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But I’d already gotten the results last week, and the Harringtons’ strong recommendation was that we take a deeper dive with their operational review, where Mr. and Mrs. Harrington would spend six weeks on site, shadowing every aspect of our business to give us a fully individualized plan for how to turn the resort around.

“Unfortunately, you’ll have to act fast if you want this done,” Blake Harrington had told me over the phone. He’d said they’d had a rare last-minute cancellation and could do the review now. The alternative was to wait a full year for their next available time.

A full year would be too late.

I knew Blake Harrington wasn’t bluffing. I’d called several friends who’d worked with Harrington Consulting who backed up what the online testimonials had said:They’re the best. They saved us. I’d sell them my firstborn.I also liked that they were a husband-and-wife team.

So last week I’d made the snap decision to sign the contract and pay their eye-watering deposit without consulting my brothers and sister. I knew they’d never agree to spend that kind of cash. Not that we even had the cash—it was credit that I would have to use to pay the fees until the hotel started earning again.

Today I was going to tell my siblings they had a week to prepare their respective departments for the review; that I was assigning my day-to-day CEO duties to other staff so I could focus on being in the office with the Harringtons; and that the review was starting next week. Eli in particular was going to throw a fit, I knew—he was Chief Financial Officer and knew just how thin the ice was. But once he heard from Mr. and Mrs. Shark directly, he’d be just as excited as I was.

So, that morning, I didn’t drag myself out of bed for my run. I bounded out, feeling hopeful for the first time in eight months.

My phone buzzed just as I was heading out the door to my baby sister’s apartment.

Chelsea and I lived side-by-side on the top floor of the staff apartments, while Eli lived below us. This was where we’d grown up, though back then the three apartments had been combined into one large family home. Other staff members lived on the lower floor, while our two other siblings, Jude and Griffin, lived nearby, in town and in the woods, respectively.

Chelsea and I went for a run together every other morning, down on the trail that ran alongside the Quince River.

I pulled out my phone in the hallway to check the message, my door clicking shut behind me.

CHELSEA:I can’t do our run, sorry.

“As if!” I exclaimed into the empty hallway, doing my best Cher inCluelessimpression.

It was 29-year-old Chelsea who’d gotten me into running; when before, the only time I’d ever move faster than a purposeful stride into a boardroom was to catch the subway. But Chelsea has been slipping lately. She’d canceled another run last week, too. She was getting as bad as our brother Jude, who only seemed to show up to stuff when it suited him.

I was about to bang on Chelsea’s door when a second text came through.

CHELSEA:Don’t knock. I’m not home. I mean, pretend I’m not home. I’m not alone.

Now that I saw the text, I seemed to recall a loud banging at midnight last night, followed by the muffled sound of Chelsea laughing.

“On a Tuesday?” I asked the empty hallway.

I should maybe try to live vicariously through my younger sister. My social life consisted of bringing work home to eat over a TV dinner, and occasionally putting on one of my guilty-pleasure 80s or 90s rom-coms—movies my ex had said were ‘beneath me’—when I was feeling really wild.

Instead, I shoved my phone into my running belt and pushed through into the stairwell, trying to stay on top of the slight panic crawling up my chest.

I’d planned on doing a soft reveal about the Harringtons’ review with Chelsea this morning. She almost always supported my decisions, and it would be good to have at least one person on board before dropping the news on the rest of them. But it didn’t matter. I was the CEO. And at the end of the day, I held ultimate responsibility. Plus, sometimes in business, risks were required. Calculated risks.

A few minutes later, I was jogging down the trail that ran through the trees from the resort property. I emerged from the trees along the short edge of our golf course, which fronted the river below. The resort was on the south side of the Quince River Valley, which was cut through by the Quince River, running east-west. On the other side of the river was the town of Quince Valley, which glittered like the river in the early morning sunrise.

Spring had been dreary this year, with every morning coming up gray and overcast, so the sun was everything today. There’d been torrential rain, and the Quince River had come close to flooding several times in the past couple of months. But this morning, the sky was pink and orange with the rising sun, promising the first real day of sun this April.

It was strange being home, and even stranger running the resort with my brothers and sister. The resort was Mom’s baby, and we’d always felt like Mom would run it forever. We’d never contemplated what would happen after her death. An ache squeezed around my chest as I reached the trees by the riverside. Mom’s death really had changed everything.

But here, birds were singing, and sun filtered through the early spring leaves.

You’ve got this, Cassamatass.

That was Dad’s voice in my ear, and the silly nickname he gave me when I was a kid. We’d been close, me and Dad, and my heart hurt that he’d gone so far sideways since Mom died.

Having not been down to the river this week, my jaw dropped when I cleared the trees. Normally this stretch of path ran several feet above the Quince River, which on this part of its path was a wide, meandering strip of water with a few small islands dotted throughout. Today, the water was running higher than I’d seen it in years, with only the largest of those islands visible at the moment. In fact, as I ran, I was alarmed to see the path had eroded in parts, as if the river had come all the way up and taken bites out of the gravel trail. So far, it looked intact enough to continue, but I had to go carefully, leaping across large muddy patches. I’d have to post an announcement down in the lobby to let guests know to take care when I got back.

Back the way I’d come, the path crossed over the bridge and followed the road into downtown, on the other side of the water. But over here, it was all nature, and at this hour, I rarely ran into anyone. As I reached a higher part of the trail, where flowers were beginning to pop up on the slope next to the trail, the going improved and I allowed myself to let down my guard, focusing on my run and the surrounding scenery.

I actually loved running. Ever since coming home, it was my greatest form of stress relief. I took in deep breaths and finally slipped into the zone—the space where all thoughts left my head and I could focus only on the feel of my feet hitting the path and the air in my lungs. To my right, I vaguely noticed I’d reached the spot where the river narrowed into a deeper stretch of water, with some small, treed islands mid-stream. While the water was fast here, the area just a hundred feet down smoothed out again. That part was popular for fishing, and even now I could see a man downriver in hip waders.