Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Hadley
Some people would argue that I’m never on time. By some people, I mean my family. The ones I’m sure are already snug in their conference room seats right now, wondering if I’ll show up at all.
Meanwhile, my Uber sits two blocks away from them—stalled by a delivery truck that has decided this is the perfect Monday morning to unload an entire restaurant’s worth of produce directly into the only available lane of traffic.
My phone vibrates.
Honor: Thinking of you. Good luck. Crossing fingers for you.
I smile, wishing she were with me right now.
How did you know I needed emergency rainbow power?
You’re going to see your mom. I packed extra.
I’ll call you after. Let’s do dinner or something. I’ll come to you.
(rainbow emoji followed with a high voltage emoji)
In the short text exchange, my Uber hasn’t moved an inch.
“I’ll just get out here.”
The driver twists in his seat. “Are you sure, lady? It’ll only be a minute.”
“I’m sure.”
He can’t imagine the way my mother’s nostrils are flaring right this second. According to her, I’ve been running late since the day I was born because I clearly inherited more of my father’s genes than hers.
I shoulder the door open, then tip and rate him on my phone as I walk like a professional speed walker. Technically, I’m not running, but two people step out of my way without being asked.
The building is a gray stone high-rise with ornate architecture that screams old money. So very Hargrove. I weave toward it through the morning commuter crowd, saying excuse me haphazardly, never meeting anyone’s eye.
A text message from Whit comes through, which doesn’t surprise me.
How long?
As if I have time to message him back.
I’m not sure which family member of mine decided to have my grandma’s will reading downtown on a Monday morning.
I should reprimand them just like they’re going to reprimand me for my tardiness.
Every Hargrove family meeting comes with silent scorecards, and I’ve been docked marks before the meeting has even started.
The revolving door deposits me into a marble lobby that holds that distinctive smell of polished leather no matter the amount of air freshener they’re pumping through the vents.
I locate the elevator bank, jab the up button, and look at my phone once more. The elevator arrives, and I’m immediately absorbed into a wall of morning commuters with their briefcases, coffee cups, and someone’s aggressively bold cologne choice.
I can’t see anything except the back of a man’s very wide shoulders and the floor numbers crawling upward, one excruciating stop at a time.
All my excuses cycle through my head on a loop, loading my ammunition before I walk into that room.
The L was running behind.
The Uber took the wrong route.
The delivery truck that couldn’t park without blocking two lanes of traffic.
Every reason is legitimate, but not one of them will matter to a single person in that conference room.
But I wouldn’t be the whimsical baby of the family if I weren’t late and loaded with excuses. God forbid the family narrative lose its favorite character.
My phone buzzes in my hand.
Got it, Whit. Almost there. I open my phone to give him a quick thumbs-up, but the text message isn’t from him.
EB: When are you coming back to town? Let’s get a date in the books. We can go out… or preferably stay in? ;)
I stare at Easton Bailey’s text for one second longer than I should, then pocket my phone.
I absolutely do not have time for him right now.
Finally at the fourteenth floor, I get ready to squeeze my way through the herd of people to fight my way off this metal box, but when the doors open on the fifteenth floor, five other people are getting off.
They take their sweet time, so I almost get smashed by the doors before I make it out alive.
I scan both directions before I spot the name etched into frosted glass on my right.
Edmund Mills, Attorney at Law.
The font alone is professionally stuffy. Perfectly Hargrove-like.
The receptionist pauses mid-typing when I push through the door. Her eyebrows lift at the slightly windswept hair from a woman who has been in transit since before dawn.
Okay, slight exaggeration, but I feel as though I’ve been racing for hours to get here.
She points down the hallway. “Conference room is on your right.”
She doesn’t ask my name. She already knows. Whit has probably been sent out here three times just to make sure I’m not sitting in the waiting area for someone to get me.
“Thank you,” I mumble.
I follow the hall to the frosted glass door and stop just outside it.
Through the glass I can make out the shapes of them—my mother’s perfect posture, Whit twisting his wedding ring, Sloane tapping her nails against the boardroom table.
I press my palm flat against the wall and pull in a slow breath, one that never truly calms me, just reminds me why I never stay home for too long.
As I assumed, the minute I step into the conference room that feels as stuffy as everything else in this office, every head turns in unison.
Edmund Mills sits at the head of the table.
His hair is more silver than black since the last time I saw him, but he’s still draped in a suit that has been dry-cleaned to within an inch of its last thread.
He holds that particular air of a man who has managed affluent families long enough to deem himself of the same economic stature.
My mother is to his left.
Margot Hargrove does not look like a woman who just lost her mother. She’s composed and immovable. She meets my eyes, and something moves through hers that I have spent thirty years trying to decode.
“There she is. Traffic?” Whit says, tipping his head toward the empty chair beside him.
“Yeah, and the Red Line was down and—”
“Well, now that you’re here, we can get started.” My mom steamrolls my perfectly valid excuses.
