CHAPTER ONE
The wind off the harbor always smelled faintly of salt and something mineral. It was a smell that Emily had always associated with low tide and change. In her experience, over the past few years running The Inn at Sunset Harbor, change could be good, bad, or somewhere in between, and those years had also taught her to wait for the universe to rebalance—notto crash and froth like the waves that she was staring out at.
In the warmth of the early summer morning, she sat at the edge of the beach, tucked in behind a drift of tall grass, the old journal she’d been reading splayed open across her knees. Charlotte napped in her portable playpen to Emily’s left, tiny fists clenched, face shaded from the sun by the cheerful little unicorn canopy clipped over the frame. Every so often, Charlotte made a sound—a high, staccato inhale or a rapid cycling of lips, like she was silently practicing words in her sleep. Emily smiled at the precious cycle ofsqueak, squeak, squeak, smack, smack, smack.
The girls—Chantelle and Bailey—galloped through ankle-deep water in the near distance, shrieking at the still-cold depths, stopping only to collect clumps of dark green seaweed and heave them at each other. The two of them had been inseparable since school had let out. Summer meant time expanded, ungoverned by bells or bus schedules, and Emily tried not to hover. She’d sworn to herself, after Chantelle had come to live with her and Daniel, that she wouldn’t grow into one of those mothers whose anxiety sucked up all the air. But she still had a smidgeon of a hard time letting go.
A gull swooped low over the girls, so close that both ducked, then laughed with the wild invulnerability of children. Emily allowed herself a smile and turned back to the journal. Severalpages had begun to detach, but she handled it with care. Each line of looping handwriting preserved a fragment of the inn’s soul. She’d been sent it by Maude at the historical society, a Christmas gift. One that had occupied her long after the holiday had passed.
She thumbed to a familiar entry, one she’d read so often that she could recite it in the dark:
There are storms that take the whole of the next season to mend, and some that leave the land changed altogether. We make do with what’s left.
That had stuck with her. It reflected so much of her own journey as a mother, a wife, a daughter, and a woman trying to juggle all that and a few businesses. Margaret Winthrop Erlinger, the journal's author and once a resident of the house, was often a very sage young woman in the weathered pages. Emily found herself returning to them on mornings like this, when she was tired again as soon as she opened her eyes.
A shrill squeal from the shoreline broke her reverie. “Mom! I got a crab!” Chantelle bellowed, hoisting a wriggling prize above her head.
Bailey, in loyal mimicry, called out, “Me too! Mine is bigger!” Both ignored the scurrying, frantic arcs of the creatures in their palms, the snapping claws.
Emily set the journal on the blanket and rose, brushing stray sand from her shins. “Watch your fingers, please!” she called out, shading her eyes. “Let’s keep all of them attached today, yeah?”
Chantelle rolled her eyes but complied, dropping the crab into a pail, then flexing her fingers in the air for dramatic effect. She and Bailey conferred in huddled whispers, then started up the beach toward Emily, their feet leaving prints that filled inalmost instantly with each retreating wave. Bailey carried the pail of scrabbling crabs.
When the girls flopped down on the blanket, Charlotte, ever the light sleeper, awoke at once. She squinted into the bright, blinked twice, and issued a staccato protest until Emily scooped her up, settling her into the crook of her arm. Even now, Charlotte’s gaze seemed to take in the whole horizon before fixating on Chantelle, as if her sister alone could explain the world.
“Chan-tie!”Charlotte babbled, reaching for her sister. Chantelle grabbed Charlotte’s chubby foot and squeezed it affectionately.
Bailey pointed at the journal, her lips stained blue from some snack she and Chantelle had obviously smuggled to the beach. “Are you reading about dead people again?” she asked.
Emily laughed. “Only the interesting ones.”
“Were there pirates here ever?” Bailey’s eyes widened.
“Not here. Maybe further down the coast.” She glanced at Chantelle, who’d begun to braid wet strands of Bailey’s hair with bits of sea grass. “But plenty of scandal. This lady, who lived in the inn, was a woman of means who was in love with a man of the sea.”
Bailey looked delighted. “So,hewas a pirate?”
Chantelle snorted. “No, dummy, like he fished and sold his fish, or whatever. Mom, tell the real story.”
Emily laughed again, a constant state around these girls. “Maybe later. We need to rinse off and get ready for lunch.” She tousled Bailey’s hair, careful not to undo the braid that Chantelle had completed.
A shadow flickered over them, and for a moment Emily thought it was gulls again, but it was only a cloud pulling itself across the sun. The light changed: everything sharper, cooler. Charlotte looked up at Emily.
“Mama,” she said, patting Emily’s cheek with a sweat-sticky hand.
Emily crossed her eyes at the toddler and made a funny face. “Char-lie,”she replied. “Mama’s sweetba-by.”
Charlotte grinned, showing her bitty baby teeth. Emily ducked and gathered up their things, slinging the diaper bag over one shoulder. Chantelle and Bailey folded up the playpen and picked it up, one on each end.
“Okay, troops. Forward march.” Emily pointed up the bluff toward the house.
On the walk back to the inn, Bailey asked, “Why do you keep reading that journal? You already know how the story ends.”
Emily considered. “I guess I’m looking for something I missed. Plus, it’s just a good story.”
“What could you have missed?” Chantelle pressed.
Emily let them catch up, let the girls flank her so Charlotte could hear their chatter. “Like ways to make summer in Sunset Harbor special. I’m open to suggestions.”
