“Fine,” Amy said. “But thirty-one sounds like a baby to me! I don’t like to think about it. Me hitting the big four-oh so much sooner than him.”

“You’re thinking that far ahead?” Emily asked, raising her eyebrows.

Amy shrugged. “I guess I am. I can’t help it. We just click. It’s like everything is easy, you know. Even the arguments don’t feel that bad because I just have this sense that we’ll work it out.”

“That’s amazing,” Emily said, smiling to herself. Amy’s description sounded just like her own relationship with Daniel. It wasn’t easy, there were still challenges, but there was a pervading sense that they would make it work no matter what. “But what do you argue about?”

“Time,” Amy said. “Distance. Obviously.”

“Yeah, what’s going to happen with that?” Emily asked. “Do you think you’ll move here? Or Harry to New York City?”

“I don’t know. I’m here for the summer now so I’m just going to think about that. I needed to get out of the city for a bit anyway. I guess I’ll see how I feel about it after having spent a couple of months here. The back and forth wasn’t fun but I wonder if once the initial passion stage dies down a bit the long distance might not be so much of an issue anymore.”

Emily laughed. “It’s so funny hearing you speak like this. There was a point when a weekend was too long for you here.”

Amy looked embarrassed. “Well, it was,” she said defensively. “Back then. Things are different now.”

“You’re in love,” Emily pointed out. “Now you know why I had to stay here.”

Amy nodded reluctantly. She hated being wrong.

Just then, the store woman came over. “I’m sorry, ladies,” she said, “but we’re closing now. Did you want to purchase anything before I shut down the till?”

“No thanks,” Emily said at exactly the same time as Amy said, “Yes.”

Emily looked at her friend, frowning with confusion.

“We’ll have this nursing seat,” Amy said.

“Ames, no way!” Emily cried. “It’s so expensive!”

Amy shook her head. “It’s fine. You deserve it. And it already has significance to us. We had a good heart-to-heart on this very chair. We can’t not take it now that it has such sentimental value.”

Emily held her hands up, relenting. There was no point arguing with Amy over this. Best to just let her friend go all out. Treating her friends was one of her great pleasures in life after all.

They paid for the chair and loaded it into the back of Amy’s car. Emily noticed as she got in the passenger’s seat that she had a missed call from the inn. She checked her voicemail. It was Lois.

“Sorry to disturb you, Emily, but the Erik & Sons men are here. They said they had a meeting booked with you. A tour of Trevor’s house. Daniel says you have the keys so he can’t let them in.”

“Oh no!” Emily cried. “Amy, floor it. I’m late for a meeting!”

The echo inside Trevor’s house made Emily shudder. It felt so empty and unlived in. So devoid of humanness.

Wayne Erik drew up to Emily’s side. “It’s a beautiful place,” he said. “Trevor kept it in great condition.”

“It was his summer home for many years before he moved in full time,” Emily explained. “That might account for the lack of wear and tear.”

That and the fact that Trevor hadn’t really had anyone in his life; no family or friends to visit him. He’d rattled around in that big house alone for years. Emily wondered whether her father lived a similar type of existence. Elderly and alone. Maybe he had neighbors who thought he’d been abandoned by his family, who worried about him getting lonely. The thought made her ache inside.

Daniel came up next to her and touched her elbow lightly. “Are you okay?” he asked softly.

Emily nodded. “I just get so sad when I come here,” she explained.

Daniel scooped his arm around her shoulder. “I know. It’s a good thing that we’re transforming it. Although I know it doesn’t always feel like we’re doing the right thing by stripping Trevor from this place. But you did it with the inn, remember, and that was ultimately the best decision.”

“You’re right,” Emily agreed.

They held hands as they walked through the house together with the architects, stopping periodically to study their plans and compare them with the real thing. The Erik brothers had drawn up several options for how to convert the house, depending on how many rooms Emily and Daniel decided on as guest bedrooms, how big they wanted the restaurant and open-plan kitchen area to be, and how much they were willing to spend. The cheapest option involved doing the least amount of work, keeping at many of the original internal walls in place as possible, but Emily was certain she wanted the entirety of the lower floor to be completely open plan, which was only a feature on the most expensive option. From a business plan point of view, they also had to factor in the increase of income from having more rooms to rent out, but Emily didn’t want to just cram in as many as possible. The third floor of the inn already had dozens of smaller, cheaper rooms. Emily wanted this part of the inn to be luxurious, high end, something that would really dazzle visitors.

They stopped in the kitchen and looked over the three plans.

“I want this to be the lower floor,” Emily explained, pointing at Wayne’s creation for the kitchen and restaurant. “But this for the rooms.” She pointed at Cain’s third-floor plan with just three apartment-style rooms that could accommodate families with space for a living room and separate bathroom in each apartment. “I like how you’ve laid them out so that each one has an ocean view.”

Daniel seemed to agree, though Emily noticed his focus was much more on the cost of things. It hadn’t escaped his notice that she’d chosen the most expensive downstairs option and the least lucrative upstairs option.

“And what about the second floor?” Wayne Erik asked.

“I can’t decide,” Emily explained. More bedrooms as per Shane’s design? Or more restaurant space as per Wayne’s? “What if we were to replicate the third floor on the second?” she said. “A carbon copy?”

Daniel frowned. “But then there would only be six apartments in the whole house,” he interjected.

“I know,” Emily explained. “But think of it in terms of the revenue from the higher price of the apartments. Right now there’s only one place for families to stay, which is the carriage house. But Bryony said there was so much demand coming in from families who want to spend the summer in Sunset Harbor. If we convert this into the family-friendly part of the inn it would be a great selling point. Plus, if we do it this way then every room can be advertised as having an ocean view! That would be an amazing selling point too.”

“I can see what you’re saying,” Daniel said, not sounding even the slightest bit convinced. “But I can’t help feeling like that’s not the best use of the space.”

“We’d only need to have six families each summer to get fully booked,” Emily contested.

“We don’t want to get fully booked from six families,” Daniel countered. “If there’s so much demand, why not double the amount of apartments? Income from twelve families is going to be better than just from six!”

Emily rubbed her forehead. She didn’t just want to pack the inn to the brim. And more people traipsing in and out would mean hiring more staff to care for them. They would cause more damage and wear and tear that she’d need to account for. The costs would be eradicated through the amount of cleaning, reupholstering and towel washing alone!

“We can always go back to the drawing board,” Wayne said. “Find a compromise that’s somewhere between your two ideas.”

“Like what?” Emily asked, not sure that there could be a compromise to satisfy both her desire to keep the inn feeling personal while making it as luxurious as possible with Daniel’s wish for a more stable income.