“Me! I’m pretty handy, you know. I run that theater on a shoestring. And Jake Ramsey can build anything. And Pearl and Karl and Eiko and all Lucille’s old friends. I mean, they’ll want you to stay forever—God forbid anyone ever leave Matchmaker Bay, where they pull the strings—but you can exploit that. Karl owns a hardware store! That will be handy.”

“Matchmaker Bay?” Eve asked.

“Yeah, those old folks have gotten really aggressive with their meddling, so some of us started jokingly calling the town Matchmaker Bay.”

That was actually pretty funny. It didn’t change her circumstances, though. “Even so, I really have no money—I’m taking a leave from my job. You can’t renovate an inn without money. I can’t do everything myself, even if I have a pack of meddling elders helping me.”

“That’s what lines of credit are for.”

She did own the place free and clear—she wasn’t accustomed to owning things—so she probably could get a loan against it.

This was all so deeply, deeply unsettling.

When she didn’t say anything for a few moments, Maya said, “Okay, what else you got?”

“What do you mean?”

“Technical knowledge. Money. If we’re listing roadblocks, what are the rest of them? Tell me, so I can plow them over for you.” She angled her head so she could look Eve in the eye. “Unless you don’t want me to. In which case, screw Lucille, she’s about to be ashes in Lake Huron, let’s get you back to Toronto.” She smiled. “I would miss you, but I will totally come up with a list of roadblocks a mile long if you want me to.”

Something in Maya’s cheerful relentlessness—and her loyalty, despite the fact that they’d only recently gotten reacquainted—made Eve want to tell the truth. “Sawyer. Sawyer’s what else I got.”

“Ah.” Maya nodded and, without missing a beat, said, “Okay, well, the answer there is exorcism.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Exorcism.”

Eve laughed incredulously. “As in ‘Get thee behind me, Satan’?”

“Exactly. I mean, look. It sounds like Sawyer looms pretty large in your personal mythology. But he’s just a man. Which will probably be made abundantly clear if you spend a year here. He’ll turn out to be a normal, unremarkable dude. You won’t be able to figure out what you ever saw in him. If you’re spending a year here, semi-against your will, why not look at it as an opportunity? Redo the inn, undo Sawyer.”

“An exorcism.” Eve tried out the word. It sounded like…not a bad idea. If she could cut Sawyer down to size, maybe she could also walk around this town without water fountains and ice cream stands giving her panic attacks. She shot Maya a tentative smile. “It’s just a year, right?”