Leah really did not want to scoop her tail between her legs and run away, but she didn’t have any other option. Her friends were Greg’s friends, her job was gone, and she had little savings outside her severance.
“How about I drive up from New Jersey and help you settle in at the cottage?” her father had offered softly over the phone. He was still shy with both her and James, acting almost guilty since he’d remarried.
“Thanks, Dad,” she told him, “But I could use some time on my own.” To be fair, Leah didn’t know if that was true. From where she sat, a whole future of aloneness awaited her.
Now, she parked in the narrow seashell driveway and surveyed the house. The lawn was overgrown in that scrubby coastal way that was wind-worn and salt-blown; rugged more than unloved. The scraggly beach pines surrounding the house appeared taller, casting the small patch of yard in shadow, but the blue hydrangeas that flanked the front door were vibrant, bursting with hope. Leah smiled sadly. How many years ago had her mother planted those? She had not been back since her mother’s funeral, and staring at the flowers now was bittersweet. Perhaps someone was here to welcome her home, after all.
Leah found the key under the giant clamshell tucked among the hydrangea; the same spot they’d hidden it since she was achild. When she opened the front door, the air inside was hot and stale. Leah paused on the threshold, wondering if she’d walked into the wrong house. The pine paneling had been painted white, reportedly at her brother’s wife’s urging when her father decided to rent the house out to summer vacationers, and for a beat she missed the warm honey-tone of the wood she’d grown up with. An unfamiliar slipcovered sofa sat where the comfy old plaid sectional had been, two impractical wicker chairs tucked at its elbows. To the right, the kitchen had also received a coat of paint, the wood cabinets were now a deep nautical blue and the old appliances had been replaced. Leah was relieved to see the butcher block countertops remained, though she doubted it was because her father realized they’d come back into vogue. He was a practical man, if nothing else. When she opened the fridge, she was almost surprised not to see the package of bologna and the six-pack of Budweiser her father always kept on the bottom shelf. Leah had to admit, as sparse as the house was, it did look charming if not completely familiar.
After throwing open the doors and windows she tackled the car. It was full of everything she could cram into it from Boston, from clothes and books and toiletries to an antique brass reading lamp and a box of framed artwork, vintage New England prints she’d collected. Greg surely wouldn’t miss those; he was probably already hanging his Red Sox paraphernalia on the exposed nails she’d left stuck in their brownstone walls. She hung towels in the bathroom and made a quick grocery list on an old notepad she found in a kitchen drawer, wondering if the local market still closed at seven.Eggs, Coffee, Yogurt, Blueberries,Sourdough, Tomatoes, Cheddar. By then, the sky was turning a burnished apricot and her stomach was growling mad.
As she was hiding the key beneath the clamshell in her mother’s hydrangea, she heard the rumble of a truck coming down the narrow lane. Standing, she shoved her sad shopping-list-for-one into her back shorts pocket, barely registering the faded blue Ford that slowed as it passed her driveway. If the man behind the wheel leaned out his truck window to stare at her, Leah Powell was too exhausted to notice.
