Then I see her on the dock.
Bag over one shoulder, hand shading her eyes against the morning light, looking up at the island with the expression of someone who has been meaning to do this for a long time and has finally stopped letting the restaurant talk her out of it.
Anna.
Behind her, three very large men are helping unload bags from the tender. Beside one of them, holding a stuffed rabbit by one ear and looking at everything with enormous interested eyes, is Lily.
I am down the shell path before I have thought about shoes.
We reach the bottom of the path at the same time as Anna reaches the top of the dock, and then I have my free arm around her and Sofia between us making a sound of profound protest at being squashed.
“Jennifer!”
"You didn't tell me," I say.
"You would have worried about the rooms."
"The rooms are always ready."
"That is exactly why I didn't tell you. You would have found something else to worry about."
She is right. I would have found several things.
She looks at Sofia. Sofia looks back, then grabs a fistful of Anna's hair.
Anna laughs.
"Hello, Sofia," she says softly.
Sofia responds with something that is not a word and is absolutely an opinion.
Then Lily, Anna’s eldest daughter appears at Anna's side, Mr. Flops dangling from one hand, wild curls escaping a braid that has clearly had a long morning. She looks at Sofia with the particular solemnity of a six-year-old encountering something smaller than herself.
"Is that the baby?"
"Her name is Sofia," I tell her.
"She has a lot of hair," she concludes, which from Lily I understand to be a compliment, given her feelings about her own curls.
Sofia reaches toward those curls with one small determined hand.
"She likes you," I say.
Lily looks pleased about this in the careful way of children who are trying not to show how pleased they are.
Behind them, Laurent, Julien, and Bastien have finished with the bags and are standing on the path taking in the island. Laurent says something in French. Julien responds. Bastien looks at his phone and then puts it away, which for Bastien I understand represents a significant commitment to being present.
"They'll be fine," Anna says, reading my face. "Laurent already asked about the kitchen."
"Of course he did."
"Julien wants to know if there's a pasta wheel."
"Santos has four."
Anna smiles. "They're going to get along like a kitchen on fire.”
Santos appears at the top of the path at that exact moment. He clocks Laurent, Julien, and Bastien, does the rapid silent assessment one chef performs on other chefs, and then his face opens the way it always does with people he has already decided he likes.