“Yay! Renovation with a side of exorcism, here we come!” Maya clapped her hands. “Okay, now, are we tossing Lucille in the bay or what?”

“Not now.” Eve pulled back from the railing.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right.”

Maya shrugged. “Okay. You’re the boss.” Eve put Lucille back in her bag, and they turned back toward town. “Hey, you know what would be really cool?” Maya exclaimed. “Murder mystery theater at the half-renovated Mermaid! Just think of the murderous possibilities! Rickety scaffolding, vats of cement, power tools.” She clapped. “This is going to be the best year ever.”

Chapter Six

Chapter Six

A week later, having filed the necessary paperwork to secure a leave from work, given notice to her landlord, and packed up Flounder—the rest of her plants were under her mother’s guardianship for the coming year—Eve was on her way back to Moonflower Bay in her brand-new-to-her car, which was enough of a junker that she wasn’t convinced it was going to make it.

She stopped in Grand View for groceries. Last week she had lived on snacks from Jenna’s General and the food people had brought to the wake, but a girl could only eat so much casserole. If she was really doing this—moving to Moonflower Bay for a year!—she needed real food.

“Oh my gosh! Eve Abbott?” The checker paused with the scanner in her hand, which she’d been aiming at Eve’s loyalty card for the chain, which displayed her name. “I heard you were back!”

The girl looked like she was in her late teens. She had long, mahogany hair and…Crap. Eyes as blue as the bay. Maybe Eve would have been better off subsisting on a diet of frozen tuna noodle casserole and chicken supreme. But no, they were bound to run into each other at some point.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” the girl said. “I recognized your name, but you probably have no idea who I am.”

“Clara Collins.” Clara Collins all grown up. It was uncanny.

“Yes! Impressive—I was only seven when you left town. But old enough to remember how down in the dumps my brother was about it.”

Uh, what? Eve opened her mouth to ask a clarifying question but was preempted by Clara’s continuing speech. “That was smart on your part, though. Sawyer’s a terrible boyfriend.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“He works all the time, and such odd hours, too. He can never hold on to a girlfriend.”

“Has Sawyer had a lot of girlfriends?”

Not that she cared. Realizing that she was leaning forward and furrowing her brow pretty intensely, she ordered herself to adopt a posture more in line with a person who did not care about Sawyer’s slate of girlfriends past.