Tears welled; Annie brushed them away. “No more emotion right now, okay? I’ve had enough in the past two days to fill my quota for a year.”

He laughed, grabbed the bun from the microwave, and took a hearty bite. “If Claire and I had ever been blessed with a daughter, I would have wished that she was just like you.”

Annie’s mouth tipped up in a smile. “Eat your breakfast, then please get out of here. I want to clean this place from top to bottom so Donna will be comfortable.”

“Didn’t you just do that a week ago?”

“Dear God, was that only a week ago? It feels more like a month.”

Earl chewed, swallowed, and gave Annie a rare hug. Then he left the cottage, chuckling as he went. And Annie got to work. She began by stripping the sheets off the bed—sheets that still held the scent of the man who loved her. Life, she knew, could be better, but some parts could be much worse. She intended to always try to remember that.

* * *

By the time Kevin and Donna appeared, Annie had finished cleaning and clipped daffodils from the garden, arranging the flowers in a pretty vase that had belonged to her mother Ellen, and setting them in the center of the table. Then she’d made cinnamon rolls, followed by chicken sandwiches on warm wheat-berry bread from Orange Peel Bakery. She’d also made tomato and basil soup that simmered on the stove. The tomatoes had come from Chappy’s own Slip Away Farm; Claire had showed Annie how to can last fall—a word that still befuddled Annie, as glass jars, not cans, were used. As for the basil, Annie had grown and dried it by herself. She hoped if Donna wasn’t hungry, maybe the aroma in the cottage would feel welcoming.

Looking smaller, thinner, and tired, at least Donna was smiling as she stepped inside without Kevin’s assistance. “My goodness,” she said. “It looks lovely in here. And smells wonderful.”

Annie returned the smile and hugged her. “Welcome home,” she said. She hung up Donna’s coat on a peg inside the closet door.

“Nice flowers,” Kevin said. “You steal them from Earl’s?”

“No. You must have been too busy to notice that ours have bloomed,” she said with a note of pride. “I suppose you’ll stay for lunch?”

“Me too?” came Earl’s voice as he stepped in the doorway behind Kevin. “Then Kevin and I can go get your bed.”

Except for the furniture in the room at the Inn where Annie had been sleeping, they’d told East Chop Sleep Shop in Vineyard Haven to hold the rest until the interior work was complete. The room that they were going to permanently reserve for Francine and Bella would have twin beds; Earl had arranged to pick one of those up that afternoon.