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Clara would tell Scott about it after the meeting, and her gut writhed as she stepped onto the boat. The thought of sitting across from Robin at lunch in only another hour, this secret right beneath her tongue, absolutely terrifying.
She told herself to be brave. She needed the information these women had. She needed more money than she currently had. If she wanted to get this inn off the ground, she had to do something more than she’d been doing.
She had to do something drastic—and she was running out of time.
ChapterThirteen
Tessa Simmons walked one step behind Clara at all times. She wasn’t sure why. She knew where she was going just as well as the other woman did. She’d met all the women they were currently going to see for lunch.
Her breath felt labored, like it was hard to inhale all the way, and she knew it was because she’d come up against an opportunity—and she hadn’t taken it.
She’d been chartering her own boat out to Friendship Island for a few weeks now. She’d seen what kind of shape the inn was in. She knew Clara and Scott were up to their eyeballs in garbage. Bad staircases. Mold. Mildew. Broken windows. No ferry services. No food on the island.
To be honest, she had no clue how Clara thought she could achieve anything with that inn. She’d seen the work Julia and Maddy had put in at The Lighthouse Inn, and it had been one-twentieth of the size. They’d done it by sheer will and hard work—and a nearly unlimited budget from the Nantucket Historical Society.
Tessa wasn’t sure what Clara was dealing with, but the desperation reeked off of her. Tessa could feel it the moment she stepped onto the island until the second she got back on the boat. Even now, her shoulders stayed tense, and all Clara was doing was smiling and hugging Robin Grover.
Tessa took her turn doing that too, her friendship and admiration for the woman genuine. She cut a look over to Clara, who wasn’t being genuine. Her gut ached, and she didn’t want to be there. Tessa scented the same vibe coming from Clara too, and she realized she needed to be at the meeting with Jennifer Golden—Robin’s mother—so she’d know what she was dealing with at Friendship Inn too.
Her bleeding heart had gotten the idea of helping Clara and Scott with the inn in a more formal and more pronounced role. That of an investor.
She and Janey had inherited a lot of money from their mother’s estate after her death, and Tessa didn’t need any of it. She got an alimony from her first husband. Her only child was grown and out of the house. What else did she have to do, really?
She thought of Abe, and she couldn’t wait to text him about the developments in the past couple of hours.
“Tessa,” Alice Rice said, and Tessa gave her a hug too. She liked all of the women here in this group on Five Island Cove, but she was slow to trust. Her past experiences had made that difficult for her, and she looked around for Eloise Sherman.
She didn’t see the woman, and Clara said, “No, no, Eloise can’t come. She said she’d bring dinner to my house and meet with me one night this week.” She wore a bejeweled smile that Tessa saw right past and led the way to a large table in the corner of the restaurant.
It was peak summer season, but after prime lunchtime. The restaurant still bustled with patrons and activity, and Tessa thankfully got a seat beside Jean on her left and Kelli on her right. They’d definitely been two of the quieter women during the wedding preparations two weeks ago, and Tessa gave them each a smile.
“How’s the inn, Tessa?” Jean asked as she lifted her menu.
“It’s…” Tessa threw a glance over to Clara, but she’d immediately gone into a near-huddle conversation with Robin, Alice, and AJ. Kristen sat beside them, looking rather lost until the hostess handed her a menu. “Okay,” she said. “The work is fine. I honestly don’t know how Clara and Scott are going to get it open, though. There’s alotthat needs to be done.”
“I had to remodel and renovate my childhood home,” Kelli said. “I turned it into a health and wellness studio. It was one house and took forever.”
“A lot of what they do is cookie-cutter,” Jean said. “They get one room done, and the others should go quickly.”
If they have the budget, Tessa thought but kept to herself. There was a lot she needed to keep under her tongue, and so she buried herself in her menu too. A couple of waiters came and took drink orders, and then Alice said, “All right. I’m going to tell the story of our disastrous night on Friendship Island.”
“Oh, come on,” AJ said. “It wasn’t that disastrous.”
“That’s because you and Kelli went up on the roof,” Alice said. “Some of us had to stay in the room.”
“You didn’t have to do anything,” AJ shot back. They both wore smiles, and Tessa sensed a deep history between these people.
Laurel said nothing, her attention still on her menu, and Tessa likewise watched Jean, who hadn’t been part of the Seafaring Girls either.
Only five of them had been—Robin, Alice, AJ, Kelli, and Eloise—and they’d added others to their group over time. Laurel was a cop who’d come into their lives at some point, and Jean was Kristen’s daughter-in-law. Clara was Kristen’s daughter, and in that moment, Tessa realized everything and everyone at the table revolved around her.
Kristen Shields. She smiled at AJ and said something that didn’t carry to Tessa further down the table. She was kind and wise, probably close to eighty years old, and to Tessa, reminded her of Helen Ivy.
Alice told the story of the five of them rowing out to the island. Losing sight of it. Finally getting there, and then getting stranded. “The island used to be a bustling place,” Robin said. “Anyone who was anyone went there in the summer. We had school dances there, and all the cool kids had big parties there.”
“How’d they get there?” Clara asked. Tessa watched as she clicked a pen into action, a small notebook on the table in front of her. She carried an enormous bag with her everywhere she went, so the notebook wasn’t surprising. For all Tessa knew, she could have a desktop computer in that bright green-apple bag.
“There was a ferry service,” Alice said. “Lots of boat rentals too. Canoes, kayaks, all of it. We rented kayaks and rowed. Lots of people did.”
