Of course. The core circle of four here used to be a circle of five—Lucille had been the first of them to pass away.

The chimes on the door jingled, and Art Ramsey joined them in the patio furniture display the group always occupied for their morning chats. Accepting a mug of coffee from Karl, he said, “I need a screw.”

“Really?” Karl said. “I thought you were doing okay in that department.”

Pearl snorted, and Sawyer chuckled.

Ignoring the ribbing, Art produced an old, rusty screw from his pocket. “This one is stripped. And it’s kind of a weird size, I think?”

Karl took it from him, put on his reading glasses, and examined it. “This is a brass screw.”

“Yeah, but the replacement doesn’t need to be brass.”

“This is from your bed, isn’t it?” Karl peered at Art over the top of his glasses. “You have a brass bed.”

“You and Jamila broke your bed! Ha!” Pearl pointed at Art and in the process sloshed some of her coffee over the edge of her cup. “Shoot! Look at that. You get laid; I get stained.” Pearl was a younger-than-her-years widow, and she was perpetually on the prowl.

“I told you I can set you up with—”

Pearl cut off Karl’s attempt at matchmaking. “And I told you I’ll never date anyone in this town.” She stood, blotted her blouse, and tsked. “And to think, I did blueberry pies this morning and managed to come out of that clean.”

“We need to talk about the Anti-Festival,” Art said.

“You’re just trying to distract us from the fact that you and Jamila literally broke your bed,” Pearl teased.

“Possibly.” Art suppressed a smile. “But has anyone considered that if the Mermaid doesn’t reopen by then, we need to find a new venue for the town sleepover?”

“Oh, crap!” Pearl exclaimed. “I hadn’t thought of that!”

“Well,” Art said, “I just heard on my way in that Eve Abbott isn’t selling the place. At least not right away. She’s going to stick around and renovate it.”

Pearl whipped her head up from where she was still working on the stain on her blouse. “Oh my God, Lucille actually did it!”

The three of them shared a conspiratorial look that Sawyer couldn’t quite decode.

“Let’s go.” Karl stuck his head around the corner of an aisle to shout at an employee—the employee who actually ran the store while Karl ran the gossip network. “I’m going out for a few minutes!”

They reminded him of a smaller, slower, more geriatric version of Ocean’s 11.

Which probably meant he should follow them.

Eve was swarmed—there was really no other word for it—by elderly people as she unloaded her car behind the inn. Karl Andersen, Art Ramsey, and Pearl Brunetta appeared out of nowhere, and they were all talking a mile a minute. Something about a…sleepover?