It came to her all at once, so simple, given that she was standing in front of one of the Great Lakes, that it made her gasp with both its obviousness and its perfection. She’d wanted this for a long time. She hadn’t felt its absence as keenly in Toronto as she had all those summers here, mostly because in Toronto she didn’t have a view of a body of water every day. But now that she was back, it was back, the wanting. Wanting mixed with embarrassment. And fear, of course. Always, when it came to this, fear.

But this wish was overdue. And even better, it wasn’t really a wish. A wish was just a hope. A passive request to God or the universe or whatever for stuff to happen to you. That whatever came around the next bend would be pleasing. But, as she had so recently reminded herself, her life wasn’t twisty. It was straight and predictable, and, more to the point, it was that way because she had made it that way. So yes, she’d make this her “wish,” but really, it was more of an intention. A pledge to do this thing. A vow.

I wish I could swim.

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Eve did get a second opinion about the will. After waking up with a hangover and a bunch of mixed-up feelings that Sawyer had stirred up in her the night before, she called a friend who worked at the law school library in Toronto. She gave Eve a referral to an estates lawyer who told her, via a telephone consultation, that Lucille’s will was probably contestable in court.

Two words there had given her pause: probably and court.

The day after that, she got several more opinions. Unsolicited ones.

From, seemingly, every citizen of Moonflower Bay.

At her aunt’s wake.

“Those balconies out front have got to go,” Karl Andersen said as he handed her a jar of homemade pickles. “Despite what everyone thinks, they are not original to the building. They were added sometime in the early twentieth century. If you ever want to get this building listed on the historical register, they’ll have to come off.”

“Oh, come on, Karl.” Pearl appeared on Eve’s other side. “She doesn’t need to worry about the balconies. The bigger issue is getting rid of all the crap in here and classing up the joint. She can charge a lot more for the rooms if she gets rid of some of this”—she patted the head of one of Lucille’s glued-down mermaids—“junk.”

“Oh, but I’m not going to open the inn,” Eve said.

Pearl seemed not to have heard her as she shooed Karl away and added two pie boxes to the growing pile of food on the table in the inn’s dining room, where Eve was, in theory, hosting a postfuneral open house.