“We’ll just do what we’ve always done,” Aunt Edie said. “What Ralph and I used to do. Hang on until summer. Summer will be here before we know it.”

Dear, sweet Aunt Edie. Always optimistic.

Always clueless. If they hung on any tighter they’d break their fingers. As Courtney had remarked, there had to be something else they could do.

“Anyway, it’s nice to take advantage of the lull,” said Patricia. “Travel, go see family and friends.” Which she did every November. Patricia had a sister in Arizona.

Patricia also had a healthy bank account and plenty of staff to cover for her. But what about the business-owners who weren’t in such good shape financially?

“We’ll have to hunker down and stretch the money,” Jenna’s friend Tyrella Lamb said to her later as the party was breaking up. Tyrella owned Beach Lumber and Hardware. She, at least, could be sure of customers all year long. “Or come up with a brilliant idea,” she added.

A brilliant idea. No problem.

Jenna waved good-bye to the last of their guests and returned to the living room to find Aunt Edie seated in her favorite seashell chair, twisting the agate ring on her finger. That ring was her aunt’s worry stone.

“We’ll be fine,” she told Jenna. Then added, “Won’t we?”

“Of course, we will,” Jenna replied. After everything they’d gone through to bring the motel back to life, no way was she letting it go out of business simply for lack of a few winter visitors.

She gave her aunt a hug and patted the covered cage where Jolly Roger, the parrot, was asleep for the night. Then she went upstairs to say goodnight to her daughter, who’d been camped out on her bed, texting with her friend Marigold about the new “older man” in her life. Tristan Van Cliburn was a nerd. A very cute nerd, tall and skinny with glasses decorating a face waiting to fill out, along with the rest of him. He was a senior and Sabrina was only a freshman, a big age difference when you were in high school.

But as Sabrina had taken to saying, “Love knows no age limits.” Where the heck had she heard that?

They’d met when he’d answered an ad Jenna had put in the Beach Times Help Wanted section for a website designer. Sabrina had wandered into the motel office when he was there and both their hormone centers had lit up like the Fourth of July. Before you could say young love, he was eating lunch with Sabrina and her two new friends, Jennifer and Hudson, every day at school, walking her home, trying to sneak in solitary walks on the beach.

Even though he seemed like a nice enough kid, Jenna didn’t want her daughter rushing into a relationship with him. Or anyone, for that matter, and becoming sexually active at such a young age. They’d had a mother-daughter talk (okay, more of a mother lecture) but Jenna wasn’t sure it had been very effective. It was so much easier to be a mother when your kids were little and you could keep them safely corralled in the backyard.