Page 47 of Forever Full Circle
The effect was contagious. The more she let people do, the more they did, often in ways she wouldn’t have considered. The breakfast tables multiplied into a row of picnic buffets, where everyone converged to eat and laugh and bond.
Mid-afternoon brought the final highlight: Mayor Derek Hansen, who greeted the crowd and made a slow, deliberate circuit of the site, pausing at every cluster of volunteers to shake hands and offer up a sincere “Thank you, we couldn’t do this without you.”
When he reached Emily, he stopped, fixed her with a steady look, and said, “I hope you know what you’ve done here.”
She blinked, not sure whether to laugh or look for an exit.
The mayor took her hand in both of his. “This lighthouse has been waiting for someone like you to bring it back to life. You did what everyone else only talked about. On behalf of the town—thank you.”
He held her gaze, the words landing deeper than she expected.
Behind them, the crowd erupted into applause for a pair of kids balancing a cupcake tower. They set it on one of the lunch tables, and Emily felt the tears rising again. This time she didn’t try to swallow them. She let them ride, just a little.
She took out her phone and texted Daniel:How’s things there?She was sure that the inn was running like clockwork, but she missed him. Missed her girls. Missed Roy, her mom, Cassie.
We miss you,he texted back.
I’ll be home tonight. Things are looking so good here.
He sent a celebration emoji.Take your time. You’ve got this.
***
Another flatbed truck pulled up just as early thenextmorning. The lighthouse grounds, already crawling with stagehands in matching T-shirts and steel-toed boots, weresuddenly covered with stagehands unloading pieces of a portable stage. A shuttle van, plastered with the logo of Roman’s label, made five runs up and down the bluff before eight, offloading armloads of cable, matte-black road cases, and more crew members with earpieces and clipboards of their own.
Emily watched it all unfold from the front steps as she sat and ate breakfast as she had promised Daniel she would this morning, a travel mug cradled in both hands. She still wore her safety vest, though the parking situation had mutated into a controlled free-for-all. Last night’s chaos had left the lawn pockmarked, rutted with tire tracks, but Roman’s team moved through the mess with the calm of people who measured everything in amps and lumens.
A phalanx of technicians fanned out, staking power cords in crisp lines from the generator to the stage. The stage itself was not the plywood riser she’d pictured, but a full-on festival platform: aluminum struts, blue skirt, a weather-resistant canopy that snapped into place with the authority of a military tent. Within an hour, they’d built a wall of speakers taller than Daniel. The rigging rose behind it in sharp, geometric counterpoint to the battered old tower.
Bryony, who had done marketing and online content for the inn for ages, stood beside the stage, iPad in one hand, a walkie-talkie clipped to her belt. She was in rare form—hair up, lips painted a glossy red, and a steady patter of updates pouring from her as if she were reporting live from a war zone.
“That’s our second food truck,” she intoned, stabbing a finger at the taco van bumping up the drive. “Lobster rolls on the left, vegan grain bowls next to the composting toilets, and they doubled the kettle corn order. Also, the Magic Elves are here to do the specialty cleaning—look at that, they even got the window in the top of the lantern room.”
Emily looked up and, sure enough, two climbers in matching blue polos were squeegeeing the last of the salt haze from the lighthouse glass. Below, another team ran a buffing machine over the stone steps. She felt her phone buzz, glanced down at a notification from the event’s website—Bryony again, live-blogging each addition to the schedule. “ROMAN WESTBROOK SOUND CHECK: 2:00 PM. CHANTELLE MOREY TO OPEN. STAY TUNED.”
It was kind of amazing what could happen when she let go of the reins a little. Emily smiled, proud of what her team had done without her. They were solid, and she just needed to learn how to let them work their own magic.
Emily sipped her decaf coffee, then set it aside on the edge of the railing. She ran a palm over her abdomen, still getting used to the new shape of her body—solid but soft, and unpredictable, like a weather system only she could sense.
A surge of sound cut through the air. It was the first feedback whine of the morning, a telltale sign that the main board was up and running. In the center of the stage, Roman himself was setting up—no entourage, no drama, just jeans and a work shirt and the kind of calm she associated with only the most seasoned professionals.
Chantelle stood beside him, guitar already slung over her shoulder. Her hair was pulled back in a taut ponytail, a borrowed denim jacket rolled at the cuffs. She didn’t fidget, didn’t hover at the margins. Instead, she leaned in, listening as Roman adjusted a pedal and muttered something about the midrange. She nodded, dead serious, then flicked her pick across the strings in a clean, bright G chord.
Emily watched, waiting for the nervous giggle, the sidelong glance—any of the tics that used to mark her daughter’s discomfort in new places. Instead, Chantelle squared her stance and echoed Roman’s next chord. He grinned, then ran aharmony line, humming it under his breath. Chantelle caught the interval instantly, singing it back without even a blink.
The sound tech, a woman with a cloud of platinum curls, cued up the mics. “Let’s do a verse,” she said, and the two of them played off each other, the notes tight and perfectly matched, like they’d rehearsed together for weeks instead of minutes.
Emily felt a dizzy flush of pride and loss all at once—her daughter, center stage, utterly unafraid. The crowd beyond the barricades grew as the morning went on: more volunteers in high-vis vests, old men in fishing caps lookie-looing, more catering crew with trays balanced on their hips. A few early arrivals clapped at the end of each run-through, but mostly people just watched, phones held up at odd angles, as if trying to document a thing they didn’t quite believe was happening.
Daniel left Charlotte with Roy at lunchtime and came to survey the setup, then found Emily. He kissed her and raised his brow, as if to ask,can you believe this?
She gave a helpless laugh, then shook her head. “Not even a little.”
He sat beside her on the steps, taking it in. “I’m pretty sure they put in more wiring than we’ve got in the entire inn,” he said. “And they’ve got a team just for the food trucks.”
Emily looked out over the tents and tables, the sea of folding chairs already filling up, the army of children running logistics for the memory wall. “This wasn’t what I pictured,” she admitted, “but it’s perfect.”
Daniel watched the stage, the set of his shoulders relaxing. “She’s grown up, huh?” he said, his voice so soft she almost missed it.
