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Alice stared at the words, wondering if she should be the first to respond. If so, what would she say? She certainly had no advice for Kristen as to how to proceed with Theodore Sands.
That’s great, Kristen, Eloise said.Maybe when Alice gets back, we can all go to lunch and talk about what you’re unsure of. Brainstorm some things.
Alice loved Eloise so much in that moment. If she’d been in the cove, she’d have suggested they get together for breakfast the very next day. She didn’t want to be left out of this very important conversation, but she was on vacation with her family.
I’m shocked, Robin said.Not about Theo, but that you lied to us. Not a week ago, you said this was nothing.
It was nothing a week ago, Kristen said.
Sure,AJ sent. I believe her. (Not.)She added a smiley face, and Alice simply watched the conversation as it continued.
In a lull, she typed out,I think this is great, Kristen. I’d love to be there for the brainstorming, but I get it if you guys want to talk before I get back.
I can wait, Kristen said.He’s going to Nantucket to visit his son tomorrow, and he won’t be back until after the wedding.
So we’ve got time,Robin said.
Yes, Kristen said.Plenty of time.
We haven’t gotten any pictures from Yellowstone today, Kelli said, and again, Alice’s heart warmed with love for her friends.
We saw two moose today, Alice tapped out and sent.You guys simply have to come to Yellowstone. There’s nothing like it.
She sent the pictures, and the conversation wove and meandered, eventually dying out as she was two hours behind them and their bedtimes had come and gone.
She sent Kristen a text just for her eyes, and she said,I’m excited for you, Kristen. Love can be found at any stage of life, and yeah. I’m excited for you.
Thank you, dear, Kristen responded.I’ll be excited when Clara gets into her own house. Haha.
She’d added the laughing, but Alice knew she wasn’t really enjoying having her daughter staying with her.Tell me more about Theo, Alice said.Do I need to do a background check on him?
She smiled at her phone while the twins and Arthur started another rowdy game of cards, and while Alice really loved being there with them, she also couldn’t wait to get back to Five Island Cove and all the drama unfolding there.
ChapterSix
Clara stepped off the ferry first and turned back to help Lena. It wasn’t really a ferry, but a semi-tugboat that seemed one or two chugs away from dying. She, Scott, and Lena loaded up every morning and met the boat captain, a man by the name of Ryan Balincia, at the Sanctuary Island pier.
That did require an actual ferry ride from Diamond Island, and Clara had to grit her teeth against the long travel times around the cove every single day. She’d forgotten that everything took so long here, because cars couldn’t swim.
Scott always brought up the rear, because he spent the fifteen-minute boat ride from Sanctuary Island to Friendship Island jawing with the captain. Clara spent it centering herself, listening to the wind, and going through her to-do list for the day.
Every day, the tasks she needed to accomplish went on and on, and she simply did the best she could. Today, she was expecting to find the general contractor on-site, as he’d promised her he’d be there that day. She’d been hounding him via text for a week now, ever since the first day her little family of three had started here on the inn.
They couldn’t do much if they couldn’t get the building to pass safety inspections. She’d hired Lance Amentrout to do exactly that, and he’d condemned half of the inn—the part that sat on the northern end of the island.
Clara couldn’t say she was upset about it. That half of Friendship Inn hadn’t been remodeled or converted in the early two-thousands, when the last major effort to fix up the inn had been.
Lance had said he’d bring his construction equipment and crews, and they’d knock down that part of the inn, clean it all up, cart it all away. Clara had no idea what that meant, but as a tremendous, thundering sound filled the air, she spun toward the building that was literally her last lifeline to a real life.
Lena shrieked and scampered behind the nearby lamppost, as if that skinny pole would be able to save her from a monster. Even Scott yelped, and Clara alone had been able to remain silent. Her heart pounded like the jackhammer that now filled the air, and she could only stand and watch as a significant plume of white dust rose into the summer sky.
Well, Lance had come today, and Clara supposed she couldn’t be too upset by that. There was quite a bit of construction happening in Five Island Cove right now, mostly on Diamond Island, as more and more businesses came to the cove. Restaurants, a new specialty mall, and three housing developments would take Diamond Island from a thriving small town into a near metropolis.
Clara didn’t want to live on Diamond for long, but her housing options at the moment were quite limited. The caretakers’ apartment here on Friendship Island, inside the inn, on the first floor behind the lobby and check-in desk, were actually in decent condition. The very first thing they’d done when they’d purchased the inn a month ago was to have it assessed by a restoration company.
They’d come in and fixed the leaking pipes and then applied mold treatments, blown dried walls, and gotten everything as safe as possible.
Now, it was just a matter of making sure the structure was sound, and then Clara could turn her attention to cleaning and decorating.
