Emma noticed the change before she was fully awake.
The bedroom window was open, just as it had been most nights through the summer, but the air coming through it felt different.
Cooler.
She reached for the quilt folded at the foot of the bed and pulled it over her legs.
For most of August, even the mornings had carried the warmth of the day ahead. She’d wake to sunlight already filling the room and leave the windows open while she made coffee, letting the breeze move through the cottage.
This morning, she stayed beneath the quilt a little longer.
Outside, the windchimes moved lightly near the porch. Somewhere toward the water, gulls called back and forth.
September had arrived.
Emma got up and closed the window halfway before pulling on a cardigan over her T-shirt.
In the kitchen, she started the coffee and opened the back door.
The yard still looked like summer in most places. The hydrangeas Margaret had planted years ago were beginning to fade, their blue blooms softening toward green. The garden was full from months of growth, and the grass still held the deep color of August.
But the air had changed.
Emma stepped onto the porch with her coffee.
Across the yard, the first few leaves had fallen beneath the tree beside Margaret’s bench.
She smiled. Not fall yet. But close.
She sat on the porch for a few minutes before going back inside.
Her laptop was already on the kitchen table beside a small notebook and the folder she’d packed the night before.
Today wouldn’t be a normal workday.
She had a meeting on the mainland that afternoon.
When her boss had asked if she could come in, Emma hadn’t thought much of it. Her remote arrangement had lasted far longer than either of them had originally planned, and she’d known eventually there would be meetings that required her to be there in person.
She’d packed enough for two nights.
The thought should have felt ordinary.
For years, that apartment had been where she returned after trips. Groceries in the refrigerator. Mail on the counter. Work clothes hanging in the closet. The coffee shop around the corner knew her order, and she could drive from the office to her building without thinking about which streets to take.
It was home. At least, it had always been.
Emma took another sip of coffee and looked toward the window.
Her suitcase sat beside the door.
She’d leave after her morning calls, catch the midday ferry, and be at the office with plenty of time before the meeting.
Organized. Simple. Exactly the way Emma liked things.
Still, as she carried her mug to the sink, she found herself checking the weather for Bellward Isle before she checked the forecast for the mainland.
She stared at the screen for a second. Then smiled and set her phone down. Apparently, some habits changed faster than others.
By eleven thirty, Emma had answered the last of her emails, finished her morning call, and shut down her laptop.
She carried her suitcase to the car and went back inside for her bag.
Before leaving, she walked through the kitchen once more, checking the windows.
The one above the sink was still cracked.
Emma reached up and closed it.
Two nights. She almost laughed at herself.
She had left the cottage for longer than that plenty of times during the summer.
Still, when she stepped outside and locked the door behind her, she looked back.
The hydrangeas moved slightly beside the cottage. Margaret’s windchimes hung near the porch, quiet now that the breeze had settled.
Emma tucked the key into her bag and headed toward the car.
There was a meeting to get to.
And an apartment waiting for her on the mainland.
An apartment she hadn’t slept in for months.
The ferry ride to the mainland took less than an hour.
Emma spent most of it answering a few messages on her phone and watching the island grow smaller through the window. By the time they reached the terminal, she had already shifted her attention to the afternoon ahead.
Traffic thickened as she drove toward the office.
That part she hadn’t missed.
She turned down the radio and followed the familiar streets, passing the grocery store she used to stop at after work and the dry cleaner she’d used for years.
Nothing had changed.
She pulled into the office parking lot ten minutes early.
Inside, the afternoon passed easily. People stopped by her office to say hello, someone asked how island life was treating her, and within half an hour Emma was back in the middle of conversations that had once filled most of her weekdays.
The meeting itself lasted just over an hour.
When everyone else had left the conference room, her boss remained behind.
“Do you have a minute?”
“Of course.”
Emma closed her notebook.
“I wanted to talk about the remote arrangement.”
Emma looked up.
She had known the conversation would come eventually. What she hadn’t known was what she wanted him to say.
“It’s working,” he said.
Emma waited.
“Actually, it’s working better than I expected.”
She smiled. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should.”
He leaned back in his chair.
“I don’t see any reason you need to come back into the office full-time.”
Emma hadn’t expected that.
“You don’t?”
“No. Your work is getting done. You’re available when we need you, and nobody has had to chase you down for anything.”
