10. Mattias

There was something wrong with me.

Or maybe it was just that there was something wrong with my life. I knew damned well that I was lonely almost beyond my own understanding. I loved my grandmother, but it wasn't like sitting around the parlor Saturday nights playing kings in the corner was my idea of the best time.

I loved my grandmother. I loved Cider Landing. I'd always pictured my life ending up in Cider Landing, even when I'd been living in New York. It was just that something was missing.

An actual life, probably.

So instead of sitting in my room reading, I was sitting with a sad man, talking about his missing child and absent husband. Worse yet, I was fantasizing about wandering into the woods and finding his missing kid, and being the hero of the whole town, bringing a child back to their happy home and... gods, it was pitiful.

That was how empty my life was; I was reduced to fantasies about impossible heroics.

The funny part was that I had, in fact, gone into the woods looking for Jessie a few times. Oh, I hadn't called it that, much less out loud. But I'd just happened to follow the same trail as the Darling family, and kept glancing around for a head of golden curls. Like somehow if I found Jessie Darling alive and well, everything in the world would be fine. Not only would Connor and maybe even Trev's lives be enriched, but all my own problems would be solved.

"This pie is the best I've ever had," Connor Darling told me, a tiny smile on his face—one of the first smiles I'd seen there since the day his child had gone missing. Logically, I knew it wasn't really the pie. It was time and... well, and the fact that against all logic, Connor seemed to like Cider Landing. Even the most devoted father of a missing child, which I thought Connor was, couldn't spend every single moment sad and tragic and obsessing over the mistakes they'd made, right? Not forever.

Fuck, I hoped not. That sounded awful. Like it wasn't bad enough to be dealing with a tragedy at all, having to worry about whether you were worrying enough sounded ridiculous.

"The apples are from our own trees," I told him. "Freshest produce you can get. They grow over on the north side of the?—"

A crash from the lobby distracted both of us from the otherwise empty room. There was no one else at the inn. No one but?—

"Grandma?" I shoved out of the chair and rushed into the lobby to find Grandma, pale and panting for breath, lying on the lobby floor. At her feet, the area rug that covered the center of the room was turned up. She'd tripped over the edge of the damned thing.

Her voice was high when she looked up at me—at us, since Connor Darling was standing next to me, gripping my arm tight. "Mattias honey? I—" She trailed off, looking confused, and it sent ice flowing through my veins. I dropped to my knees next to her, trying to speak and instead gasping for breath because I couldn't seem to get air into my lungs.

Not—I couldn't. I couldn't lose Grandma. Not so soon after Grandpa. Maybe not ever.

Behind me, Connor was speaking, and it took me a moment to let the buzzing coalesce into actual words. "Yeah, forty-six Riverside Drive, and her name is Jessamine Hall. I think she tripped over a rug, but she also seems confused."

"A rug?" Grandma asked, her eyes finally clearing somewhat and going to the upturned edge of the rug. She sighed. "That damned rug. Your Grandfather always wanted me to move it to the parlor."

Suddenly, I could breathe. Not well, but the air sucked into my lungs like I'd just surfaced after being sucked into the ocean. "I'm throwing it away," I managed to squeeze out.

She blinked. Once. Twice. Looked at the rug again. "I suppose that's only fair. I think maybe it's broken my hip."

"I'm going to burn it," I promised.

She giggled, a tear slipping from one eye, but after a second, she nodded. "Goodness, that hurts quite a lot."

I grabbed her hand in mine and squeezed for all I was worth. It was all I could do, as Connor summoned an ambulance and Grandma lay there in pain—support her in any way she asked. And vow retribution against the rug that had wronged her.

At the hospital, the doctor explained that given her low bone density, it was possible the break had caused the fall, and not the other way around. Apparently, it was a too-common problem in women Grandma's age.

The rug was still getting it, as far as I was concerned. Who the hell else could I blame?

Next to me, Connor reached up and gave my shoulder a squeeze, then he walked over to the nurse's station. It was... frankly, it was incredible he was there. They'd brought me in the ambulance with Grandma, and he'd driven along after us, saying we'd need someone to drive one or both of us home when it was over.

He was a bastion of strength in a moment when I found that I had none at all, and I had no idea how to say that to him. Especially not without bringing Jessie to his mind, and causing him pain was the last thing I wanted.

"—best if we kept her a day or two," the doctor was saying as I watched Connor approach the nurse at the desk. "I don't think there's anything deeper wrong, but since you both said she seemed a little confused immediately after the accident, it's not a bad idea to observe her for some underlying issue. Just in case."

The woman was right, of course, but... well, I'd had to sell the car to pay off Grandpa's medical bills. How the hell was I going to pay for this? The inn barely made enough to pay for itself, really, let alone thousands in hospital bills. I had nothing. No way to cover this.

The inn was all we had left.

We'd have to sell it to pay for this hospital stay.

That moment, when I was realizing that my whole life was imploding, was when Connor nonchalantly handed the nurse a black credit card and said, "Anything she needs. The ambulance, the stay, the testing, the cast, the wheelchair. Use this to cover it."

And that was when the tears came.