Chapter 7 - Rebuilding the Inn—and a Life That Was Finally Hers
The Blackthorn Inn opened its doors six months later, on what would have been Margaret’s seventy-third birthday. The whole town showed up: Mabel with a table full of pies, the high school band playing on the porch, Cole directing traffic in the parking lot, the kids from the elementary school singing happy birthday to Margaret. The inn was perfect: the walls were painted soft yellow and blue, the bedrooms decorated with antique furniture Margaret had collected over the years, the restaurant serving Mabel’s famous home cooking, the back porch overlooking the creek where Margaret used to teach Cole to fish.
By the end of the first weekend, they were booked solid for the next three months. People came from all over the state to stay: people who’d seen the Facebook posts, people who’d read the news stories, people who just wanted to support the woman who’d stood up to her cheating husband and built something beautiful out of betrayal. Emily posted photos every day: of the sun rising over the valley, of Mabel’s pies, of guests laughing on the porch, of Margaret’s photo hanging above the fireplace in the lobby. Her page had 120,000 followers, and every post got thousands of shares and comments from people telling her she was an inspiration, telling her Margaret would be proud.
She threw herself into the work. She ran the front desk, cooked breakfast on busy mornings, helped the housekeeping staff clean rooms, sat and talked to every guest, listened to their stories, gave them advice when they asked for it. She ran the Margaret Whitmore Foundation, too—they’d already given out more than a million dollars in grants to disabled women and their families, paid for medical bills, home modifications, college scholarships, rent assistance. She went to work every day excited, went to bed every night tired but happy, no longer waking up in the middle of the night panicking about what Daniel would be mad about next, no longer walking on eggshells, no longer feeling like she wasn’t good enough.
She and Cole had taken things slow. He’d asked her out on their first real date a month after the deposition, a picnic by the creek, fried chicken from Mabel’s, a bottle of sweet tea, Max chasing fireflies around them. He’d told her he’d liked her from the second he’d seen her standing in the inn’s doorway holding a cast-iron skillet, that he’d thought she was the bravest, strongest woman he’d ever met. They’d kissed as the sun went down, and it was nothing like kissing Daniel—no tension, no fear, no feeling like she was doing something wrong. Just soft, and warm, and right.
Six months later, they were living together in the master suite at the inn, Max curled up at the foot of their bed every night. Cole still worked as sheriff, but he spent every free minute helping her at the inn, fixing things, carrying heavy boxes, grilling burgers for the guests on weekends. He never made her feel like she had to be perfect. He never told her to change her clothes or lose weight or stop talking so much. He loved her loud, and messy, and exactly as she was.
The only dark spot was Daniel. He’d been arrested by the FBI two months after the deposition, charged with wire fraud and embezzlement from the foundation, facing up to twelve years in federal prison. He’d called her twice from jail, collect, begging her to drop the charges, begging her to give him money for a lawyer, telling her he’d “learned his lesson.” She’d refused both times, blocked the jail’s number, and tried not to think about him. He was her past. She was done with the past.
Or so she thought.
One cold Tuesday in November, she was going through the mail at the front desk when she found a thick envelope, no return address, postmarked from the federal correctional institution in Petersburg. She opened it, and a single piece of paper fell out, written in Daniel’s messy, slanted handwriting:
You think you won, you bitch? You think you can take everything from me and get away with it? I have friends on the outside. They’re gonna come for you. They’re gonna burn that stupid inn to the ground. They’re gonna make you pay for every single thing you did to me. You’ll never be safe. Never.
Emily’s hands started shaking. She dropped the letter on the desk, her breath coming fast. She’d known Daniel was angry. She’d known he was capable of being cruel. But this? Threatening to burn down the inn? Threatening her?
She looked up, and Cole was walking through the front door, holding two mugs of hot chocolate, his face falling the second he saw hers.
“Hey,” he said, rushing over, putting the mugs down. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
She handed him the letter. He read it, his jaw tightening, his hand going to the gun on his hip. He pulled out his phone, called his deputy, told him to put extra patrols on the inn day and night, told him to run down every lead on who Daniel was talking to in prison. Then he pulled Emily into his arms, held her tight, kissed the top of her head.
“No one is gonna hurt you,” he said, his voice steady, sure. “No one is gonna burn this place down. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you. Ever. You hear me?”
May you like
Emily nodded, burying her face in his chest, her hands fisting the back of his uniform. She believed him. She really did. But for the first time since she’d arrived in Blackthorn, she was scared.
Daniel was in prison. But he was still capable of destroying everything she’d built.
