Page 2 of A Brambleberry Summer

Carrie laughed. “Stop. We’re not supposed to be shopping! I came in because I need to talk to you.”

Against her will, Rosa’s gaze shifted to Bella and then back to the girl’s mother. “Oh?” she said, hoping her voice sounded casual.

Carrie leaned against the counter. “Yes. How are you, first of all? I haven’t talked to you in forever.”

Carrie did not usually drop in just to chat. What was this about? She looked back toward Bella, who was holding the turquoise earrings up to her ears and looking in the mirror of the display.

“I have been good.” She smiled. “Summer is always such a busy time here but I am glad for the tourists. Otherwise, I would not be able to keep the store open. And how are you?”

“Good. Busy, too. Bella is going in a hundred different directions, between babysitting and softball and her music lessons.”

Such a normal, happy childhood. It warmed her heart. “Oh, that is nice.”

“Did I tell you, we have tickets to the theater in Portland next month?” Bella said. “It’s a traveling Broadway production ofHamilton. And then we’re driving down the coast to San Francisco. I cannotwait!”

Rosa hid a smile. Bella had only mentioned the upcoming trip about a hundred times since spring, when she and her parents had first started talking about it. “That will be wonderful for you.”

“Other than that, everything is pretty good,” Carrie said. “Well, okay. I do have one small problem I was hoping you might be able to help us out with.”

“Of course. What can I do?”

“Don’t answer so quickly. It’s a huge favor.”

Carrie had to know Rosa would do anything for her. Theirs was that kind of friendship.

“I was wondering if you’ve found a tenant to sublease your empty apartment until fall, when your renters come back.”

Rosa lived on the top floor of a sprawling old Victorian, Brambleberry House. She managed the property for her aunt and her aunt’s friend, Sage Benedetto Spencer.

Right now, Jen lived in the second-floor apartment, but the older couple who had been renting the furnished ground-floor apartment for the past year had moved to Texas temporarily to help with an ill family member.

“It is still empty for now.”

She didn’t have the energy to go the vacation-rental route, with new people constantly coming in and out.

Carrie’s features brightened. “Oh, yay! Would you consider renting it for the next month or so?”

Rosa frowned. “Why would you need a place to rent? Are you doing something to your house?”

Carrie and her husband lived in a very nice cottage about a mile from Brambleberry House. She had recently remodeled the kitchen but perhaps she was thinking about doing the bathrooms.

“Not for me,” Carrie assured her. “For Wyatt and Logan.”

Rosa tensed at the mention of Carrie’s brother and his young son. While the boy was adorable, seven years old and cheerful as could be, his father was another matter.

Wyatt Townsend was a detective for the Cannon Beach Police Department and always seemed to look at her as if she was up to something illegal.

That was surely her imagination. She had done nothing to make him suspicious of her.

“I thought he was staying with you while his home is being repaired.”

“He is. And I would be fine with him living with us until the work is done, but everything is taking so much longer than he expected. It has been a nightmare of wrangling with the insurance and trying to find subcontractors to do the work.”

Wyatt’s small bungalow had been damaged in a fire about a month earlier, believed to have been caused by faulty wiring. It had been a small miracle that neither he nor his son had been home at the time and that a neighbor had smelled the smoke and called the fire department before widespread damage.

Rosa knew from Carrie that the fire damage still meant he had to renovate several rooms and had been living with his sister and her husband while the work was being completed.

“That must be hard for Wyatt.”

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