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breath, let it out slowly, and hit Answer.
    “Hey there.”
    “Oh, hi, honey.” Claire’s voice dripped with sympathy. “How are you? Doing okay?”
    “I am. I’m just tired.” Emerson sipped her wine.
    “I bet. Did you meet with the lawyer today? How’d that go?”
    “It was…ugh. I don’t know.” Emerson could picture Claire sitting at her big mahogany desk in her office, the surface littered with sheets of numbers and data. It was late afternoon on the west coast, and she’d be getting ready to wrap up her day as an accountant for a large pharmaceutical company.
    “Yeah? How so?”
    “Everything was left to me.”
    “Not surprising.”
    “True. But now I have to figure out what to do with it all. There’s the inn, the cottage she lived in—where I’m currently staying—a commercial rental property in the village, her car, all her stuff.” Emerson groaned. “It’s a lot.”
    “What do you want to do with it all?”
    “Sell it, I guess. I don’t know. I mean, according to the lawyer, the rental property is set up with a rental company. My mom didn’t have to do anything. She kept an account with money in it in case of repairs or something. The rent from the tenants gets deposited into that account, and she took money out if she needed it, though I don’t think she made much on it. The lawyer said she hadn’t raised the rent in ages, which is typical of my mom. But it’s basically hands off, which is good.”
    “So, you could keep that running the same way, but do it from afar if you want.” Emerson could hear Claire shuffling papers on her desk; her ability to multitask was amazing.
    “I could, though I’d still have to deal with any big problems, which would be really hard to do from clear across the country. The inn is a different story. Did I tell you about its original layout?”
    “No, I don’t think so.” The shuffling stopped, and Emerson could picture Claire cocking her head to the side in curiosity, her chestnut brown hair probably pulled back in a complicated knot of some sort.
    Emerson finished her wine and got up to refill her glass, talking as she went. “The original Lakeshore Inn was three buildings: the main building up on a hill on the other side of the street, overlooking the lake, a smaller building of eight waterfront rooms right on the lake, and a separate cottage, also on the water. It all belonged to my grandparents way back before I was born. When they died, it was passed on to my mom. I think that was eighteen or nineteen years ago. I was in high school. Anyway, my mom was not a great money manager back then, and it wasn’t long before she was in the red in a pretty significant way. Luckily for her, she got an offer she couldn’t refuse from a real estate developer from downstate. Initially, he wanted the whole business, all three buildings, but Mom couldn’t bear the thought of losing the entire inn, so they struck a deal where he bought the main building overlooking the lake and Mom kept the waterfront building and separate cottage. And she got to keep the name The Lakeshore Inn. He changed the main building to The Lakeview Hotel.”
    “Wow. So different, those names,” Claire said with sarcasm.
    Emerson laughed and returned to her spot on the couch. “I know, right? But it ended up being a good deal, I think. Mom brought in Mary O’Connor, and they’ve been running the place together for years.”
    “Just the two of them?”
    “I’m sure Mom hired a few others here and there to help out.” Her brain flashed on Cassie Prescott, whom she’d seen through the cottage window dragging a vacuum cleaner from one room to another, her dark ponytail bobbing as she walked, her dog following on her heels. “It’s a lot of work. And I’m sure there must be a gardener or landscaper of some kind. And somebody to plow in the winter. These are things I need to look into. I wish I knew more.” A pang of guilt poked her in the stomach.
    “What’s your next