They rowed back, and when they dragged the canoe onto the beach, it was to find that its pink stripe hadn’t held up to the boat’s maiden voyage.

“Needs more varnish,” Jake said.

“Nah,” Sawyer said. “Don’t bother. This was a stupid idea anyway.”

Eve had kind of been hoping the Realtor would leave before Sawyer and Clara arrived to pick her up for the trip to Toronto. No such luck, though. They pulled up as she was installing the for-sale sign out front.

Eve wasn’t sure why, but the overlap was making her uncomfortable. She and Sawyer had been doing an excellent job not talking about her upcoming departure, and though it was nonsensical, she didn’t want to present him with visual evidence. She wanted to keep living in denial, she supposed. Denial and orgasms.

There were worse places to be.

“Eve!” Clara called as she got out of the driver’s seat. “I’m driving, so you should call shotgun!”

Eve laughed but refrained from doing so. The siblings should sit up front with each other on a historic day like this. “Jessica, do you know Sawyer Collins, our chief of police?” Eve had recruited Jessica from Grand View, way back when she first came to town and needed an estimate. She’d been trying, back then, to use nonlocals, because she’d been so paranoid about the fine citizens of “Matchmaker” Bay poking their noses into her business. So much for that. “And his sister, Clara. Sawyer, Clara, this is Jessica Hacking from Remax in Grand View.”

Sawyer shook Jessica’s hand and nodded at the for-sale sign. “Hard to believe it’s been a year.”

Eve didn’t know what to say.

Jessica stood back to admire her handiwork. “Here’s my thinking, Eve. I’m leaving town tomorrow, back on Labor Day. My plan is to run an agents-only open house this evening, get some buzz going, then the listing will go live. We’ll hold back offers until after the long weekend, both because I think that’s the right strategy but also because then we can sit down and go through them together. My question is—”

“Hold up,” Sawyer, uncharacteristically, interrupted. “What happened to the Little Free Library?”

Jessica blinked. “We had to take it down. It was interfering with the sightlines to the sign.”

Annoyance flashed across Sawyer’s face. “We can put it back up after the sale,” Eve said, wanting to smooth things over. But then she realized that she wouldn’t be here for that. Even if they got an offer over the weekend, the sign would probably stay up until the closing date. Maybe she could ask Sawyer to put the library back up without her.

And hope the new owner wanted to keep it.

“So,” Jessica continued, drawing Eve out of her unsettling thoughts, “are you okay with me having one of my colleagues handle any showings while I’m away?”