“One would think you might leave earlier for a nine a.m. Monday morning meeting.” Sloane delivers her line without looking me in the eye.
“I did, I told you the Red Line—”
“We’ve wasted enough of Mr. Mills’s time.” My mom’s hand lifts in a gesture that has been ending arguments our entire lives. “Please, Edmund, let’s begin.”
Whit presses his knee briefly against mine under the table in solidarity as if saying, Relax. Let it go. We both know you’ll never win.
He’s right.
Sloane and my mother have been a unified front for as long as I can remember—Mini Margot and the original share the same bone-deep certainty that I am the family liability. Pretty sure that title was officially awarded the day I dyed my hair purple at thirteen.
Mr. Mills straightens in his chair and opens the manila folder on the desk. He peeks up at me. “It’s nice to see you again, Hadley. You’ve grown up into a beautiful woman.”
I offer a polite smile.
“Now, let’s get started.”
The familiar tension that my family brings to a room bands tight around my chest, squeezing.
My grandmother was the matriarch for the past two decades, and whatever she’s leaving to us has the power to change our lives.
I’m not here for the money or the stocks, the lake house on Lake Michigan, or the penthouse in the Gold Coast.
I don’t want the jewelry or the museum-worthy art collection.
That’s not to say what I’m hoping she’s left me isn’t big. It’s her most prized possession, honestly. But at least it’s the one thing no one in this room wants.
My mind drifts as Mr. Mills goes through my grandmother’s estate in careful, methodical order.
My mom gets everything for the most part.
She leaves anything that was my grandfather’s to Whit, which isn’t surprising.
She leaves Sloane’s and Whit’s kids a sizeable trust fund they can access when they’re twenty-five, pending conditions.
Her art pieces are left to Sloane, who may look at them and love them but never, under any circumstances, sell them.
Whit gets her lake house—staff included—but if he fires anyone, he forfeits the deed.
My mom gets the condo in the city, but she must put it up for a weekend getaway silent auction for three weekends out of the year for my grandmother’s most beloved charity.
All of this should’ve been my first red flag.
Everything has a condition.
I shouldn’t have expected anything less from Mae Hargrove. She believed earning things builds character.
Edmund Mills sets down one page and picks up another. His eyes find mine across the table, and I straighten in my chair, the low hum of anticipation tightening in my chest.
The moment is here.
“‘To my youngest grandchild, Hadley. I’ve always admired your need to explore and live life without attachments. I suppose you got that from your dad, the need to go out in the world and take it for yourself. But I still remember the little girl who would tuck herself into the corner of the bookshelves and read for hours, then follow me around the store recounting every single thing she’d discovered. Of course, The Story Jar is yours.’”
Warmth floods through me, so sudden and so sharp it almost hurts.
Sloane makes a small dismissive sound under her breath, but she’s not going to ruin this moment for me.
“‘With two stipulations.’” Mr. Mills peeks up above the rim of his wire-framed glasses at me.
Sloane’s scoff becomes something closer to a laugh.
Whit’s hand finds my forearm under the table.
“‘Even though I deeply admire your spirit of adventure, I need you to demonstrate that you are ready to care for The Story Jar the way it deserves to be cared for…’”
Mr. Mills glances up once more and offers me an odd smile, so I prepare myself for the stipulations that will come with me inheriting the children’s bookstore. Maybe I’ll have to show the books to the accountant and have someone mentor me for a period of time.
And I love all the employees, so no worries about firing anyone.
Whatever stipulation she’s put on me getting the store, I can handle.
“‘First, you need to establish permanent residency in Chicago for a minimum of one year.’”
“Done.” I nod in agreement.
Easy.
Sure, it’s not my favorite place because of my family, but it’s not a hard price to pay.
His eyebrows lift slightly. “‘And you need to be married.’”
I lean in closer, sure I misheard him.
The silence that fills the room is absurd, since everyone here prides themselves on never acting shocked by anything.
My mother’s composure, which has survived decades of Hargrove family drama without one visible crack, fractures just slightly. “Married?” Her voice shakes.
“She was quite adamant.” Edmund Mills sets the papers down and leans back in his chair. “I did attempt to advise her that the condition was antiquated and bore little practical relation to Hadley’s readiness to manage a bookstore.”
“Well, thanks,” I mutter.
“But she didn’t budge.” He slides an envelope across the table. “She left you a letter.”
“No one else got a letter?” Sloane asks.
Nobody answers her.
I stare at my grandmother’s handwriting—the perfect, looping cursive she maintained her entire life because she believed penmanship was a form of self-respect.
Around me, my mother and Whit and Sloane have descended into murmured conversation.
I barely hear any of it.
She’s completely lost her mind.
I love her, but she has completely, spectacularly lost her mind.
I look up at the fluorescent lights of Edmund Mills’s conference room and take a very slow breath.
It’s a no-brainer really.
I’ll do whatever she wants as long as that bookstore is mine in the end.
But the big question is, where on earth am I going to find a husband?