It was official: when it came to Boyce Wynn, I was the quintessential swooning twit.

• • • • • • • • • •

The inn was over a century old but had been reincarnated multiple times. In one form or another, it had survived a fire, a tidal wave, and a lengthy economic downturn. My semi-official title was Front Desk Person, but that hardly covered the responsibilities of the position. By my third shift, I’d unclogged the ice machine with a screwdriver and a couple of swift kicks, placated a returning guest when another guest refused to vacate the room they’d reserved, and set mousetraps in a storage closet after a guest freaked out that the scratching noises she heard in her room overnight were evidence of a haunting—part of the inn’s folklore.

Minnie assured her that the inn’s resident spirit meant no harm. “Alyce was a former tenant who’d lived a happy life here and didn’t want to leave. She had a touch of the OCD—not diagnosed back in those days, y’know. She’s been known to sweep the floors at night. Maybe that’s what you heard?”

“It did sound like sweeping!” The woman agreed while I fought to maintain a straight face and worried whether my boss actually believed what she was saying.

When the door shut behind the guest, Minnie reached beneath the counter and pulled out a box of mousetraps and a jar of peanut butter. “Ghosts they’ll stay for, rodents they won’t.”

The room (and storage closet next to it) was upstairs, and Minnie was under strict orders not to climb the creaky staircase with her cast and cane. “Don’t let it snap on your finger,” she said. “It’ll take your nail clean off.”

I was less worried about trap springs and more worried about squeezing into a narrow closet with a territorial horde of mice.

In my last hour of the night, I’d been summoned three times to a room shared by three college boys—first to deliver fresh towels, then extra pillows, and then to change a lightbulb in the ceiling—which I accomplished standing on a chair while they stood around watching. Their last call was an invitation to join them in some whiskey-shot pregaming before they went out. I declined.

As I locked up the office and drove home, I thought about Boyce’s mother. Specifically, where would she stay when she arrived? I’d spent one night in the new bed, but I could be back on the sofa in a day or two. Or sleeping in my car.

Chapter Nineteen

Boyce

I had a picture in my mind of my mother’s face, but it was fifteen years old now and had been stored there by a kid. The night she left, she was in her early thirties—skin unlined, hair a darker copper than mine and taller than me, though not by much. Next to my father, she’d been pretty and small and fragile.

I knew Brent had taken his disappointment in her to his grave, though he hadn’t been given to resentment toward anyone but our father. He’d never said a bad word about her to me, but I would never forget the look on his face the night she left. Once she was gone, it was clear as day he hadn’t hoped or planned for her to return. That faith had been mine. He’d known better.

The woman standing on the top step when I opened the door Sunday evening was a faded version of my memory. Her hair was carrot-red with an inch of dark and gray roots, her face lined from years of smoking and sun and God only knew what else. Only her hazel eyes were untouched by the years.

“Boyce—my God, you’re bigger than your daddy was,” she said. “Bigger than Brent too.”

Brent, standing in this very doorway, begging you to take me with you. “He was fifteen the last time you saw him,” I said. “I’ll be twenty-three—”

“Next month. I know.”

I inclined my head once, at a loss for what was supposed to happen next.

“Can I come in?” she asked.

I stood back and she walked into her former home, glancing one way and then the other. “It looks just the same,” she said, as though she’d expected Dad might’ve redecorated in her absence. The only modifications he’d made were installing the flat-screen and replacing a lamp that broke years ago when he punched me and I landed against the table it sat on.

Trailing her fingers over the sofa, she stared at the square of less-soiled carpet where Dad’s chair had been before I lit it on fire in the yard. Mrs. Echols, watching from her corner window, had called the volunteer fire department on my mini-inferno, but by the time the first truck pulled up that chair was a smoldering bunch of coils and charred wood. I hosed it down with the extinguisher I kept on hand in the garage and the first responder called off the emergency, noticeably disappointed.

I followed her into the kitchen, where Pearl’s laptop, notebook, and a couple of textbooks covered half the tabletop. She pointed to one. “Dynamics of Marine Ecosystems? Are you—”

“That’s my roommate’s stuff.”

Her mouth tightened, lips a flattened line. Her eyes shifted toward me and away, and she cleared her throat. “I hadn’t really meant to do this right off, but I’ll be needing my bedroom, of course. Since it’s my house now.”

From the constricted feel of my jaw, I knew my face mirrored hers. “Well. That didn’t take long.”

She flinched. “I don’t intend to kick you out, Boyce—this place is yours too. I just didn’t think you might’ve rented a room out to some stranger so quickly.”

She didn’t understand that she was the stranger. How could she not see it?

I stole a glance at the clock on the microwave and shot Mateo a text to tell him I wouldn’t be over for supper. In three hours Pearl would be home from work, and I wanted this settled before then. “Let’s get this over with,” I said, reaching into the fridge to grab a beer. When I gestured to her, she nodded and I grabbed another one. “I know what you’re entitled to legally, but I’ve built a life here without being aware you were going to come back and take it from me.”

She lowered her bottle. “I told you I don’t mean to take anything—”

“Then why are you here? If that’s the truth, leave.”

We stared across the table until her eyes shifted away and she said, “I left here with a trash bag full of nothing. While he built that business, I lived in this trailer day in and day out, cleaning his clothes and cooking his meals and raising his babies and abiding his slaps and punches when everything I did wasn’t good enough. It was hell.”