The next morning, Emma woke to the sound of wind moving along the side of the cottage.
She stayed beneath the covers for another minute, listening to it move past the windows before pushing them aside and getting up.
She reached for the sweater she’d left draped over the chair and pulled it on as she crossed the room.
One of the windows was open an inch.
Emma smiled.
Her grandmother had always done that. Even on cooler mornings, Margaret liked to leave a window cracked, letting the salt air move through the cottage.
“The house needs to breathe,” she would say.
Emma reached for the window, intending to close it.
Instead, she left it as it was.
The envelope was on the dresser.
She’d brought it upstairs with her the night before but hadn’t been ready to open it. Her name was written across the front in Margaret’s handwriting, the sight of it enough to make Emma stand there for a moment before picking it up.
She sat on the edge of the bed and slipped her thumb beneath the flap.
The paper inside was folded once.
Emma,
If you’re reading this, then you made it back.
Emma stopped.
Almost a year had passed since she’d heard her grandmother’s voice. Longer since she’d seen her handwriting anywhere other than the old birthday cards she’d kept.
She continued.
I know being here without me won’t be easy. There are memories in every room, and I imagine you’ll feel some of them before you’re ready. Let them come.
You’ve spent so much of your life thinking you needed to know what came next. You don’t. Not yet.
A small smile touched Emma’s mouth.
That sounded like Margaret.
Stay awhile. Open the windows. Walk down to the water. Put your hands in the garden when it needs tending. Sit in my chair if you want to. You know where everything is.
And when the house gets too quiet, listen.
Emma’s gaze stopped there.
You always did know how to hear the things other people missed.
I didn’t plan on staying here either, you know. Not at first. I thought Bellward Isle would be one small part of my life, and then, little by little, I kept finding reasons not to leave. Slow mornings. Flowers coming back in the spring. People who noticed when I hadn’t stopped by.
So don’t be in too much of a hurry to decide what comes next. Give the house a little time. Give the island a little time, too.
You might be surprised by what you hear when you finally get quiet enough to listen.
Love always,
Grandma
Emma read the letter again.
Then she lowered it into her lap.
There was nothing to figure out. Margaret wasn’t asking anything of her. If anything, she was telling Emma not to rush into deciding what to do simply because a decision was waiting to be made.
Emma looked toward the open window.
Listen.
The old clock downstairs ticked steadily.
Wind pressed against the screen and released it again.
A gull called somewhere toward the water.
And beneath it all came the low rush of the sea.
Emma sat without moving.
Home.
The word came before she had time to think about it.
She looked down at the letter.
That wasn’t quite right.
Home was her apartment on the mainland. Her own bed. The coffee shop around the corner. The route she drove to work every morning.
This was Margaret’s cottage. Or had been.
Emma folded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope.
She smiled as she stood.
Downstairs, her laptop waited on the kitchen table. She had emails to answer, a report to finish and a conference call that afternoon.
There were cupboards to go through, too. Drawers she hadn’t opened. Closets she’d eventually have to sort.
But first, coffee.
And, she decided while waiting for it to brew, a walk.
Margaret had specifically mentioned the water.
Emma glanced toward the window. She had plenty of time before her conference call.
The air was colder than it had looked from the kitchen.
Emma tucked her hands into her sweater pockets and followed the road toward town.
March had left Bellward Isle somewhere between seasons. Beach grass still lay brown from winter, and most of the gardens were little more than dark soil and last year’s stems.
Still, there were signs of what was coming.
Daffodil shoots beside a porch. Freshly turned soil in a garden. Open shutters on a pale blue house she remembered from summers with Margaret.
The island wasn’t asleep.
It was getting ready.
By the time Emma reached town, she could smell bread.
Morning Salt stood along the same stretch of buildings she remembered, though the sign over the door was newer. The windows had fogged slightly from the warmth inside.
She pushed open the door.
A bell sounded overhead.
“Morning.”
Emma returned the greeting and stepped toward the pastry case.
A woman sitting near the window looked up from her coffee.
Emma recognized her almost immediately.
“Ruth?”
Ruth’s face broke into a smile.
“Well,” she said, setting down her cup. “Look at you.”
Emma smiled. “It’s good to see you.”
Ruth stood and gave her a quick hug.
“It’s good to see you too. Margaret would be glad you’re here.”
The mention of her grandmother caught Emma for a moment.
“How are you doing?” Ruth asked.
“I’m okay.”
Ruth nodded, seeming to understand there was more inside the answer without asking Emma to explain it.
Ruth glanced toward the pastry case. “I suppose I don’t have to ask whether you still like Mabel’s biscuits.”
Emma looked toward the basket near the register, already smiling.
“I was hoping she still made them.”
“Every morning,” Ruth said. “Same recipe.”
Mabel looked over from behind the counter. “And if I remember correctly, one was never enough.”
Emma laughed. “You remember correctly.”
“Two, then?”
“Definitely two.”
Mabel reached for a sheet of brown paper while Ruth took another sip of her coffee.
“How’s the cottage?” Ruth asked.
“It seems all right,” Emma said. “There are a few things that probably need attention.”
“If you find anything that needs work, I’d call Hale & Son,” Ruth said. “Thomas worked on that cottage for years.”
Emma nodded. She remembered him.
“He’s mostly stepped back these days,” Ruth continued. “Elliott handles most of the work now.”
“His son?”
“That’s right. You probably remember him from when you used to come in the summers.”
Emma thought for a moment. “I do, actually.”
“Their shop’s still down toward the harbor. Elliott knows those old cottages as well as his father does.”
“That’s good to know.”
Mabel handed over the brown paper parcel.
“Coffee?”
Emma glanced at the clock.
She had nowhere she needed to be for another few hours.
“Sure.”
Instead of heading back to the cottage, Emma carried her coffee and biscuits toward the water.
On the way, she passed a weathered wooden sign.
HALE & SON
Coastal Restoration & Carpentry
That must be Elliott.
She made a mental note of where it was and kept walking.
At the end of the road, the land opened.
The beach looked nothing like the one Emma remembered from summer.
No umbrellas. No chairs. No children racing toward the water.
Only pale sand beneath a washed-out March sky, gulls gathered along the shoreline and one man walking far down the beach with a dog.
Emma stepped off the path.
The wind pulled a strand of hair across her cheek as she opened the paper parcel.
The biscuit was still warm.
She broke off a piece.
Buttermilk, salt and just enough sweetness.
For a second, she was eight again, sitting across from Margaret with sandy legs and wet hair while her grandmother told her not to get crumbs all over the table.
Emma smiled.
Then she walked closer to the water.
Emma heard the water moving along the shore, the wind coming off the sea, and the gulls calling overhead.
Beach grass moving behind her.
Nothing she hadn’t heard a hundred times before.
Maybe that was the point.
Emma stood there until her coffee began to cool.
She had work waiting at the cottage. She needed to unpack properly. At some point she should make a list of what needed repairing and decide where to begin sorting Margaret’s things.
A week wasn’t very long.
Emma looked down the shoreline.
Then she took another bite of the biscuit and started walking along the water.
The cottage could wait another half hour.