The annual opening of the Beach Rose Inn marked the unofficial start of summer. It was part of the rhythm of life in Provincetown, like the ferry service from Boston, the whale-watching tour schedule, and the route of the Fourth of July parade. Amelia understood this, and it was something she had weighed carefully in making her decision to close it.
The old house had been in her family for five generations, and every spring required pre–beach season maintenance that she had long managed like clockwork. There was reshingling, repainting, flower-bed upkeep, cable and Internet upgrades, and of course a multitude of unpredictable repairs depending on how harsh the New England winter they’d just endured had been. And then, once the summer got into full swing, the work really began. For fifteen straight weeks, from May until early September, her home was filled with guests. Some were new, some were old (more like friends than guests, really), but all of them kept Amelia and her partner, Kelly, on their toes all season long.
And she loved it. At age seventy-five, she had been running the inn for so long, she couldn’t imagine a summer without it. But things changed, and it was time to slow down.
But then, the phone call. Out of nowhere.
Amelia was in the kitchen, standing at the sink, when the call came in. She had been looking out the window at the long wooden table that stretched the length of the backyard to the tip of the sand that framed Cape Cod Bay. Her guests always took their breakfast at the table, dining communally, making new friends, relationships that she had heard often lasted well beyond their vacation week.
“May I speak to Amelia Cabral?” The young woman’s voice shook.
“Speaking,” said Amelia, prepared to tell her the inn would be closed that summer—perhaps closed indefinitely. After months of such conversations, they had not gotten any easier.
“Hi, um—I’m sorry to bother you.” A long pause.
“Yes, dear. How can I help you?” Amelia prompted gently.
“Mrs. Cabral, my name is Rachel. I live in LA. And I’m pretty sure you’re my…grandmother.”
The word hung in the ether between them, heavy and weightless at the same time.
Amelia had thought that at her age, the days of surprises—good and bad—were long behind her. She had been standing in that very spot when a call had come in nearly three decades earlier, news so devastating all she could do was grip the countertop as if it were the only thing tethering her to the earth. And as the young woman told her story, that’s exactly what Amelia did once again.
When she finally hung up the phone, she had to hug herself to stop the shaking.
Funny, Amelia thought, how we greet both extremely bad news and extremely good news in the same way: disbelief.
In a daze, Amelia walked out the back door of the house into the early-spring sunshine. Her first thought was that she had to tell Kelly, stalwart Kelly, who had helped her keep the inn afloat all these years and had only reluctantly supported her decision to close it for the season. What would Kelly make of this?
What did she make of it? All Amelia knew was that she’d spent the last thirty years filling the house with strangers. But in a few weeks, she would have family under her roof.
After all this time, her family.