I am exhausted. So tired, in fact, that my head is buzzing and my shoulders ache. Sonny groans and rolls onto his side, making the glider swing.

I look out over Lake Michigan, and it looks as if it’s cloaked in ethereal light. I look up and spot the Big Dipper.

My mind turns to Sadie. When she looked out the turret, she saw the same stars—the same Big Dipper—as I do now. But her stars were “cross-grain’d.”

Mine seem to be shimmering with hope and pointing in a definitive direction.

The Big Dipper seems to be telling me—with its bright stars—that life is all interconnected, a connect-the-dot pattern to something bigger if we just take the time to see it, to follow it.

“No,” I say to myself, petting Sonny. “There is wonder, and this place is still magical. I’m just sharing it now with the world.” I stop. “I am seeking my own stars.”

I consider how many times my parents sat in this exact spot—on this same glider—waiting for me to come home. How many times did my grandparents do the same? And now, that continues, just in a completely new way.

My first day has not gone as planned. For some reason, I anticipated all of the guests arriving at the same time, like summer campers descending from a bus. I was planning to hand them sparklers—as my dad had done with my family for so long—and recite the rules of the cottage to them as an introduction to the beauty and spirit of the inn. But Mildred and Mark had thrown me off-kilter, and by the time I’d showered, I returned to the front desk to find more guests who’d arrived early.

Sonny’s breathing calms me, and I shut my eyes and listen to the soundtrack of Michigan. Over the rhythmic thump of the waves, the peepers sing and the bullfrogs moan.

Once spring establishes itself in Michigan, nature returns after a winter of hibernation, and a chorus of insects and frogs sing their glorious return to life. My dad, like so many Michiganders, calls a certain frog that lives in these parts “peepers” for their distinctive call—a single, high-pitched peep—which is known as a harbinger to spring and summer. As the heat and humidity increase, their peeps become a deafening chorus. Accompanying them, cicadas serve as altos to their sopranos, and their calls—akin to violins—rise and fall from song to silence as if a conductor were leading them. The baritones are the bullfrogs, whose resonant, resounding moan reverberates like a bass drum over the landscape.