“These days,” she muttered to herself. “I sound ancient.”
Her phone’s soft landing had been courtesy of the enormous stack of financial documents that Dianareallyneeded to sort through. This was, in theory at least, the responsibility of her bookkeeper, but Sarah, although a very nice person was notpreciselya go-getter. Oh, she would do things if Diana asked her to do them, in very specific terms, but that meant that Diana had to always be on top of things, had to always know what needed doing. And in the chaos of the tourist season, that was a big ask.
She probably needed to start looking for a new bookkeeper, but that was just one more thing on her list. A list that felt like it never, ever ended.
“Tomorrow,” she said with a huff, standing up and snagging her phone. “I will deal with it all tomorrow.”
All she wanted to do now was go home, collapse on her couch with some ice cream, watch a girly movie, and go to bed early.
After all, she thought with a touch of bitterness, wasn’t that what old maids did?
“Unpacking is poop,” Eloise declared.
Anthony Whitaker sighed. “El. Please don’t talk about bathroom stuff while we’re eating.”
Eloise looked down at her grilled cheese and tomato soup, clearly thinking hard about this. Anthony couldn’t believe his daughter had chosen to eat hot soup after the blistering day they’d just made it through, but, if he’d learned anything about ten-year-olds, it was that they were impervious to things like weather when it came to ordering their favorite dinner at a diner.
Anthony, meanwhile, had gone with a club sandwich with a side salad, because he wouldn’t even consider eating something that was warmer than room temperature. The waiter had been over to refill his ice water twice already.
Then again, Anthony had done most of the heavy lifting. Eloise was anexuberanthelper, but she did get easily distracted.
“Okay,” Eloise said after contemplatively chewing her bite of sandwich dipped in soup. “Unpacking is… you know that yucky puddle behind our old house? It’s like the yucky puddle got put in a yucky microwave and got all hot and stinky and there is dirt in it, but not nice dirt. Gross dirt. With little bugs in it, and?—”
“El,” Anthony said. “As much as I appreciate your creative mind, that is also a very gross image for when we’re eating.”
She pouted. “So I can’t say bathroom words and I can’t say gross words. Does that mean I can say bad words?”
“No.”
She sighed theatrically at the injustice of this. “Okay,fine. Unpacking is very, very, very, very, very,veryboring.”
“Nailed it,” he told her with a chuckle.
For his part, Anthony would have preferred it if the unpacking was a little more boring. Instead, it was fraught. He and Eloise had come to Magnolia Shore for a much-needed fresh start. They’d been muddling along in Cleveland these past few years, after Anthony’s wife and Eloise’s mother had died unexpectedly. Shannon had slipped when trying to juggle groceries and keys on the icy front porch steps. It should have been a minor injury, the doctors had told him later, but apparently Shannon had already had a latent aneurysm, one that had perhaps been there for years. The fall had caused it to rupture.
It had been a totally random occurrence. Impossible to predict.
But the impact on Anthony’s family had been immeasurable.
Anthony hadn’t made the decision to relocate lightly. He hadn’t wanted to avoid his grief, but as the years went on, he’d begun to worry that seeing Shannon around every corner, constantly encountering memories of her had been stopping him from envisioning his next chapter. And, more to the point, he’d worried that his grief had been affecting his daughter.
He never wanted Eloise to forget Shannon. Of course, he never, ever wanted that.
But he also didn’t want losing her mother to be Eloise’s whole life.
And this town… it had beensowelcoming. Anthony was a city guy, born and bred. True, Cleveland wasn’t the biggest city in the world, and it was the Midwest, which meant that being nice was basically a sport, and everyone was a competitor.
But small towns took that to a whole new level, apparently. He’d taken Eloise into a store called Nautical Crafts to get her a much-needed lamp for her new room, as he’d realized that the ceiling lights didn’t cast as much illumination as she needed, especially since she was a total bookworm. The owner of the store had lit up when Eloise, who had never met a stranger she didn’t want to turn into a friend, had explained that they were newly arrived.
She’d given Eloise a free paint set as a welcoming gift.
And that wasn’t all. The owner of the office space that Anthony was leasing for his accounting business had brought him over a corn and tomato casserole, courtesy of his wife. The waitress had slipped Eloise an on-the-house strawberry milkshake, too.
Everyone was beingso nice.
And yet Anthony couldn’t avoid the nagging question at the back of his mind.What if I made a mistake?
“Hi Miss Amy,” Eloise said warmly as the server approached again.
