Always so casual with my mother, Ellen shrugs. “She’s not on the clock yet, Sandy. She woke up five minutes ago.”

Mom looks at me and frowns. “Go put real clothes on before some pervert sees you in your sleepwear and gets bad ideas.”

I make a face. “I’m wearing oversized pants and a disgusting shirt, Mom. No pervert is going to—”

“Hush. Go change.”

“She doesn’t need to change,” Ellen says sharply.

“It’s fine,” I say to Ellen as I turn around to head back to my room. I don’t want to fight. It’s not worth it. And I don’t want Ellen to have to defend me. She’s already done enough of that throughout my life.

A nervous twitch starts behind my left eye as I climb the stairs and hear Ellen snap at my mother about being kind to me.

I was thirteen the first time Ellen tried to get me to move in with her. She’d witnessed my mother’s severe dislike for me throughout my childhood, and she’d tried to temper it for years—without success. Sandra Marshall was unhappy about her life and clung to her bitterness like it was a drug and she was an addict.

My mom was the head cheerleader in high school while my father—some guy named Greg—was the star basketball player, and they were this adolescent power couple or whatever. Until my mom got pregnant. She was seventeen.

I was young and beautiful and skinny, until you came along and ruined everything, she used to say to me. As if I were somehow responsible for my own conception.

Good ol’ Greg couldn’t handle the idea of his thin little girlfriend gaining weight and being sick and emotional all the time, so he spent more time bedding the rest of the cheerleading squad than he did hanging out with my mom during her pregnancy. Which broke my mom’s heart.

But she refused to dump him because she didn’t want to raise a baby on her own. Plus, she had plans to move to California with him, where they were both going to attend UCLA so she could become a news anchor. So she let her scumbag boyfriend cheat on her while she suffered through morning sickness and took on the body of a whale.

And then I was born.

Suddenly the baby thing got real, and life got hard. My mom and Greg were broke high school seniors who had no parental help, and Greg decided he didn’t feel like being a daddy anymore. He skipped town when I was four months old.

My mother dropped out of high school, waved good-bye to her future as a news anchor, and got a job at a local diner, where she let her broken heart fester until it was black. With Greg out of the picture, the only person left to blame for her miserable life was the baby girl who had ruined her body and driven away the only man who would ever love her—that was her reasoning.

So I never had a chance.

Ellen, who was a few years older than my mother, jumped right in to help out with baby me. But Sandra Marshall was determined to be miserable. And with every year that passed without providing Sandra a way out of town or a handsome man to sweep her off her feet, she grew more intolerant of me.

Ellen’s attempts at tempering Sandra’s behavior failed. So as a last resort, she offered up her home—a place just a few miles from the inn—and asked me to consider living with her indefinitely. My mother wasn’t horribly against the idea, but she was wicked cruel to Ellen for suggesting it. Because if Ellen took little Pixie away from Sandra, then whomever would Sandra have to blame for her unhappy existence?

I declined Ellen’s offer under the guise of not wanting to move out to the middle of nowhere and live far away from my friends. But really, I just didn’t want Ellen to have to take more heat than necessary from my mom and deal with whatever temper tantrums she decided to throw throughout my remaining years.

So I stayed in my mother’s house and settled for visiting Ellen as often as possible. She used to drive into Copper Springs and pick Charity and me up from school on Fridays so we could stay the weekend at Willow Inn.

The summer we were fourteen, Charity and I got to stay at the inn for two weeks. It was two weeks of ice cream and movies and late-night fun with Ellen. That was the summer Ellen started calling me Pixie. I’m glad she never stopped.

Sandra Marshall’s scolding voice rakes over my nerves as I hear her chatter away downstairs.

Goddammit, my mother is here. I thought I was free, but now the very person I’ve been trying to get away from my whole life is downstairs yelling at Haley about eating carbs.

I occupy myself with outdoor jobs all day before heading back inside, hoping to avoid Sandra Marshall.

There are only three ways I can enter the inn. I can go through the front door—but Sandra might be in the lobby. I can go through the main back door—but Sandra might be in the library or by Ellen’s office. Or I can go through the kitchen’s back door.

Kitchen it is.

I wipe my shoes on the mat outside and let myself in.

“Hey, handsome.” Mable smiles warmly at me. “I made honey croissants. Want some?”

“Always.” I take a croissant from her and bring it to my mouth. Pixie’s over by the sink, her hair pulled back from her face so her cheeks and nose look extra small. Her yellow apron is covered in flour and what looks like chocolate, and I notice she’s wearing nicer clothes than usual.

Our eyes meet.

She looks away.

Sandra enters the kitchen and frowns at Mable. “Croissants are not good for a woman your age. Are you trying to die?”

Mable arches a brow. “Are you?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Mother.” Pixie rolls her eyes as she starts kneading dough on the counter. “Quit insulting everyone.”

Sandra isn’t listening to her daughter, though. She’s looking at me.

Here we go.

I’d been working at Willow Inn for only three weeks the first time Sandra Marshall came to visit her sister. I hadn’t seen Sandra since Charity’s funeral, and I didn’t expect her to speak to me at all.

But she did.

“You work here now,” she stated with disgust as I hung a painting on the lobby wall.

I turned around with a hammer in my hand, not sure if she wanted me to respond.

“My sister says you live here, as well,” she added. “Do your parents approve of this arrangement? Oh wait. That’s right. They’ve moved away.” She clucked her tongue. “You just destroyed your whole family, didn’t you? First your sister, then your parents.”

I clenched my fist around the hammer.

“Can’t say that I blame them.” She looked me up and down with a pitiful sigh. “You look just like her.” She shook her head. “Your poor mother. I bet she curses the day you were born.” And then Sandra Marshall turned and left, walking out of the inn like she hadn’t just ripped out my heart and verbalized every fear I had hidden inside.

I stood, hammer in hand, staring after her for long, hot minutes, waiting for my heart to stop pounding in fury. But I couldn’t shake the pain in my chest. Because she was right. I was the reason Charity was dead.

And now we meet again, this time in the kitchen. Sandra’s evil eyes narrow in on me, and I’m the same guilty boy I was six months ago.

She purses her lips. “Judging by the muck and stench you’re covered in, I guess you still work here.”

I smile tightly. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“No, you’re not,” she sneers.

“Leave Levi alone.” Pixie glares at her mother.

“I most certainly will not leave him alone. He almost killed you last year!” Sandra turns to me. “And you scarred her too. No man’s ever going to appreciate her naked now. Does that make you happy?”