Forever Full Circle (The Inn at Sunset Harbor #14)

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—not to 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 of squeak, 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.

Several pages 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 in almost 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, he was 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 sweet ba-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.”

The girls traded glances, then took off at a sprint, their arms windmilling. Bailey’s shriek carried up the path, “Ice cream for breakfast!”

Chantelle countered, “Nerf war in the back garden!”

Emily shook her head, smiling. But an idea had taken root.

She remembered first reading the journal, how she’d cross-referenced the names with property records and census lists, and it had hit her: the inn was just past a hundred twenty-five years old.

She could make something of that. Not just any old party, but an event.

“What about a birthday party for the inn?” she asked. Charlotte burbled, as if sensing the uptick in her mother’s heartbeat.

“Yeah!” Chantelle said. “Can we have, like, a gigantic cake?”

Just inside the kitchen in the upstairs family suite at the inn, Emily set down the diaper bag and took out her phone. There was a text from Daniel, timestamped an hour ago.

Hey, beautiful. How’s the beach?

Emily typed. I'm so sorry, the ringer was off. Charlotte was napping. It was great. We're back for lunch. Join us? She added a smiley face.

He responded within minutes. Training the new guy today. No dice for now.

Emily imagined her husband in the back office at his Sunset Harbor woodshop, Roy standing over his shoulder, both Daniel and her father explaining blueprints to Jesse, their new apprentice.

He was a sweet kid, but a definite newbie to the custom woodworking profession.

Soon, though, the idea was that he could take over basic tasks at the shop to free Daniel up a bit.

Another text arrived: Miss you lots, though. All my girls.

She smiled, one hand on Charlotte’s back, feeling the soft rise and fall. The baby had fallen asleep again. The heat had taken it out of her, apparently.

The girls tumbled into the kitchen from their beeline to Chantelle’s room. Emily almost asked where the pail of crabs had gone, but just secretly hoped they had been left on the back porch.

“What’s for lunch?” Chantelle asked.

Emily pointed to the kitchen sink, and Bailey and Chantelle dutifully went to wash their hands. “Sandwiches and carrot sticks. Bailey, you like turkey?”

Bailey nodded. “Can we have pudding after?”

Chantelle grinned. “I told her you made banana pudding.”

“If you eat your sandwiches, sure,” Emily agreed.

Inside the kitchen, sunlight struck the counter in oblong streaks, falling across the breakfast bowls that Emily hadn’t cleared before leaving for the beach.

She shooed Bailey and Chantelle toward the table as Charlotte stirred again.

The girls sat, limbs still sandy, debating whose crab had been the more “mutant” specimen.

Charlotte began to squirm in Emily’s arms, twisting her whole torso in the direction of the open fridge.

“Oh, you’re starving too, huh?” Emily murmured.

She kissed the soft patch behind Charlotte’s ear—the only place guaranteed to smell clean, no matter how many times the baby had smeared banana across her face that day—then set her into the high chair.

It was a newer model, all white composite and wipeable cushions, but the safety buckle had begun to fray at one corner; she added that to the mental to-do list.

She handed Charlotte a cold ring teether and watched as her daughter mashed it, fist to mouth, eyes never leaving Emily for more than a few seconds.

It was moments like this—two kids, one baby, the start of summer, an inn to run, and the joy of being so needed—that she felt most alive, if a little ground down.

“So, we do have turkey. But we could do turkey or PB&J,” she called to the table.

“PB&J but with the crusts off, please,” Bailey said. “And extra jam if possible. Like, a lot. Please.”