentioned he’d come with a colleague to finish up their proposal away from the office chaos.
So why did I keep kneading the dough like I was punishing it?
I thought about the last time he'd visited. He'd arrived on a Friday night, exhausted, and spent most of Saturday on his laptop. We'd had dinner at the nice restaurant in town, the one with white tablecloths, and he'd checked his phone between courses.
That night, he'd reached for me in the dark the way he always did, and I'd let myself believe it meant something.
But afterward, while I was still catching my breath, he'd rolled over and picked up his phone—scrolling through emails before my heartbeat had even slowed.
Sunday morning, he'd left before I finished making breakfast.
Next time will be better, he'd promised. Once this deal closes.
There was always a deal. Always a next time.
The predawn silence pressed in around me, broken only by the creak of old floorboards settling.
This house had its own language. The particular groan of the third step, the rattle of the windows when the wind came from the north, the way the kitchen door never quite latched on humid days.
I knew every sound the way I knew my own breathing. Gran had taught me to listen.
This house has stories, she used to say. You just have to pay attention.
I'd been paying attention my whole life. To the house. To Gran. To Marcus and what he needed, what he wanted, how to make myself fit into the spaces he left for me.
When had I stopped paying attention to myself?
I shaped the dough into rolls and arranged them in the pan with the practiced spacing Gran had drilled into me. Not too close or they wouldn’t rise. Not too far or they’d dry out.
Everything in its place. Everything measured. Controlled.
I let time do its work. That was always my part—wait, trust the process, don’t rush what needed patience. I’d been good at that for as long as I could remember.
The oven timer beeped. I slid the pan inside, set the next timer, and stood there with flour still clinging to my hands, staring out the window above the sink.
My reflection stared back. Dark hair slipping loose from its braid. Shadows under my eyes. The face of a woman who’d been running on empty for so long she’d forgotten what full felt like.
I remembered how Marcus used to look at me like I was the most interesting thing in any room. Used to show up with flowers for no reason, call in the middle of the day just to hear my voice. Used to talk about our future like it was something he couldn't wait to build.
And then, at some point, everything became about him. His future. His career. His deals. His timeline.
I was in there somewhere, I assumed. A supporting character in a story that had slowly stopped being about us.
The cinnamon rolls needed twenty minutes.
I wiped down counters that were already clean.
Outside, the sky was just starting to lighten.
I kept my hands busy and didn’t ask myself why.
The BMW pulled up at eleven, sleek and black against the gravel drive. I watched from the kitchen window, dish towel in my hands, as Marcus stepped out.
He looked good. He always did. Tailored coat, expensive watch catching the light, the kind of easy confidence that came from knowing exactly where you belonged in the world.
I'd fallen in love with that confidence when I was twenty, a girl who'd spent her whole life in a small town, dazzled by a man who seemed to have all the answers.
Then the passenger door opened.
I don't know what I expected. An older colleague, maybe. Someone with gray hair and a briefcase, someone professional and forgettable.
His female colleague was neither.
She unfolded herself from the car like she'd been born doing it.
Long legs, heels that would last approximately three minutes on the gravel before she regretted them, and a silk blouse that probably cost more than my groceries.
Her hair was that perfect shade of blonde that required either excellent genetics or an excellent colorist.
She laughed at something Marcus said, her hand touching his arm, and even from here, I could see how easily they moved around each other.
My hands tightened on the dish towel.
Colleague, I reminded myself. At least, that was the word he’d used.
I made myself move. Set down the towel, smoothed my apron, and walked to the front door with the smile I'd perfected over years of hospitality. The innkeeper smile. Warm and welcoming and absolutely impenetrable.
“Grace.” Marcus came up the porch steps and kissed my cheek. Quick, perfunctory. The kind of kiss you give a relative at a funeral. “Good to see you. This is Emma Blake. She's been leading the analysis on the Hartwell deal. Emma, this is Grace.”
Not my fiancée, Grace. Not the woman I'm going to marry. Just Grace.
Emma's handshake was firm, her smile professionally warm. “Marcus has told me so much about this place. It's even more charming than he described.”
This place.
Not me. Not the woman who ran it, who kept it alive, who stood in its kitchen at four in the morning making cinnamon rolls. Just the house.
I smiled anyway, because that was what you did when you realized you’d been reduced to scenery.
“Thank you.” My voice came out steady. “We're happy to have you. I've put you in the east room. It has the best morning light.”
“Oh, that's lovely.” Emma glanced at Marcus, something passing between them I couldn't read. “Marcus said you might have space for a working weekend. I hope we're not imposing.”
“Not at all. That's what we're here for.”
The words stuck in my throat like something that refused to go down.
I led them inside and gave Emma the tour, showed her the room, explained breakfast times, and where to find extra towels.
The whole time, Marcus trailed behind us, checking his phone, barely looking up.
Emma asked questions about the history of the house, about the town, and about how long I'd been running the B&B.
She seemed genuinely interested, which somehow made it worse.
Mrs. Patterson was in her usual spot by the window when we came back downstairs, paperback open on the table, tea cooling beside her. She'd been coming here every few months for fifteen years, since before Gran died. She'd watched me grow from a grieving twenty-two-year-old into whatever I was now.
Her eyes met mine as Marcus and Emma headed for the sunroom. Something flickered there. Recognition, maybe.
I looked away before she could say anything.
The afternoon stretched long and strange.
It refused to move forward, no matter how busy I made myself.
Even the B&B felt unfamiliar in small, unsettling ways, like it didn’t quite recognize me.
I threw myself into work the way I always did when I didn’t want to think.
I changed the linens in the empty rooms, smoothing out wrinkles that didn’t matter.
Polished the banister until the wood gleamed, even though it already had.
Helped Elena prep for tomorrow’s breakfast, lingering over tasks she didn’t need help with, and we both knew it.
Elena had been working at the B&B for three years. A quiet woman in her fifties who'd needed a fresh start after her divorce and found one here. She took one look at my face when she arrived and didn't ask questions. Just handed me a vegetable peeler and pointed at the potatoes.
That was the thing about this place. It attracted people who understood that sometimes you needed to keep your hands busy while your heart figured itself out.
Through the kitchen doorway, I could see Marcus and Emma in the sunroom.
They'd spread papers across the big table, laptops open, heads bent together over spreadsheets.
Every few minutes, Emma would say something and Marcus would nod, or he'd point at something on her screen and she'd lean closer to look.
They worked well together. That was obvious. The kind of easy rhythm that came from long hours and shared purpose. I remembered when Marcus and I had that rhythm, studying together in college, planning our future over cheap wine and cheaper pizza. When had that stopped?
I brought them coffee at three. Set the tray down carefully, arranged the cups and the cream, and the small plate of cookies I'd baked that morning.
"Thanks," Marcus said without looking up.
Not thank you, Grace. Not these look great. Just thanks, the same tone he'd use for a server at a restaurant, someone whose name he wouldn't remember in an hour.