Maddie stepped between them. She couldn’t help it. It was the middle sister in her, the approval seeker, the office manager deep inside. “Look!” she said in desperation. “A puppy!”

Chloe swiveled her head to Maddie, amused. “Seriously?”

She shrugged. “Worth a shot.”

“Next time say it with more conviction and less panic. You might get somewhere.”

“Well, I don’t give a hoot if there are puppies and rainbows,” Tara said. “As unpleasant as this is, we have to settle it.”

Maddie was watching Chloe shake her inhaler again, looking pale. “You okay?”

“Peachy.”

She tried not to take the sarcasm personally. Chloe, a free spirit as Phoebe had been, suffered debilitating asthma and resented the hell out of the disability because it hampered her quest for adventure.

And for arguing.

Together all three sisters walked across the creaky porch and into the inn. Like most of the other buildings in Lucky Harbor, it was Victorian. The blue and white paint had long ago faded, and the window shutters were mostly gone or falling off, but Maddie could picture how it’d once looked: new and clean, radiating character and charm.

They’d each been mailed a set of keys. Tara used hers to unlock and open the front door, and she let out a long-suffering sigh.

The front room was a shrine to a country-style house circa 1980. Just about everything was blue and white, from the checkered window coverings to the duck-and-cow accent wallpaper peeling off the walls. The paint was chipped and the furniture not old enough to be antique and yet at least thirty years on the wrong side of new.

“Holy asphyxiation,” Chloe said with her nose wrinkled at the dust. “I won’t be able to stay here. I’ll suffocate.”

Tara shook her head, half horrified, half amused. “It looks like Laura Ingalls Wilder threw up in here.”

“You know, your accent gets thicker and thicker,” Chloe said.