‘I mean, kinda. I guess it wasn’t always that way. There were families once. Most of them grew up here and then just never left, and their kids moved away, and no one else moved in. And excuse me if I’m not the most complimentary towards them as most of them don’t even like the Seasonals, which is very whatever. You think they’d be a little nicer given their whole island enterprise would fall apart without us, but what do I know?’

‘I met Sylvia yesterday. And Ellis, I think? They were nice.’

Peyton’s face bursts open like a solar flare. I was right about her smile – straight to her eyes. ‘Oh, my God. You met Ellis? Isn’t he the greatest?’

‘You know him?’

‘I’ve been bugging him for two years straight! I normally work at the B and B.’ She scrapes her welcome packet off her desk and flicks open to the first page. ‘And again!’

‘Yeah, he was unbelievably nice.’

‘He’s the best. He’s sort of the official Seasonal adoptee. Little shy at first but the sweetest once you get to know him. But –’ she leans in – ‘between you and me … I wouldn’t have come back if I didn’t truly like it here – OK, I love it here, but Ellis is the embodiment of how shitty this place can be.’

‘He mentioned people treating him badly – because of his stutter, I guess.’

Peyton shakes her head. ‘That’s only the cherry on top. It has to do with their whole family.’

I leave a space for her to continue.

‘It’s just a – weird history. I don’t wanna get into it. As eager as Ellis is to share, I don’t even know the full extent of it, to be honest. People around here think they’re cursed or something.’

‘Cursed?’

‘Well, OK, maybe that’s stretching it. They keep their distance, anyway.’

‘Ellis was concerned,’ I say, ‘about his mom being overprotective. He wanted to take me to the hotel and his mom almost wouldn’t let him.’

She shakes her head sadly. ‘This is the thing – because he does get it. He’s not blind to it. He knows how people are but still wants to give them a chance to hurt him anyway.’

‘He mentioned they’re moving?’

‘What? He did?’

‘Yeah. Apparently Sylvia’s selling the hotel.’

Deer in the headlights. ‘I … didn’t hear about that. When?’

‘End of the summer.’

Peyton palms her face. ‘Well, that’s a bummer, I guess. But it makes sense. They deserve to be happy. At least, Ellis does.’

‘Not his mom?’