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“Where do you live?”
“On Beachfront Row?” Her eyebrows went up. “There’s a row of cottages there, right on the beach.”
“Yeah, of course,” Eloise said. “Kelli over there lived there for a little bit when she first moved back to the cove.”
“Back?” Tessa watched Kelli, who stood with Helen, Jean, and Lena, none of them doing much of anything.
“Yeah,” Eloise said. “We’re all from here originally.” She looked around, realizing she hadn’t said that right. “Some of us, at least. Laurel grew up on Nantucket. Jean’s from Long Island. Clara grew up here, but she’s lived in Vermont for a long time now.” Eloise couldn’t explain their whole history, so she just shrugged. “Robin never left, but the rest of us did. But now we’ve all moved back here. Kelli lives here on Pearl now, after she got remarried, but she lived in one of those beach cottages when she first came back to the cove.”
“Interesting,” Tessa said, but Eloise didn’t see what was interesting about it. “What do you do, Eloise?”
“I own the Cliffside Inn.” She tried to keep the pride out of her voice, and she hoped the little that had bled in hadn’t been heard by Tessa.
“Oh, I love that place.” She came alive and added, “I haven’t stayed there or anything, but I drove up to it, and you can see the whole world on top of those cliffs.”
Eloise nodded, the view there in her mind’s eye. “Yes,” she murmured. “Yes, you can.”
The whirring of a sewing machine joined the fray in the room, and that meant Jean had gone back to stitching together the napkins they’d use for dinner. “These can be folded,” Mandie yelled, and Eloise watched as Kristen and Clara went to learn how to properly fold hand-made napkins for a beach wedding.
“Did you say you own the Cliffside Inn?”
Eloise looked up from her flowers to meet Julia’s eyes. “Yes,” she said. “I own it and run it. It’s only six rooms, but it keeps me on my toes. We serve two meals a day, and I have a ton of day-events, deliveries, staffing issues, and more.” She shook her head. “I’m married to the Chief of Police here in the cove too, and we have two teenagers. So my life is a little crazy sometimes.”
She caught the look Tessa and Julia exchanged, and an older version of Eloise wouldn’t have said anything. The version of herself she was now, however, asked, “What was that look for?”
Neither of them said anything. Finally, Tessa said, “Tell her.”
“You tell her,” Julia said.
Tessa gave her a look under drawn-down eyebrows. “Julia runs the Lighthouse Inn on Nantucket. It only has five rooms, and she’s drowning—and that’switha co-manager.”
Eloise had no idea what it would be like to have a co-manager. “I have a night manager,” she said. “She lives on-site and handles everything so I can be home with my family in the evenings.” She didn’t mention that she still had to answer texts constantly and deal with things mentally.
“She’s looking for a job here in the cove.” Tessa stabbed her iris down into the stones, and her vase slipped. She tried to catch it, but Eloise knew it was going to fall before it did.
She jumped back as Tessa still fumbled with it. In the end, it did topple to the floor—a very cement floor—where it shattered.
The conversations came to a halt as blue, green, and white seaglass went skidding along the floor and the sound of breaking glass filled the air. It only lasted for three seconds, and then the silence took over.
“Okay,” Mandie said. “It’s okay. It’s just one vase. We bought extras.” She sounded and acted so much like Robin that Eloise had a moment of thinking shewasRobin. Then Robin appeared with a broom, and several others dropped to pick up the scattered stones.
“I’m so sorry,” Tessa said, her face full of shock. “It just got away from me.”
“It’s fine,” Eloise said. She stepped back to the table and her own arrangement. “I think mine just needs one…more.” She picked up another flower, clipped the stem, and put it in the black spot in the bouquet.
She met Julia’s eyes. “How long will you be here?”
“Through Sunday evening,” she said. “I have to get back to Nantucket.”
Eloise nodded. “Come by the inn on Saturday or Sunday before you go. We can talk.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely.” She glanced over to Clara, who wore a happy smile. That caused Eloise to smile too. “And you know what else? Clara over there just bought Friendship Inn, and I’m pretty sure she’d love someone with experience in the inn industry.”
Julia spun toward Clara and Kristen, and Eloise felt like she’d done her one good deed for the day.
Her phone rang, and she stepped away from the bouquets and blooms and booming voices to take Billie’s call. “Hey, sweetie,” she said. “Did you and Grace make it home?” They’d gone to the lighthouse that afternoon with several of Billie’s friends from school. From there, they could walk down a path and along the cliffs to a secluded beach with a calm cove of water.
