I glare at him. “Mind your own business, Melvin.”
“This store is my business.” He doesn’t miss a beat. “Has been longer than you’ve been alive. Definitely longer than you’ve been standing behind that counter pretending you’re not bothered when you’re obviously bothered.”
I almost argue, but nothing comes out that won’t make it worse. I turn back to the sandpaper. At least sandpaper is consistent.
The copper flashing roll is in its proper place. I know—I put it there yesterday. Or Jordan did, while I wasn’t watching, which means the entire argument was a set-up to get me to walk over and see the shelf empty.
I should be mad. I am, sort of.
But despite myself, and a long list of reasons why I shouldn’t, I’m smiling.
The art studio at the back of the house is quiet. The kind of quiet that feels like a decision someone made and then forgot to unmake. Sometimes, on good days, I tell myself that’s the point, the best thing about this room—the hush, the stillness, the way nothing intrudes. But tonight, it’s the other kind of day, the kind where the quiet is more like a trap. The north window is doing exactly what Drew wanted, letting in that blue-gray Vermont evening light, dusk like watercolor seeping under a closed door. Everything in here glows and fades at the same time. I can’t help but notice how beautiful it is, and how much it would have pleased Drew, how he measured and deliberated, making sure his art studio got the perfect light. Not just good light, but optimal, as if sunlight could be tamed by spreadsheets and certainty.
The canvas on the easel is waiting for me. It’s been waiting for six weeks, maybe longer, but time is weird in this room. The painting is halfway to something, or nothing, a tangle of gray and ochre that could be a horizon or a shoulder or the edge of a dream. I stand in front of it, arms folded, trying to decide if I see anything at all. The painting just waits. Unbothered. It doesn’t care if it’s finished or abandoned. It just hangs in the space, patient and unresolved, the way unfinished things prefer to be.
Over at the worktable, the paint tubes are in their basket. Most have sealed themselves shut at their caps, the white and the ochre especially. The burnt sienna still bends when I squeeze it; the ultramarine is soft if I press harder. I pick up the white paint, try rolling it between my hands, like warming a coin or a stone. Nothing. The cap is stuck for good.
The brushes by the sink are lined up in a mason jar, spotless. Too clean. The kind of clean that means they haven’t beendipped in anything in a long time, which is just another way of saying I haven’t been painting, not really. I choose one—a number six flat, still with the sticker on the handle—and rub my thumb along the bristles. They barely move. Soft, new, and a little bit sad. Ready, but not needed.
I wander through the room, touching things at random. A palette knife with its tip bent from too much frustration, too little patience. A photo tacked to the corkboard: the ridge trail above town last October, leaves burning scarlet and orange, back when the world felt bright. A jar of linseed medium, bought with big plans, unopened and still shining in the light. Every object has a story, or the beginning of a story, or the memory of a version of me who was still trying. I put the jar back on the table. It clicks softly. That sound marks the most action this studio has seen in ages.
I end up at the window and look out.
Drew’s garden is in full midsummer riot. Tomatoes forming, heavy and green. Zucchini everywhere. By the time August hits, I’ll be sneaking them into neighbors’ cars just to stay ahead. At the edge of the yard, the shed sits open, tools hanging on their pegboard inside like soldiers waiting for orders. Drew’s tools. Still in their assigned shapes, because for him, putting things back where they belonged was almost a commandment. Order mattered, like recycling or common courtesy.
The house is full of that order tonight. Every mug in its row, every key labeled and hooked, every blanket chosen for a reason and not by accident. The throw blanket on the couch is still the perfect blue I once said I liked, and Drew remembered. That was the sort of thing he did.
But now it’s just me standing in the space he built for two, and the chairs and blankets and mugs are still waiting for someone to tell them the rules have changed.
I leave the studio and walk into the kitchen. The house contracts and expands at the same time: too big for one person, too crowded with memories and things that haven’t figured out how to move on. It’s been three years. Three whole years. You would think the ghosts would have found their way out by now. Maybe the mugs would have shuffled around, or a blanket would have found its way to another chair, or some new detail would creep in to prove that life is still here. Still moving.
The laptop sits on the table, waiting like an accusation. My tea is cold. The only chair at this table that gets used anymore is the one I pull out and sink into, the kitchen dim and heavy around me. The screen lights up, a flash of my face before the search page takes over. My fingers sit on the keys; I wait. I listen.
Then I search.
Commercial real estate agents Sleighbell Springs VT
The results pop up, immediate and overwhelming. Names, faces, phone numbers, promises. The first is Elaine something, who looks like she’s never lost a sale in her life. Then three more, and then the map, colored dots showing what’s available, what’s possible.
I don’t click. I just stare. In my head, I can hear my sister: “Boston misses you.”
The search bar blinks, steady and polite, as if the answer is right there if I just ask. The tab is open, sitting at the top of the screen: commercial real estate agents Sleighbell Springs VT. Eight words. That’s it. But the real question is bigger, a gulf between staying and leaving, between what was and what might be.
It’s easier to stare. To let the cursor blink until my eyes do too. Because sometimes, what’s hardest isn’t choosing—it’s knowing the choice is there at all, waiting in the gap between your hands and the keyboard, in the air that fills every room youdon’t quite fit in. The person you were, and the one you could become.
The cursor waits. I don’t move. The house waits, too, full of all these things that know exactly where they belong. Hoping, maybe, that someday soon, I’ll figure it out too.
Chapter 2
The alarm doesn’t ring; I didn’t bother to set it. No point. My body’s been hauling itself upright at 4:45 since I turned twenty-two—a trick that sometimes feels like a gift, sometimes a punishment, depending on whether I drank too much the night before. Today? Solidly, crushingly, a curse.
The ceiling above my bed slopes, steep as a ski jump—a feature everyone else would call “charming,” except I keep finding new ways to smack my forehead on it, which makes me less than sentimental. I stay there a minute, flat on my back, listening to the bones of the house shift and settle around me. Someone’s creaking down the hall, headed for the bathroom, moving careful and heavy-footed. Through the wall: a radio, low and scratchy, talking about overnight markets and soybean futures in a voice so dull it could lull a coyote to sleep.
My room at the Stocking—the one and only boarding house in Sleighbell Springs, home to more misfits than matching towels—is the size of a walk-in closet, maybe a generous one if you’re feeling charitable. I’ve lived in worse. The quilt on the bed is a riot of colors my mother sewed together before she got sick of Vermont winters and married a man named Steve in Arizona, who collects vintage belt buckles like they’re going out of style. The patchwork doesn’t match and neither does anything else in here, but matching would mean planning, and planning suggests I’ve thought further than the next chimney flue I’m supposed to shimmy up.
My bare feet hit the floor and the cold bites, sharp as wire. I wriggle into the same canvas work pants I’ve worn sinceTuesday, empty the pockets: a bent nail, a Rutland plumbing place’s business card, maybe seven bucks in change. I shrug into a flannel from the back of the door. It smells like woodsmoke and sweat—the notes I’d go with, if I ever bottled my own brand. Eau de Chimney, with a subtle finish of creosote and regret.
The sweep kit waits by the door. Always ready. I run through the contents anyway: wire brushes, rods, drop cloth, respirator—all present and accounted for. I’ve had this kit longer than any romantic interest, and honestly, it’s never let me down.
