CHAPTER THREE
As the evening drew to a close and the guest began to gather up the blankets from the lawn, Emily’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She took it out to see the screen lighting up with an unfamiliar number. For a second, she debated ignoring it—she’d been strict about not checking messages after business hours unless it was on the emergency line—but her sense of unease won out.
She ducked into the garden, treading carefully among the haphazard rows of tomatoes and snap peas. The old apple tree at the edge of the property provided a sort of natural sound booth, muffling the lingering music and the laughter as the party packed up. She pressed the phone to her ear, wiping her palm against her dress.
“Hello?”
A half-second delay, then: “Is this Mrs. Morey?”
“Yes. This is Emily.”
Emily braced for spam, but the voice didn’t launch into a car’s-extended-warranty talk.
“Hi, Emily, it’s Jamie Marsh, from the town office. Sorry to bother you on a Saturday. I, uh, hear there’s quite the bash going on over there.” A low, nervous laugh. “So sorry I couldn’t make it.”
She smiled despite Jamie not being able to see it. “Next time.”
“Well, happy one-twenty-five. Listen, I wanted to catch you before this hit the listings or the paper. We got a call from the Coast Guard. They’re officially decommissioning the old lighthouse at Bluefin Point.”
Emily blinked, instantly picturing the battered white lighthouse. “Is that… official?”
“Pretty much. They’re offering it up for auction, but since you and your husband have done so much with the inn—and historic preservation—they told the city they’d prefer to see it stay in local hands. We’d like to give you first shot at the purchase before it goes public.”
Her breath caught. She fumbled, thumb pressed too hard to the phone’s “mute” bump. “They want us to buy the lighthouse?”
“If you want it, yes. Of course it’s a process—permits, transfer, all that. But you’d have first right of refusal.” Jamie’s voice softened, like he was trying to break good news to someone who might mishear it as bad. “You’re the first people I called.”
She looked up, past the apple tree, into the thin slice of moonlight above the house. For years, the lighthouse had been a detail in her father’s painting collection. She’d been there, once, with Daniel, and it washistoricalto say the least. Would they want it? To do what with?
Jamie said something, but Emily didn’t hear him. Instead, she saw herself at age nine, sitting on the floor with her mother in front of one of those paintings. Her mother’s voice, describing how she’d met Roy there. The history wasn’t just there for Sunset Harbor, but for Emily’s family, too. She wondered how to translate this news to them, this absurd, beautiful possibility, into something that wouldn’t sound insane.
Let’s buy a lighthouse!
Jamie waited. “Are you there?”
She swallowed. “Yes. Yes, I’m here. Do you know the price?”
“Not yet, but I can send over the estimate Monday. It’s not much, frankly—nobody else wants the upkeep.”
She almost laughed. Upkeep was practically her area of expertise, now. “Thank you. This… means a lot.”
“You’re welcome, Emily. Give Daniel my best.”
She hung up and let her arm fall to her side; fingers numb. For a minute she just stood, surrounded by the cricket-noisygarden. Her mind ping-ponged between the practical—how would they pay, what would they do with it—and the poetic: a lighthouse, a real lighthouse, and a second chance at something that had never quite belonged to her family, but could now. Her pulse thudded in her ears. She pressed her palm flat to her chest, just to check that her heart hadn’t flown out of her chest.
I need Daniel.
She found him breaking down the folding tables that had made up the game station. She made a beeline.
He caught her eye, the look unmistakable:Is everything okay?
She gestured to the side of the porch, and he extricated himself from his chore with a few backward steps.
“Something up?” he murmured when he met her at the side of the house, low enough that only she could hear.
“Walk with me,” she said. She could feel her pulse now thumping in her neck.
They skirted the side garden beds, past where the girls had strung solar lights in the lilacs. On the far side of the property, beyond the gazebo, Emily stopped at the edge of the bluff, where the lawn slipped away to darkness and only the faintest scrap of surf sounded in the distance.
