“Thanks,” I said. “Yours are definitely cuter.” She wore Bohemian-looking sandals with multiple straps in various colors and textures.

“Hey, Holden. You can join us too,” Anna said, and I was beginning to understand that making sure everyone felt welcome, wherever she was, was her superpower.

Holden greeted the seated group as a whole, all smiles and friendliness and ease, like he always was, joking with them for a couple of minutes before he glanced around and said hello to a handful—or a couple of handfuls—of others.

“Get your ass over here, Henry,” one of the guys called from the other side of the fire.

“How can I resist when you ask so nicely?” Holden shot back. He leaned down to me and said so only I could hear, “You okay here? Want to come with me to talk to Finn and Cade McNamara?”

“I’m good,” I said, determined to mean it.

Holden took out a hard seltzer from our mini cooler, cracked open the can for me, and handed it over. Then he angled in for a quick kiss before heading toward a trio of guys.

I turned back to the row of friendly faces. The welcome from these girls had me forgetting my unease in an instant, fast-forwarding to a more realistic current-day Chloe than the isolated one from the past. I went to the low-to-the-ground Adirondack-style chair between Anna and Emerson and lowered myself into it, acknowledging Emerson, Maeve, and the two on Maeve’s other side.

“Shawna Jenkins and Isabel Ballantine,” Emerson said, gesturing to them one at a time. As soon as she said their names, I vaguely recognized them as being a couple of years younger than we were. “Y’all remember Chloe Abrams, right?”

“Of course,” Isabel said. Her family was a mainstay of town and wasn’t one you could forget easily, particularly since Isabel was one of five blond sisters. They’d always turned heads wherever they went. “Or is it Henry?”

“It is,” I said. “Good to see you. Hi, Shawna.”

“Hey, Chloe.” Shawna leaned forward as she spoke, her curly black locks falling across her face. She brushed them back with long, ring-covered fingers. “You look fantastic and I heard you’re in charge of that new hotel. Local girl doing us proud.”

“Thanks. My company is the developer, so I’m overseeing the construction and opening. I have a general manager who will be in charge of the property going forward.”

“The place looks gorgeous from the outside,” Isabel said. “I can’t wait to see the inside.”

“The back porch is incredible,” I told them all, as everyone seemed tuned in to hear more about the hotel.

“We should plan a fall girls’ weekend there,” Olivia said. She and Anna had angled their chairs to make it more of a semicircle than a row.

“I love that idea,” Maeve said. “Some spa time, cocktail time—”

“Back porch time,” Shawna said.