Chapter 121
CHAPTER 8
Magnolia Ridge moved at its own unhurried pace, a sleepy southern town tucked away near the border of Georgia and South Carolina. To Isla, it felt as though time itself had slowed, dragging her along in an endless loop of uncertainty. The town, with its quaint charm and quiet streets, seemed to offer little for someone in her predicament.
Each morning, Isla locked the door to her small, dingy room at the guesthouse like it was a ritual. She would step out onto the porch, the air already thick with the scent of blooming jasmine and the faint hum of distant traffic, and begin her search. For two days, she walked the streets of Magnolia Ridge, peering into shop windows and timidly entering restaurants. But every inquiry ended in the same disheartening response: No vacancies.
The first day had been especially demoralizing. She had returned to her room just as the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in shades of amber and gold. Her legs ached, and her heart was heavy with rejection. But when she stepped into her room, a wave of unease rippled through her. Her belongings had been disturbed. The few clothes she’d neatly folded were now haphazardly tossed, her toiletries shifted around, and her small possessions out of place.
She froze, her gaze darting around the cramped space. The room felt different now—violated. Isla’s stomach churned as she hurried to her suitcase, dropping to her knees and fumbling with the zipper. Her fingers found the tiny slit she had cut into the lining, where she’d hidden the cash she brought with her. Relief washed over her when she counted the crumpled bills. The few thousand dollars she had saved from Thornfield Manor were still there, but her relief was fleeting.
The owner of the guesthouse had unsettled her from the moment she arrived. He was a stocky man with a greasy smile and a leering gaze that made her skin crawl. She had seen him lingering in the hallway a little too often, always watching, always grinning. Isla felt certain it had been him—or one of his staff—who had gone through her things. But what could she do? She had nowhere else to go. For now, she had to endure it.
By the second day, the gravity of her situation had begun to sink in. She wasn’t just a young woman looking for work; she was a high school graduate with no formal skills, no references, and a significant disadvantage—her deafness. Every time she inquired about a job, the initial flicker of interest in the employer’s eyes dimmed the moment she explained her condition.
“How will you know when customers are calling you?” a restaurant manager had asked, his brow furrowed. Isla had tried to assure him that she could manage gesturing to demonstrate her ability to read lips. But her efforts were in vain. She saw the same doubts reflected in the faces of everyone she approached.
By the end of the second day, the sting of rejection had deepened. Each "no" was a blow to her fragile resolve, and each time she returned to her shabby room, it felt harder to summon the strength to try again. She would sit on the edge of the hard, lumpy bed, staring at the peeling wallpaper, and think of Thornfield Manor. It came to her vividly in her dreams each night—the sprawling grounds, the familiar creak of the wooden floors, and the comforting presence of Robert Lancaster. But every morning, she woke to her bleak reality, a hundred miles away from everything she had ever known.
On the third day, exhaustion gripped her. Her feet dragged as she walked through the streets, her spirits lower than ever. The weight of her circumstances pressed down on her chest, a suffocating reminder that there was no going back. Each rejection echoed in her mind like a cruel refrain, reinforcing the harsh truth: she was alone, unprepared, and unwelcome in a world that seemed to have no place for her.
That night, as Isla lay in the unforgiving bed, she stared at the cracks in the ceiling, her heart aching with homesickness and despair. She told herself she had no choice but to keep going. But the words felt hollow, as though they belonged to someone else. The thought of returning to Thornfield Manor crossed her mind for a fleeting moment, but she quickly banished it. There was no going back, she reminded herself firmly. No matter how hard it got, she had to find a way to survive.
Graham’s head throbbed with a relentless buzz, a dull, incessant ache that seemed to pulse in time with his frayed nerves. Sleep had evaded him for two weeks, leaving his eyes bloodshot and rimmed with dark shadows. The scruff on his jaw had grown into a thick, unkempt beard, the once-sharp edges of his appearance dulled by neglect. At 35, Graham looked a decade older, the strain of the past weeks carving lines of exhaustion into his face. Worry, he had learned, could age a man overnight.
But it wasn’t the sleepless nights or his disheveled appearance that gnawed at him—it was the guilt. Heavy and suffocating, it wrapped around him like a vice. Isla was gone. The girl his father had entrusted to him, the girl he had sworn to protect, had vanished under his watch. And he had failed her. Miserably.
The guilt was a constant companion, but it was often overshadowed by something far more paralyzing: fear. A raw, spine-chilling fear that kept him awake at night and drove him to the edge of reason during the day. Isla had never been beyond the safe, familiar borders of Willow Creek. She was innocent—too innocent—and oblivious to the cruelty the world could unleash. Graham shuddered to imagine what might have happened to her in the weeks since she’d disappeared.
His life in New York felt like a distant memory now. Two weeks ago, his billion-dollar company had been on the brink of sealing a lucrative deal with a major European firm. It was a deal he had been meticulously preparing for months, one that could have secured billions in investments. But his absence had cost them dearly. Without him to oversee the negotiations, the opportunity had slipped through their fingers.
And then there was the mall project in Los Angeles—a high-stakes venture that was already behind schedule. Every day the project was delayed meant millions of dollars lost, and yet Graham couldn’t bring himself to leave Willow Creek. He had chosen to stay, pacing the halls of Thornfield Manor, staring down the empty driveway, and clinging to the faint hope that Isla would walk back through the front door.
But she hadn’t.
When the local police failed to uncover any leads, Graham decided to take matters into his own hands. He had reached out to his network of contacts, tapping into the resources of the city’s best private investigator. For two grueling weeks, he waited, the silence stretching unbearably thin. And then, finally, there was news.
The investigator had tracked Isla to a small, obscure town on the border of Georgia and North Carolina called Magnolia Ridge. It was a hundred miles from Willow Creek, and Graham had no idea what could have led her there. He struggled to make sense of it. Why had she run? What had happened to make her flee the only home she’d ever known?
As he drove the long, lonely road toward Magnolia Ridge, these questions haunted him. The leather steering wheel creaked under the grip of his tense hands, his knuckles white as he tried to suppress the torrent of emotions threatening to overwhelm him.
In the two weeks since she’d disappeared, Graham had replayed every conversation, every moment he had shared with Isla. He scrutinized every detail, searching for the misstep that might have driven her away. Was it something he’d said? Something he hadn’t said? The frustration of not knowing gnawed at him relentlessly.
The town finally came into view, its outline faint against the sprawling landscape of green and gold. Graham’s stomach tightened as he approached. Magnolia Ridge was his only lead, and with it, his only goal of finding Isla.
No, he corrected himself, he had another goal too. That once he finds her, he was never letting her go again.
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