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“I know, but I thought you were keeping your distance from them.”
“Sam said I was welcome to spend the evenings with them. I got the impression they were lonely. It’s just the two of them.”
Elle tipped her head. “I didn’t want to ask him, but where’s the mom?”
“She works at a hospital in Maryland. She’s a doctor. He said she doesn’t visit often and that I probably wouldn’t need to worry about her.”
Elle’s eyes widened. “She works out of state and doesn’t visit her child?”
“I know it’s hard to believe. I guess work is important to her.”
“That must be some job to ignore your kid,” Elle said.
Gray reached over to cover her hand with his. “Not everyone puts their kids first.”
Elle nodded. “It’s hard to remember that. Although I guess we got that growing up.”
“At least our parents didn’t live out of state,” I agreed.
“They might as well have for how much they were home with us.”
I couldn’t remember dinners together, and we never had a family game or movie night. Sam worried about messing things up with Maggie, but he was already doing a billion times better than our parents.
“My dad was arrested, so there’s that,” Gray said dryly.
Gray hid that part of his life when he first moved here, but he came clean with Elle and his boss, eventually. He realized he wasn’t defined by his past. But that was different from my situation because it was his dad who was the criminal.
I was the one who screwed up in the past.
“You think you’ll stay there for a while?” Elle asked.
“Yeah, I like it there.” I got paid a good amount with free room and board. I enjoyed Sam and Maggie’s company. “He encouraged me to do my mosaics.”
“He knows about them?”
“Yeah, I invited Maggie to my room to show her my seashells, and they saw them.”
“Is he okay with you filming?” Gray asked.
“He said he was. He’d keep Maggie away from the camera, though. He wanted to know why I wasn’t selling my stuff.”
“I’d like to know that too,” Gray said.
“Didn’t a shop owner reach out to you about stocking some?”
I nodded. “A store in Maryland did. But how would I ship them?”
Elle gave me a look. “You wrap them in bubble wrap, put them in a box, tape it, and go to the post office.”
“Yeah, but then how would I price it? Shipping is expensive.” Each step felt like an insurmountable mountain I’d have to climb.
“You include it in your price,” Elle offered.
“You make it sound so easy.”
“Starting a business isn’t easy, but I think you’re making it a bigger deal than it needs to be. You don’t need a physical space. You could sell online and in stores.”
“I’m not like you. I don’t want to start a business. I just want to create.” Something about placing the tiles helped me clear my head. It wouldn’t make sense to anyone else.