“That would bother me more than it would bother you.”
He laughed. “Exactly.”
Emma smiled.
“We’ll still need you here occasionally,” he continued. “Meetings like today. Maybe a day or two every few weeks, depending on what’s going on.”
“That’s fine.”
“But otherwise, if you want to keep working remotely, I’m good with it.”
Emma looked down at the notebook in front of her.
Back in March, she’d asked for several weeks.
Several weeks had turned into spring.
Then summer.
And now September.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’d like that.”
“Good. Then we’ll keep doing what we’re doing.”
Simple as that.
Emma gathered her things and headed back to her office.
She had expected the conversation to settle something.
Instead, it seemed to open another possibility she hadn’t really allowed herself to consider.
There was no longer a job requiring her to return to the mainland every morning.
For months, that had been the practical reason waiting in the background. The thing that made Bellward Isle temporary even as she stayed longer than she’d planned.
Now it wasn’t.
Emma slipped her notebook into her bag.
She still had an apartment here. A lease.
Most of her clothes were still in its closets. There were books on the shelves, dishes in the cabinets and a refrigerator she continued to pay to keep running despite rarely putting anything in it.
She shook her head slightly. One thing at a time. She still had work to finish.
It was after six when Emma pulled into the parking garage beneath her apartment building.
She carried her overnight bag upstairs and unlocked the door. Everything was exactly as she’d left it.
The sofa sat beneath the living room window. A stack of mail she’d collected on her last trip was still on the counter. The throw blanket was folded over the arm of the chair.
Emma set her bag down.
For years, she’d walked through this door at the end of nearly every workday.
Tonight, she stood there longer than usual.
The apartment wasn’t uncomfortable. It wasn’t even particularly quiet. Through the windows came the steady sounds she’d once barely noticed—cars on the street below, a horn farther down the block, someone closing a door in the hallway.
Emma walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.
Water. Condiments.
A container of yogurt that had somehow survived her last visit.
“That’s helpful.”
She closed the door.
A trip to the grocery store hadn’t made it onto her schedule.
She picked up her phone and considered ordering something before deciding to walk to the little restaurant a few blocks away.
Outside, the evening was warmer than it had been on Bellward Isle that morning.
The sidewalks were busy with people heading home from work. Cars waited at the light while someone across the street walked a dog that seemed determined to investigate every tree along the block.
Emma had walked this route hundreds of times.
She knew which intersection took too long to change, which coffee shop would already be closed, and where the sidewalk dipped enough to collect water whenever it rained.
At the restaurant, she ordered dinner to go and carried it back to the apartment.
She ate at the kitchen counter while going through the mail.
A utility bill. An advertisement. A renewal notice.
Then the envelope from the property management company she’d been expecting.
Emma opened it. Her lease renewal.
She read the first page, then set it beside her plate.
The timing almost made her laugh.
For months she’d been paying for an apartment she barely used because she’d assumed she’d eventually come back to it.
Now her boss had just told her she didn’t have to.
Emma looked around the kitchen. She didn’t need to decide tonight.
The renewal wasn’t due for several weeks.
She folded the paperwork and placed it neatly beside her bag.
Tomorrow was soon enough to think about it.
Later, Emma changed into pajamas and climbed into bed.
The room was exactly as she remembered it.
Same sheets. Same lamp.
Same framed print on the wall across from her bed.
She reached over and switched off the light.
A few seconds later, headlights moved across the ceiling as a car turned into the street below.
Emma closed her eyes. Another car passed, followed by voices drifting up from the sidewalk. She rolled onto her side. It had never seemed particularly loud here before. Maybe it wasn’t.
Maybe she’d simply grown used to different sounds.
Wind against the cottage windows, gulls in the morning, the windchimes outside the porch, and the ocean when everything else settled down.
Emma opened her eyes.
For the first time all day, she wondered what the weather was doing on Bellward Isle.
She smiled into the dark.
Tomorrow, she had another day at the office.
The morning after that, she’d take the ferry back.
Two nights.
That was all.
Emma pulled the blanket higher and closed her eyes again.
For years, this apartment had been the place she returned to.
Tonight, lying in the bed she’d once thought of as unquestionably hers, Emma found herself thinking about getting back to the island.
Leave a Reply