Page 11

I’d met my immediate neighbor, Peggy—a lovely woman around the same age as our mother—and the owner of the coffee shop across the street seemed friendly enough, but that suddenly seemed like a very thin support network to rely on. Especially since I only understood about half of what they said.

Anxiety laced with sadness wrapped itself tightly around my chest, making it hard to draw a full breath, as Mac patted his pockets to check that he had everything.

“I’m going to miss you.” I over-exaggerated a sniff to hold back the tears threatening to break loose, hoping that he would think I was doing a bit. One glance at his worried frown dispelled that delusion. I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d always been able to read me like an open book. “You know,” I said, “because of all the heavy lifting I’ll have to do for myself now.”

Mac laughed as he flexed his nearly nonexistent bicep. “Uh-huh. I believe that. Are you sure you’re not just scared of being alone and possibly getting a wee bit homesick?” He pulled me against him and rubbed the top of my head with his knuckles in a gentle noogie. I struggled just long enough to put up a good front, then let myself melt into his embrace.

“Whatever,” I muttered wetly into his shirt.

“I hate leaving you here all alone,” Mac said, squeezing me close. “If it weren’t for Gerald’s show, you know I’d stay a little longer,” he added, pulling away to meet my gaze. “But you know how he gets.”

I did know. Mac’s long-term partner was a brilliant sculptor with near-crippling ADHD who could pinpoint every random piece of trash—or, as he called it, reclaimed building material—in his studio, but could barely function when he was on deadline. Without Mac there, Gerald was likely to land himself in the ER the week leading up to a gallery opening.

“I can come back as soon as the show is underway! Maybe we’ll both come.”

I almost laughed at the dubious expression that accompanied that comment. Being anywhere over fifty miles from his studio made Gerald twitchy and cranky. He wouldn’t cross the Atlantic even if I promised him some grade A Scottish trash to pick through. Mac wrapped both of his arms around me in a bear hug that spoke volumes about how bad he felt about leaving.

“You’ve got this,” he murmured into my hair before pulling back and grinning down at me. “Don’t forget,” he added. The twinkle in his eyes tugged the corners of my lips up despite the tears running down my face. We finished the sentence together.

“With enough motivation and duct tape, there’s nothing we can’t do.”

We chuckled about the catchphrase that kept us going through the worst of our teen years while Mac shouldered his duffel bag, gave me a last tight squeeze, and let himself out, leaving me entirely on my own.

Silence settled on me like a weighted blanket that was simultaneously comforting and smothering.

Swiping away an errant tear, I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin. As our grandmother would have said, I’d picked the sheets and made the bed; the only thing to do was sleep in it.

I smiled sadly to myself. At least I wouldn’t be missing her any more here than I would have back in Massachusetts. She’d been dead and gone long enough that the sting of her passing had dulled to an ache rather than a sharp jab whenever I thought about her, but I still occasionally missed her more than I’d ever expected to.

A foghorn oddly reminiscent of her laugh echoed off the water nearby, making me chuckle. I wasn’t sure why the horn was sounding off in the middle of a sunny day—likely one of the many things I had yet to learn about my new home—but I wasn’t complaining. For an instant, it felt like she was there with me, and I wasn’t entirely alone.

I listened for another blast of the horn, but nothing rang out over the still-unfamiliar crash of waves or the halyards clanging rhythmically against the masts of the boats in the harbor. Maybe I’d imagined it. As fresh tears welled in my eyes, a single thought bounced around the gaping emptiness inside me.

It’s just me now.

Suddenly, the weight of what I’d undertaken and passed up made my knees buckle, and a cry that had been building inside me for months finally erupted. My body shook as I wrapped my arms around myself and curled forward. My forehead touched the ground, and the floodgates holding back the ocean of tears that had been building from the moment Jim had walked out—taking with him my peace of mind and stability, leaving me alone in the rubble of my life—burst open.

Pent-up fear, rage, and grief for everything I’d lost—the life I thought I’d been living and the future I’d been promised—came pouring out in a torrent of tears and gasping sobs that shook me to my core, until, like the clouds parting after a heavy rain, they slowed to a trickle and stopped.

When I blinked open my eyes, I still felt hollow, but in a way that welcomed being filled with newness rather than just being gutted. More important, what had appeared to be more than I could handle a moment before no longer seemed so dire. I took a shaky breath and straightened up to look around the shop.

Sure, I didn’t know the first thing about running a tea or cookie shop, or any other store for that matter, but I was smart and resourceful. I could learn. And if I failed, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Nothing could possibly be worse than not trying.

We’d worked hard over the last few days, and it showed. The debris that had littered the floor was gone, as were all other signs of neglect. The afternoon light streaming in through the scrubbed storefront window lit up the waxed floor and danced along the whitewashed bricks. Like me, it was a refreshed canvas, ready for whatever came next. My heart swelled with love and pride, buoying me until I couldn’t stay down any longer.

Feeling just the tiniest bit silly, I got to my feet and turned my face to the sunlight, letting it wash over me, bathing me in warmth and possibility.

It’s just me now, I thought again. But instead of bringing tears to my eyes, the words made me grin.

If no one was coming to my rescue, that also meant no one was coming to stop me. I could be anything I wanted, do anything my heart desired.

And I had a pretty good idea what my heart wanted to do.

FIVE

A ray of sun peeked through the clouds and lit up my thistle-blue storefront as I approached the next morning, and joy exploded in my chest

But just like it had the day I’d fallen in love with the quaint, quirky little shop, my heart twinged painfully as the sweet man whose eyes and smile had briefly touched my soul popped into my head. What might have come from the spark we’d both felt on our one magical date if I’d given it the chance to bloom beyond the few weeks of increasingly intimate emails and calls that had ensued?