She wanted to be honest and say no, they were not at all prepared for that. They hadn’t even been prepared for this much to have happened. She supposed she could invite the new tenants in and show them the Excel spreadsheets that held detailed facts and figures about how far the Inn was in debt, so they would know how desperate she, Kevin, and Earl were for the Inn to open, too. She wanted to tell them they weren’t the only ones whose quality of life was at stake. But, of course, Annie couldn’t do any of those things, so she simply smiled and said, “Look. I know this is hard for you. Believe it or not, I know what it’s like to live on the island and find yourself without a home. I don’t know if any of you know Earl Lyons. Or his son, John, who’s an Edgartown cop. The Lyons family has been here for a dozen generations. This Inn was Earl’s idea, and he’ll do everything in his power to make it happen. He takes care of people here. So please, don’t worry. As it stands, before this happened we’d made considerable progress on the interior so, in any event, we’re almost done.” She didn’t know if she should have said that last part because, in truth, they weren’t “almost done.”

“Can we see the rooms?” Marty asked.

Annie hadn’t expected that. She smiled again, hoping to kill a few seconds while she dreamed up a believable reply. “I’m so sorry, but I can’t let you in yet. Until we have an occupancy permit, the town doesn’t want people walking through the construction site.” Hopefully, none of them knew more than she did about the inner workings of town regulations. Still, there was no way she wanted them to see the extensive amount of work that was still needed upstairs. “Nothing’s stopping you from peeking in the downstairs windows, though!” she added with forced exuberance. “You can see the kitchen through the wall of glass along the back. It’s really spectacular. And if you walk around front, you can see into the great room—it isn’t quite finished, but the reading room and media room are. Feel free to explore from the outside. But, please, don’t go in. We could get into trouble, and that might hold things up even longer.” She wondered if in her next life she could become a hawker of miracle potions or swampland in Florida. What had happened to innocent Annie Sutton who’d never been able to tell a lie?

By some unexplained mystery of nature, the group seemed appeased. Greg thanked her, the others nodded, and they began to walk up toward the house.