“It, ah, looks great.” It looked the same as it ever had. And she knew this view. Every time one of the top-floor front rooms was vacant, she used to sit on its balcony and read.

Or sit on the balcony and talk for hours on end with He Who Shall Not Be Named.

Or sit and watch the Mermaid Parade from up high, which they also used to do.

Except that the last year she’d watched alone from the sidelines, and he’d turned out to be in it.

But no thinking about the Mermaid Parade. Time to lock the marching, waving mer-people back in the mental vault. Which probably wasn’t healthy, but whatever. It had worked pretty well for her for the past decade.

“That’s a new gazebo,” Karl called. “The old one had been painted over so many times, it would no longer hold on to a coat of paint for more than a season.”

He was right. The old gazebo used to be a magnet for love graffiti. “Jake + Kerrie 4EVR,” that kind of thing. It’s possible there was once a “He Who Shall Not Be Named loves Evie” on that gazebo, too, and it had been carved, not painted. That way, the carver had proclaimed, it would be “more permanent.” Eve, embarrassed by how thrilled she’d been, had teasingly pointed out that permanent wasn’t a concept you could have more or less of. It just was.

Or wasn’t, as it turned out.

“Town council was deadlocked over what color to paint it.” Mr. Andersen was still going on about the gazebo. “There was a pink faction, if you can imagine it. They said it was ‘raspberry.’” She could hear the air quotes. “It was supposed to be an homage to the festival. But it was pink. Bubble gum pink. Raspberries are red, I kept telling them.”

Right. “Mr. Andersen, do you think you could—”

“You see Jake Ramsey’s boat on its way in?”

That gave her pause. The concept of Jake Ramsey—he of “Jake + Kerrie 4EVR”—on a fishing boat was not unusual, but ten years ago he would have been on a fishing boat with his dad. The boat would have been referred to as Arthur Ramsey’s boat.

But time marched on, didn’t it? She’d left everything and everyone in this town behind when she’d fled on that horrible Labor Day weekend ten years ago. Arthur had probably retired. For all she knew, Jake and Kerrie had broken up, too, though that seemed impossible. If there was any couple in the world that was permanent, it was them.